One of America’s ugliest strategic bombers crashed in South Dakota on Thursday night. According to the Air Force, all four of its crew members ejected and no one was hurt. The bomber was the Rockwell B-1B Lancer, a supersonic aircraft first introduced in 1986 that has the distinction of being one the stupidest-looking planes of its type in the Air Force’s fleet. It lacks the iconic grace of the B-52, the badass name of the B-17 Flying Fortress, and the effortless cool of the B-2 stealth bomber.
This particular B-1 was from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, where it was assigned to the 28th Bomb Wing. According to a statement from the 28th Bomb Wing, the bomber crashed “at approximately 5:50 p.m. today while attempting to land on the installation. At the time of the accident, it was on a training mission. There were four aircrew on board. All four ejected safely.”
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Only 104 of the B-1s were built and the machine has a remarkably clean flight record with few crashes. But it was a troubled aircraft during its initial production and testing. A 1987 crash saw a B-1 destroyed in a training range in Colorado that killed three of its six crew after hitting a flock of birds.
At the time, the bomber was experiencing a revival. It was conceived in the 1960s and first tested in the 1970s, but President Jimmy Carter shut down the program after problems during production and testing. Ronald Reagan later reversed Carter’s decision when he came into office.
Like the F-35 now, the B-1’s production was plagued by problems. Fuel tanks leaked, navigation devices failed, and electronic components didn’t work. But the Air Force and manufacturer North American Rockwell nonetheless entered the plane into service in 1986. It’s crashed 11 times and killed 17 people since then. The most recent, before last night’s crash, happened more than 20 years ago in 2001, when a B-1 bomber involved in the war in Afghanistan crashed in the Indian Ocean. All four crew members survived, and the plane gained the the distinction of being the first bomber the U.S. lost in the Afghan War.
Today, the B-1 is one of America’s three kinds of strategic bombers, continually overshadowed by the sturdy and reliable B-52 and the stealthy B-2. The B-1 was also once a nuclear-capable bomber, the U.S. officially de-nuclearized the bombers as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.
UPDATE 1/5/24 at 11:24PM: This article and its headline originally stated that the B-1 is nuclear-capable. It is not. It was originally a nuclear bomber but was de-nuclearized as part of an arms reduction treaty with Russia. This article and its headline have been updated and VICE (but mainly the author) regrets the error.
