Accident Details
At 11:05 a.m. on Tuesday, June 23, 1959, a Boeing B-52D bomber designated Tommy's Tigator departed Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, for an experimental low-level flight test. On board were five employees of the Boeing Airplane Company: Lewis E. Moore (commander/pilot), Joseph Q. Keller (copilot), Gerald G. Green (navigator), and flight-test engineers Charles K. McDaniel and Neil Johnson. Since April 10, 1959, the aircraft had been conducting test runs over Eastern Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, carrying special electronic equipment to measure stresses on the airframe and flight surfaces.
The bomber was scheduled to fly at an altitude below 500 feet above the ground on an elliptical course from The Dalles, Oregon, to Malheur Lake near Burns, Oregon, and back to Walla Walla, Washington, at a near-maximum speed of 638 miles per hour. At 11:30 a.m., the crew radioed that they were over The Dalles and preparing to descend for the low-level portion of the flight. No further communications were received after that checkpoint.
Eyewitness Account
Leslie Heinz, a lineman for the Harney County Rural Electric Cooperative, was working with a crew on power lines in a remote area approximately 35 miles west of Burns and three miles from the crash site. At about 12:00 noon, he observed the B-52 flying southeast at approximately 300 feet above the desert floor when it suddenly crashed. The aircraft disintegrated on impact, killing all five crew members.
Investigation
The official investigation, conducted by Air Force and Boeing experts, concluded that the accident was caused by the catastrophic failure of the horizontal stabilizer (tail plane), which affected the B-52's longitudinal stability. The aircraft was not designed for the excessive turbulence encountered during high-speed, low-level flight, and it began to disintegrate. Without the horizontal stabilizer, the nose pitched sharply upward, the aircraft stalled, struck a knoll, and exploded. At an altitude of 500 feet, the crew had virtually no chance to escape.
Aftermath
The crash occurred in a remote area three miles from the eyewitness's location. All five crew members—Lewis E. Moore, Joseph Quentin Keller, Gerald G. Green, Neil Johnson, and Charles Kenneth McDaniel—were killed. The aircraft was completely destroyed.