2008 Guam B-52 Crash - Recovery and Investigation

Recovery and Investigation

The USAF worked with the United States Navy to map and retrieve the aircraft's wreckage from the ocean floor. The wreckage did not include a flight data recorder because the aircraft was not equipped with one.

The accident investigation board concluded that the horizontal stabilizer was set at a down angle during the training mission. The cause of the mishap was an improper stabilizer trim setting. Due to the lack of available evidence, no surviving crew members, no radio calls, no other witnesses and lack of a data recorder, the accident investigation board was unable to determine by clear and convincing evidence why the stabilizer trim was mispositioned. The investigation board felt that the most likely cause of this runaway stabilizer trim was a system malfunction that would have led the stabilizer trim to improperly run in a nose-down direction. The improper trim setting occurred somewhere between 14,000 and 10,000 feet (3,000 m) and caused a rapid and uncontrollable descent the experienced crew could not overcome. Based on the descent profile of the mishap aircraft, there was only 34 seconds from the presumed start of the mishap sequence until impact.

The board president, Brigadier General Mark Barrett explained that two factors led to the crash. The first was the "combination of low altitude with a descending left turn of the aircraft". The second was "the late recognition of the serious nature of the situation by the crew". He added, "any experienced air crew could have found it difficult to recognize, assess and recover from the rapidly developing situation involving the stabilizer trim setting." The USAF also conducted a separate safety investigation into the mishap but did not publicly release its findings.