Forum: Mishaps

B-1 bomber catches fire in Qatar; crew safe
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes online edition, Friday, April 4, 2008


ARLINGTON, Va — An Air Force B-1B bomber caught fire at 9 p.m. local time while taxiing after landing at Al-Udeid Air Force base in Qatar.

The crew evacuated the aircraft and is safe, and the fire was contained, according to a statement issued by the Air Force Combined Air and Space Operations Center Southwest Asia on Friday afternoon.

The $283 million aircraft flies with a crew of four.

Al-Udeid Air Base is the headquarters of all American air operations in the Middle East.

The Air Force has appointed a board of inquiry and will investigate the incident, the statement said.

Originally intended as a replacement for the venerable B-52 Stratofortress, the first long-range, supersonic B-1B Lancer was declared operational at Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas, in October 1986.

The 100th and final B-1B was delivered to the Air Force in 1988, and by 2000, there were 93 left in the inventory.

The Air Force decided to retire 33 of the B-1B fleet in 2003, but returned seven of the bombers to service the following year, leaving the Air Force with 67 aircraft (the rest were cannibalized for spare parts).

Thanks to its high-speed strike and large payload capacity, the “Bone,” (B-one) as the B-1B is usually called by its crews, has proved very useful in a close air-support role in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Source: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?sect ... icle=53850

B-1 bomber burns after landing in Qatar

(CNN) -- A U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber caught fire Friday after a landing at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, U.S. military officials said.

The crew evacuated safely, the officials said.

They said the fire began while the plane was taxiing after landing about 9:10 p.m. at al-Udeid, the headquarters of U.S. military air operations for the Middle East.

Officials said the fire on the bomber was contained. A military board of inquiry has been appointed to investigate the incident, they said.

The officials said initial reports said the plane crashed at the headquarters of the U.S. military's air operations for the Middle East.

The B-1B Lancer is widely used by the U.S. military to bomb targets over Iraq and Afghanistan.

It carries a host of satellite and laser-guided bombs and is able to remain over targets for long periods of time to assist in close-air support for troops on the ground.

In December 2001, a B-1 crashed while returning from a bombing run over Afghanistan to a British base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

Originally designed to speed nuclear bombs into Cold War Russia, the B-1 was retooled to become a long-range bomber able to carry more conventional bombs, allowing it to hit more targets over a wider area.


Al-Udeid, about 20 miles south of Qatar's capital of Doha, has the military's longest runway in the Middle East.

About 3,300 U.S. troops, mostly Army, are stationed at the base.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast ... ber.crash/

B-1 bomber catches fire in Qatar
Published: Saturday, 5 April, 2008, 02:27 AM Doha Time

Staff Reporter

B-1 BOMBER belonging to the US Air Force caught fire last night at the Al Udeid Air Base, 35km south of Doha.

A spokesperson for the US Air Force Central Public Affairs Office, South West Asia, said: “The US Air Force B-1, while taxiing after landing at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, was involved in a ground incident and caught fire at 21.10 local time on April 4.

"The crew evacuated the aircraft and is safe. The fire was contained. A board of inquiry has been appointed and will investigate the incident."

At the time of going to print, officials in Qatar were not confirming the incident and the Air Force Public Affairs Office was looking into local reports that a number of explosions had been clearly heard in parts of Doha at the time the B-1 caught fire.

An earlier report from Al Jazeera English said the B-1 had crashed.
Reuters also reported the incident citing a US Defence official as saying: "A B-1 crashed. We are investigating. We don’t know how many people were on board or what mission the bomber was conducting."

Meanwhile, AFP said another official, who was travelling with Defence Secretary Robert Gates in Oman, had denied that the bomber had crashed, claiming there was "an explosion aboard a B-1 bomber on the ground".

However, this failed to explain local accounts in and around the surrounding area of the base.

One source told Gulf Times: "I heard repeated loud explosions and the ground beneath my feet was shaking. When I ran out of my accommodation to see what was going on, I could see smoke billowing into the sky."

Another source said: "I was at home when I heard a deep rumble like thunder. A few seconds later I heard it again, and then one more time. When I went outside I could not see anything, but I did hear a number of emergency sirens. I assumed there had been some kind of major accident on the roads."

Although there was no comment from the authorities, the roads leading to the air base were closed to traffic, indicating an incident of some sort had occurred. Ambulances and police vehicles were also seen racing through Doha in the direction of the base.

Despite all the signs pointing to a major incident having taken place at Al Udeid, there was never any suggestion that there was a direct threat to the security of Qatar and no civilian flights were disrupted at Doha International Airport as a result of the incident.

The B-1 is a long range bomber capable of flying intercontinental missions without refuelling and is able to penetrate sophisticated defensive networks.
The B-1, which was estimated to cost $283.1mn in 1998, was conceived as part of the Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (AMSA) programme around 1965.

AMSA was the last in a series of programmes through the 1960s that looked at replacing the B-52 Stratofortress with a multi-role supersonic aircraft capable of long-range bombing and missile launching with nuclear weapons.

A series of cancellations led to its service introduction being greatly delayed, until the later half of the 1980s, over 20 years after the programme first started.

Last month, a B-1 bomber slid off the runway at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, crashing into a group of emergency vehicles. The military reported that there were no injuries and no fatalities as a result of the accident.
The $1.4bn Al Udeid Air Base is the home of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the US Air Force. It has the longest runway in the Middle East — 3,751m.

It is estimated that about 3,300 US troops, mostly army, plus pre-positioned equipment, are stationed in the base.

The base can accommodate up to 120 aircraft. Early in the Afghanistan campaign, F-16 fighters and E-8C Joint Stars reconnaissance planes that monitor ground units were based here, along with refuelling tankers.
Military research group Globalsecurity.org states that the base also houses the 44th, 340th and 379th Expeditionary Air Refuelling squadrons; 434th and 911th Air Refuelling Wings; and 93rd Air Control Wing.

Source: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/a ... rent_id=56