Crashed Bomber Flew Oddly, Witness Says

The Air Force B-1B bomber that ripped a half-mile gouge across the prairie, killing its four crew members, was flying lower and slower than normal military flights in the area, a rancher said Saturday.

“I thought that was kind of strange, but they do all kinds of different maneuvers out there,” Jim Watts said.

Watts, 41, who was herding cattle near an Air Force training area in southeastern Montana, said the B-1B “came over me real low, and it was flying exceptionally slow for as low as it was, I thought. Normally they’re flying twice as fast as that.”

The crew of the plane from the 28th Bomb Wing had been practicing low-level maneuvers, which usually are performed at altitudes of 400 to 1,000 feet and speeds of 500 to 550 mph, Col. Will Fraser, the wing commander, said in a news conference at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, S.D.

There was no evidence the crew sent a distress signal before Friday’s crash, and investigators had not yet found the flight-data recorder, said Col. Glen Spear, who was at the crash scene Saturday.

The Air Force said the plane was not carrying any bombs

Watts said he notified authorities after seeing “a big flash of fire and just a hell of an explosion over the ridge.”

A rancher who arrived later said the largest piece of wreckage was no bigger than a big bale of hay.

“Looking at the pieces, you couldn’t recognize they were parts of a plane,” said Sandy Thomas, whose ranch borders the crash site. “There was a lot of black smoke, and the pieces of the plane were scattered for about half a mile.”

It was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash, the sixth involving a U.S. military aircraft in a week, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said Saturday at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

After the crash, the Air Force moved up a one-day suspension of training flights from next Friday to Monday. The suspension is to determine “why these incidents happened and how to prevent more mishaps,” said Gen. Richard Hawley, head of the Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va.

The victims were identified as Col. Anthony Beat, the pilot and vice commander of the 28th Bomb Wing; Maj. Clay Culver, assistant operations officer; Maj. Kirk Cakerice, the co-pilot; and Capt. Garry Everett, weapons systems officer.