The military on Wednesday released the names of the eight people who were killed this week when a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California.
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They are: Col. Gregory Watson, 53; Lt. Col. Gabriel Estrella, 40; Retired Lt. Col. Miles Middleton, 50; Maj. Alexander Davis, 34; Maj. Robert Dee, 40; Maj. Brad Hovey, 35; Flight test engineer Jeromy Smith, 32; and Flight test engineer Christopher Rischar, 41.
“They were dedicated professionals, beloved family members and irreplaceable teammates,” Col. Thomas Tauer, commander of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards, said in a statement.
Watson and Middleton were employees of Boeing, the manufacturer of the B-52 Stratofortress.
Their loss “is deeply felt across our teams, and our hearts remain with their families, loved ones and those who worked with them,” Boeing said in a statement.
The name of Jeromy Smith, a civilian flight-test engineer for the Department of Defense, emerged on Tuesday. Four months before he was killed, Smith became a father for the second time.
“My husband just went back to work,” his widow, Lauren Smith, told NBC News. “He was there for just a week.”
Smith, who was also the father of a 2-year-old named Fletcher, had worked on projects at the base for 10 years.
“We did not see this coming,” said Lauren Smith, 30, who had been married to her husband for six years.
Lauren Smith, who worked on the base as a kindergarten teacher, said Monday’s flight had originally been scheduled for Friday.
“They go through tons of safety things before they even take off,” she said. “And I know specifically on Friday they had — they were gonna fly on Friday, and they just kept pushing it back and pushing it back.”
“And I don’t think that plane was ready to take off, and I’m so sad it did,” she said.
Middleton, of Tehachapi, California, was a married father of two, according to an obituary provided by the military.
A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Middleton worked as a test pilot for Boeing and played the viola with the Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra.
Watson, who hailed from Shreveport, Louisiana, was also an Air Force veteran and a weapons system officer.
Rischar was a father of three and a flight test engineer with the defense contractor JT4. Like his grandfather and father, he was a civilian employee based at Edwards Air Force Base.
Davis was also based at Edwards and was a weapons systems officer with the 419th Flight Test Squadron.
The Stratofortress, which is a long-range bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons, was on a “routine test mission” when it suddenly went down, Air Force Col. James Hayes told reporters Monday.
“Given the swiftness of the crash after departure, the incident was declared unsurvivable,” officials said in a statement.
But they declined to speculate on what could have caused the catastrophic crash.
“The Accident Investigation Board process has formally commenced; these types of investigations can take up to six months for initial conclusions on the cause of the crash,” the officials said.
Nicknamed “the Buff,” for Big Ugly Fat Fellow, the B-52 been the go-to bomber for the U.S. military since 1955, according to Air Force Global Strike Command.
Each plane costs $84 million and is manned by a crew of five, including an aircraft commander, a pilot, a radar navigator, a navigator and an electronic warfare officer.
Edwards Air Force Base is located in the Mojave Desert, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
