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B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff from U.S. air force base in California

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has been used in conflicts for decades

A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff Monday morning at a U.S. Air Force base in California's Mojave Desert, officials said.

Emergency crews were responding after the aircraft went down around 11:20 a.m. local time at Edwards Air Force Base, the military said on the social platform X. There was no immediate information on whether anyone was hurt.

Video from the scene showed a huge plume of black smoke rising from the desert.

Shortly before 1 p.m., the airfield was closed and all inbound aircraft were being diverted. Meanwhile all non-commercial visitor passes for the base were suspended "to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations," officials said in a statement.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, typically crewed by five people, is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts ranging from the Vietnam War to recent operations in the Middle East.

Edwards Air Force Base is home to a large portion of the U.S. air force's aircraft test and development efforts and is about 160 kilometres north of Los Angeles. The 412th Test Wing, which runs the base, also conducts developmental testing of all U.S. air force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their lifespan.

The vast desert base is also where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947.

Monday's incident marked the first crash ​of a B-52 Stratofortress since the same type of bomber crashed on the island of Guam in May 2016, according to the ⁠Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, a Geneva-based organization that collects global aviation accident data. All seven crew ⁠members aboard that aircraft survived.

The crash on Monday also comes almost a year after the pilot of a regional airliner flying over North Dakota last July made an unexpected sharp turn to avoid a possible mid-air collision with a military B-52 bomber that was in its flight path.