One of the 8 people killed in B-52 crash at California base had just welcomed new baby

One of the eight people who died in the crash of an Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber in California on Monday had recently welcomed a new son, his wife said. “My husband just went back to work. He was there for just a week,” Lauren Smith said about her husband, Jeromy Smith. The Department of Defense and Edwards Air Force Base have not released the names of those killed in Monday’s crash, which happened shortly after the plane took off around 11:20 a.m. Members of the military, military civilians and government contractors were on board, officials have said. Boeing confirmed that two of its employees had been killed. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. The aircraft was on a routine test mission supporting a “radar modernization program,” Air Force Col. James Hayes told reporters Monday. An initial gathering of facts can take up to 30 days, and then an accident investigation board will review the crash, Hayes said. It can take six months before the information is gathered and released to next-of-kin and the public, he said. Jeromy Smith was a civilian flight test engineer for the Department of Defense and worked on projects at Edwards Air Force Base for 10 years, Lauren Smith said. The Smiths have two children: Fletcher, 2 years old, and Fallon, who was born four months ago. “We did not see this coming,” she said. Jeromy Smith had received the Aerial Achievement Medal for flying medium- to high-risk sorties, and he was proud of that, Lauren Smith said. But for the six years that Lauren Smith has been with her husband, she said she never felt like things were not safe. Monday’s flight had originally been scheduled for Friday but had been pushed back, she said. “They go through tons of safety things before they even take off. 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,” she said. “And I don’t think that plane was ready to take off, and I’m so sad it did,” she said. The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Lauren Smith said that the last text she sent her husband was “I love you.” She became aware of the crash through social media and learned that Jeromy Smith had died when people from his work showed up at her door at 6 p.m. Monday, she said. “He worked really hard for this country, and he loved this country so much,” she said. “I know he is just a speck in this world of people, but he truly, truly loved this country, and he would do anything for this country.” “And he left a legacy with his kids,” she said. “And I hope that they — they know that their father was a hero, and that he loved them very much.”