A pilot who played the viola. A young dad who just returned to work from paternity leave. A flight test engineer who followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.
They are three of the eight men who were killed this week when a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Two days after the deadly catastrophe, the military released their names Wednesday.
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 Smith, a civilian flight test engineer for the Defense Department, emerged 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.
Middleton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was 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.
Davis was based at Edwards Air Force Base and was a weapons systems officer with the 419th Flight Test Squadron.
Rischar was a father and a flight test engineer with the defense contractor JT4. Like his grandfather and father, he was a civilian employee also based at Edwards.
Rischar loved going to airplane museums and showing their two children, 15 and 14, different types of aircraft and how they functioned, his wife, Rebecca Rischar, told The Associated Press.
She recalled how her husband’s father, who saw the crash, called her to ask whether Christopher had been flying.
“I knew he was on that flight,” she said Wednesday. “It was routine, and if the plane went up, he was going up with it.”
The couple met at a church youth group in high school and had celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary in April. He had just started helping their teenage daughter learn how to drive.
“Our marriage is not just for this life here on Earth but for eternity, so we are sealed together,” she told the AP.
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.
Officials said in a statement, “Given the swiftness of the crash after departure, the incident was declared unsurvivable.” 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 has 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 staffed by a crew of five: an aircraft commander, a pilot, a radar navigator, a navigator and an electronic warfare officer.
Edwards Air Force Base is in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
