US air force B1 strategic bomber crashes in latest American military mishap

A B-1 Lancer bomber on a training mission crashed as it sought to reach an air force base but all four crew members were able to eject, the US air force said.

The B-1, hailed by the US air force as the “backbone of America’s long-range bomber force”, crashed at Ellsworth air force base in South Dakota at about 5.50pm GMT on Thursday.

It crashed “while attempting to land on the installation”, a statement by the Ellsworth air force case said in a statement, adding that all four crew aboard had managed to eject safely.

The accident will be investigated by a board of officers, the statement added.

At the time of the crash, visibility was poor with freezing temperatures and low clouds, according to automated weather reporting equipment recording airfield conditions.

The B-1 is a conventional supersonic bomber that came into service in the 1980s.

The air force said “it can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons against any adversary, anywhere in the world, at any time”.

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It added that the nuclear mission was scrapped for B-1s in 1994, although the aircraft were considered heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons until 2007.

B-1s have been used to support the US bomber presence in the Asia-Pacific region and to conduct close air support missions in US operations in Afghanistan.

While 100 were originally built, fewer than 60 remain in service at Dyess air force base in Texas and in Ellsworth.

There has been a spate of accidents and crashes involving other US military aircraft in recent months.

In November, the US grounded its fleet of Osprey aircraft after a fatal crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight people.

The same month, five US special operations troops died after their helicopter crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training mission.

In another incident, a US navy plane flying in rainy weather overshot a runway at a military base in Hawaii and ended up in Kaneohe Bay, with all nine on board escaping injury.

In September, an F-35B crashed after vanishing from radar following a costly “mishap”, with the pilot ejecting from the cockpit and parachuting to safety. The pilot escaped uninjured after falling what he estimated was 2,000 feet into the garden of a North Charleston resident who was celebrating their seven-year-old’s birthday

Additional reporting by the Associated Press