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The investigation into a US air force bomber’s deadly crash during a test flight at a California base on Monday could take up to six months to complete, officials said.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, carrying eight people, crashed in a fiery explosion that sent up thick plumes of smoke at the Edwards air force base in the Mojave desert, about 100 miles (161km) north-east of Los Angeles.

The bomber made a sharp right after taking off and then a near 180-degree turn before it plummeted about 5,056ft (1,541m) per minute onto another runway – nearly 10 times as fast as a plane normally descends when preparing to land, according to flight tracking data from AirNav Systems.

There were no survivors onboard. The victims, who included Boeing employees, government workers, military personnel and civilian contractors, have not been publicly identified.

The airfield remained closed on Tuesday. Crews were making the crash site safe for search and recovery teams to enter, after fires flared up overnight, said Mike Paoli, a spokesperson for the 412 Test Wing at Edwards.

The way the B-52 crashed so quickly after takeoff without getting very high or going far makes aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti suspect some kind of flight control malfunction.

It’s possible the controls were rigged wrong after maintenance, he said, or a catastrophic engine problem or a failure of a piece of equipment that was being tested.

“I think it was definitely a controllability issue. Now, whether that was tied to an engine failure, a flight control failure, or some new testing device failure, I’m not sure,” said Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

In recent years, fatal air force training accidents in the US have included an instructor pilot who was killed in 2024 when the ejection seat activated while the aircraft was still on the ground in Texas and an air force ROTC cadet’s death in a 2022 accident involving a Humvee during a training exercise in Idaho.

Two air force pilots were killed when a trainer jet crashed near an Alabama airport in 2021.

Edwards is home to a large portion of the US air force’s aircraft test and development efforts. The 412th Test Wing, which runs the base, also conducts developmental testing of all air force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their lifespan.

The aircraft was supporting a “radar modernization program”, Col James Hayes, the deputy commander for the 412 Test Wing, said on Monday. In 2025, Boeing sent a B-52 to Edwards with a modernized radar system that is key to keeping the bomber in the air through at least 2050, nearly a century after it first entered service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report