{"id":363788,"date":"2026-06-17T03:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/363788\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T03:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:45:08","slug":"b-52-bomber-that-crashed-in-california-killing-8-had-ties-to-texas-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/363788\/","title":{"rendered":"B-52 bomber that crashed in California, killing 8, had ties to Texas A&M"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDWARDS Air Force Base, California \u2014 The B-52 Stratofortress that crashed during a test flight<\/a> at Edwards Air Force Base in California, killing eight people, had ties to Texas A&M University.<\/p>\n

The aircraft was named \u201cThe Spirit of Aggieland II\u201d in 2015 by Col. Bruce Cox, a Texas A&M graduate who was then commander of the 307th Bomb Wing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The plane was dedicated to past and future members of Texas A&M\u2019s Corps of Cadets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aircraft … was familiar to generations of Aggies through flyovers above Kyle Field and its longstanding ties to Texas A&M,\u201d Sen. Ted Cruz said.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Cox took the final flight of his 31-year Air Force career aboard the aircraft, flying over Texas A&M, Kyle Field and the rest of Aggieland.<\/p>\n

New flight-tracking data released Tuesday<\/a> showed the aircraft made a sharp right turn shortly after takeoff and nearly completed a 180-degree turn before plunging to the ground. Data from AirNav Systems indicated the bomber descended at a rate of more than 5,000 feet per minute, nearly 10 times faster than a typical landing descent. Officials cautioned that the limited tracking data does not provide precise altitude or speed information and does not indicate what caused the crash. <\/p>\n

Officials have not yet released the names of the victims.<\/p>\n

RELATED | ‘He is a leader, he’s a hero’: Wife remembers Edwards AFB engineer killed in B-52 crash<\/a><\/p>\n

Lauren Smith told KBAK, the sister station of KVII in Bakersfield, California,<\/a> that her husband, Jeromy Smith, was among them. She said he was a flight test engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and died doing what he loved.<\/p>\n

Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n

BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT<\/p>\n

“It is such a horrible hurt, and I’m still processing everything that happened,” Smith said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDWARDS Air Force Base, California \u2014 The B-52 Stratofortress that crashed during a test flight at Edwards Air…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-363788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}