Bomber Crashed Last Month; No Word On Possible Cause

Military investigators believe they have located the wreckage of a Barksdale B-52H bomber that crashed off the coast of Guam July 21, killing all six crew members.

The Air Force Times reports investigators with the Air Combat Command have identified a spot about 30 miles northwest of Guam, where a debris field will be defined before a joint Air Force and Navy team recover parts of the aircraft, for use in two separate crash investigations.

As ANN reported, the plane was on a practice flight at the time of the crash, ahead of a planned flyby in commemoration of the liberation of Guam from Japanese forces in 1944. The aircraft was deployed to Anderson AFB from Barksdale AFB near Shreveport, LA, as part of the DOD's continuous bomber presence mission in the Pacific.

Memorials for all six crew members have been held, despite the fact that only one has been positively identified. The Air Force says identification of the others is in process.

So far, investigators don't know why the aging bomber crashed... and even if they're able to recover large sections of the B-52's airframe, there's one item they simply won't have access to. Like other B-52H bombers, the accident aircraft was not equipped with any kind of flight data recorder, or CVR.

FMI: www.af.mil