16 July 2008 25 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Early in June a B2 Stealth Bomber departing from Andersen Air Force base in Guam crashed on a few moments after take off.  At the time of the crash the only available from the Air Force at that time was that “Water distorted preflight readings in three of the plane’s 24 sensors, making the aircraft’s control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash.”  Both pilots ejected safely.  A short time later, a video was released showing the crash.

(Video of the crash can be viewed here.)  More recently several high res photos take by base personel were released documenting the aftermath of the crash.  As more details were released it turns out that water logged sensors were indeed the root of cause of the crash.  Ground crews had re-calibrated the sensors to compensate for the water.  However, in preparation for take off pilots activate the sensors built in heaters, which in turn evaporates the water.  The pilots are left with fully functional sensors, but they are still displaying incorrect readings as a result of the earlier re-calibration.  The bombers instruments reported an incorrect speed with resulted in take off before the plane had reached the correct speed.

For more details and images check out Popular Mechanics.