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A U.S. Air Force B-52 with six crew members on board crashed off the island of Guam on Monday, an Air Force spokesman said.

Search crews have found no survivors, but they are still looking, said Lt. Elizabeth Buendia, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard in Guam. They located an oil slick but have not seen any wreckage, she said.

Rescuers with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy were searching a point in the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles northwest of Guam, a U.S. territory, where the plane is believed to have crashed, said Capt. Joel Stark, spokesman for Andersen Air Force Base.

He had no information on whether anyone survived.

The B-52H Stratofortress was based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and was in Guam as part of a four-month rotation, Stark said.

It went down about 9:45 a.m. local time (7:45 p.m. ET Sunday).

A B-52 from Andersen Air Force Base was scheduled to fly over crowds celebrating Liberation Day, which commemorates the U.S. capture of Guam from Japan in 1944, Stark said.

But it was unclear whether the plane that crashed was the one that had been scheduled to perform the flyover.

In February, a B-2 stealth bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. Two crew members ejected and were in good condition afterward.

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Ein B52-Bomber der US-Armee ist in der Nähe der Pazifik-Insel Guam ins Meer gestürzt. Bislang ist unklar, ob die Besatzungsmitglieder überlebt haben - die Suche nach den sechs Soldaten dauert an.

21.7.2008 10:31 Uhr

Washington - Ein Langstreckenbomber der US-Armee mit sechs Soldaten an Bord ist am Montag über amerikanischem Gebiet abgestürzt. Es gebe bislang keine Informationen darüber, ob jemand überlebt habe, sagte der Kapitän der Andersen-Air-Force-Basis, Joel Stark, nach Angaben des US-Nachrichtensenders CNN. Rettungsmannschaften der US-Küstenwache und der Marine suchen die Gegend etwa 50 Kilometer nordwestlich der Insel Guam im pazifischen Ozean ab. Die Unglücksursache ist demnach noch unklar.

Der Langstreckenbomber B52H Stratofortress stürzte um 9:45 Uhr Ortszeit ab, wie Stark schilderte. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt sollte eine B52 anlässlich des 64. Jahrestages der Befreiung der Insel von japanischer Besatzung über eine feiernde Menschenmenge fliegen. Dass das abgestürzte Flugzeug allerdings die dafür vorgesehene Maschine war, konnte Stark nicht bestätigen.

Heimatflughafen des Unglücksbombers war die Barksdale-Air-Force-Basis im Bundesstaat Louisiana im Süden der USA. In Guam war die B52 im Rahmen eines viermonatigen Austauschs stationiert. Die Insel liegt auf Höhe der Philippinen zwischen Japan und Australien im Westpazifik. (jam/dpa)

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Original von FalconBen

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HONOLULU (AP) — The Air Force says a B-52 bomber carrying six crew members has crashed off the island of Guam.

The Coast Guard says two people have been recovered from the waters. Their condition was not immediately available.

Rescue crews from the Navy, Coast Guard and local fire department are searching for the others.

Officials say the crashed occurred about 25 miles northwest of Apra Harbor.

The accident is the second for the Air Force this year on Guam.

In February, a B-2 crashed at Andersen Air Force Base in the first-ever crash of a stealth bomber. The military estimated the loss of the aircraft at $1.4 billion.

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Two airmen were found dead in the Pacific Ocean and rescuers were trying to find four others after a U.S. Air Force B-52 crashed off the island of Guam on Monday, the Air Force said.
Rescuers found the bodies about 30 miles northwest of Guam, not far from where the bomber was believed to have crashed at about 9:45 a.m. local time, the Air Force said.
One of the dead airmen was identified, but the identity was withheld pending family notification, the Air Force said.
Search crews have found no survivors, but they are still looking, said Lt. Elizabeth Buendia, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard in Guam, which is a U.S. territory.
The B-52H Stratofortress had six airmen aboard and was on a training mission when it crashed, the Air Force said. It was scheduled to fly over crowds celebrating Liberation Day, which commemorates the U.S. capture of Guam from Japan in 1944, the Air Force said.
The bomber was based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana but was at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base as part of a four-month rotation, said Capt. Joel Stark, an Andersen Air Force Base spokesman.
No weapons or munitions were aboard the aircraft and information on what led to the crash wasn't available, the Air Force said.

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No Survivors So Far in B-52 Crash


(HONOLULU) —The Air Force continued to hold out hope of finding survivors Tuesday in the crash of a B-52 bomber off Guam, but a brigadier general said there was no evidence that any of the airmen were alive.
Two bodies from the six-member crew were found after the crash Monday morning. An earlier Coast Guard report said three bodies were recovered, but spokesman Lt. John Titchen later said that was in error. No names of the plane's crew had been released.

"We've seen fuel in the water, oil slicks, some pieces of what look like a plane. This is right within the area where we had planned our searches," Titchen said. "We are now planning our searches to include wind and water current, any kind of drift that may happen to someone in the water."

The unarmed Air Force bomber had been making a swing around the island from Andersen Air Force Base for a celebratory fly-over of another part of the island as part of Guam Liberation Day celebrations. The holiday marks the arrival of the U.S. military arrived to retake the island from Japan.

An extensive military and civilian search continued to scour vast expanses of ocean on Tuesday for any sign of the remaining crew members, said the 36th Wing Commander, Brig. Gen. Douglas Owens.

"We recognize, however, that the longer this search continues the less likelihood there is that we'll find survivors," Owens said a day after the crash 30 miles northwest of Guam's Apra Harbor.

Three vessels including a destroyer, three helicopters, two F-15 fighter jets and a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft based in Japan were involved in the search, which covered roughly 3,000 square miles of the Pacific, Titchen said.

"We've basically saturated that area," said Titchen, who called search conditions "ideal," with light winds, calm seas and good visibility. "We're optimistic our search area is concentrated on the right area right now," he said.

The Air Force will investigate the accident. The two crew members were wearing their life vests when their bodies were recovered.

"This is a challenging operation when we lose people we work with on a day-to-day basis, so we're doing the best that we can to cover that area as quickly as we can," Titchen said.

The accident is the second for the Air Force this year on Guam, a U.S. territory 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii.

In February, a B-2 crashed at Andersen shortly after takeoff in the first-ever crash of a stealth bomber. Both pilots ejected safely. The military estimated the cost of the loss of the aircraft at $1.4 billion.

The plane that crashed Monday was based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and deployed to Guam as part of the Department of Defense's continuous bomber presence mission in the Pacific. The Air Force has been rotating B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers through Guam since 2004 to boost the U.S. security presence in the Asia-Pacific region while other U.S. forces in the area have been sent to the Middle East.
The B-52 is a long-range, heavy bomber that can refuel in midair. Since the 159-foot-long bomber was first placed into service in 1955, it has been used for a wide range of missions from attacks to ocean surveillance.