Original subtitles

NARRATOR: One of the world's most sophisticated warplanes

speeds down the runway at Guam.

CAPTAIN JUSTIN GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

COMMANDER GARRETT HARENCAK: Their mission that day was to return home.

NARRATOR: But the takeoff ends in disaster.

A two-billion-dollar Stealth Bomber goes up in flames.

PILOT TONY MONETTI: We wanted to know what they heck just happened.

NARRATOR: The entire fleet is grounded.

REBECCA GRANT: This could be the end of the B-2 Bomber program.

The plane goes full nose up.

NARRATOR: Investigators analyze the flight second by second...

What about this?

NARRATOR: ...and discover a hidden vulnerability

in the B-2's electronic armor.

INVESTIGATOR FLOYD CARPENTER: There's no way a pilot

would understand the system well enough to realize what could happen.

What is going on?

(theme music playing)

PILOT (over radio): Mayday! Mayday!

(alarm blaring)

GPWS: Pull up.

(indistinct radio chatter)

(indistinct radio chatter)

- You're good to go, sir. - Thank you.

NARRATOR: Major Ryan Link and Captain Justin Grieve

are ending a four-month deployment in Guam.

Better?

Yeah, it looks good.

- Okay. Let's head home then. - Copy that.

(switch clicks)

NARRATOR: Andersen Air Force Base is both a training facility

and a launching point for U.S. military operations

in the western Pacific.

Generator one is on.

Engines ground idle, 25% confirmed. Preflight checklist is complete.

HARENCAK: Their mission that day was to return home.

Our time was-was up in Guam, and they were beginning

a sixteen-hour continuous flight back to

Knob Noster, Missouri, Whiteman Air Force Base,

which was our home base.

NARRATOR: They're one of two crews returning home today

in a unique warplane, the B-2 Bomber.

GRANT: It was a flying wing design, and really a marvel of engineering.

The Air Force ended up spending forty-four billion dollars to develop,

and then field the fleet of B-2 Bombers.

NARRATOR: Developed in the 1980s during the Cold War,

the Stealth Bomber was designed to evade Soviet radar.

There are only 21 of them in existence.

GRANT: It can sneak in with much less chance of being detected

either by enemy surface-air-to-missile defenses or enemy fighters.

Tower, Death 5. Start-up is complete. You can activate our flight plan.

GRIEVE: Refueling number one will be at ARCP Charlie

at 0-7-35 Zulu. Expecting to onload 51,000 pounds.

LINK: Control Point Charlie. Copy.

NARRATOR: Today, the 7,000-mile journey home from Guam,

will require the crew to refuel near the Hawaiian Islands,

and then over California, before reaching Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

Major Link is a qualified instructor on the B-2.

Captain Grieve is an experienced pilot,

with more than 2,500 hours of military flying experience.

They are among only 300 pilots qualified to fly the B-2.

HARENCAK: The Aviators in the B-2 at that time,

were the absolute best of the best. They were handpicked.

They were vetted extensively.

They were truly an elite group of aviators.

NARRATOR: Grieve and Link are second in line to take off.

The plane they're flying is named Spirit of Kansas.

GRANT: Every B-2 Bomber is named after an individual state, except for two.

There's a Spirit of America and a Spirit of Kitty Hawk.

Death Six plus one, cleared for takeoff.

Maintain 5,000.

Pitot heat is on.

Clear right. Good to line up.

NARRATOR: The pilots must carefully maneuver

the massive 168-ton bomber to the foot of the runway

to ensure they don't put any dents in the B-2's shell.

MONETTI: We try to taxi slowly because you're a low-observable platform.

So obviously if you were to scrape the airplane,

you degrade the capability of the war fighting machine.

Death 5, go channel 5.

GRIEVE: Death 5. Copy, channel 5.

GUAM CONTROLLER: (over radio) Death 5, check prime.

Our lead is airborne. We go in 60.

(trills)

NARRATOR: On this flight, Captain Grieve is the mission commander.

MONETTI: What's different is, "the Captain" like you would think,

the aircraft commander is actually in the right seat,

and we call him a Mission Commander. And the pilot is in the left seat.

Thrust to MCT.

(airplane powers up)

Good cues.

MONETTI: The very first time I flew the B-2, I felt like I was a bird.

It was so smooth. You just slightly touch the flight controls,

and she does what you want.

GRIEVE: 100 knots.

(beeps)

(alarm beeping)

What was that?

FCS caution.

- LINK: Stop or go? - GRIEVE: Go. Warning rescinded.

CARPENTER: In the B-2, there's two different kind of caution lights,

the red one and a yellow one.

In this case, it was yellow, which is just precautionary.

A red caution light, you'd probably abort the takeoff.

GRIEVE: One forty-five. Rotate.

NARRATOR: Spirit of Kansas lifts off the runway at Guam.

Almost immediately, the massive bomber pitches up dramatically.

(alarm beeping)

MONETTI: The next thing they know, they're going straight up.

HARENCAK: The momentum of that maneuver up,

caused their pilots to experience about 1.6 Gs.

(beeping continues)

The aircraft's no longer doing what it's supposed to be doing.

(beeping continues)

GRIEVE: Full power.

NARRATOR: The B-2 isn't gaining altitude.

It's still only 80 feet off the ground and losing speed.

MONETTI: Make believe you're in your automobile right now.

You turn left, but the car turns right. What is going on?

That's not the way it's supposed to work. That's the scenario these pilots were in.

NARRATOR: The pilots now feel their airplane shaking violently...

and realize it's on the verge of stalling.

MONETTI: From my 15 years of flying the B-2,

the only time I felt a B-2 shake is in the simulator.

That's the only scenario where you will feel that shake.

You never feel it otherwise.

NARRATOR: The plane's left wing drops.

Grieve knows the plane is heading for the ground.

There's only one thing he can do to save his and Major Link's life.

GRANT: They are trained to have

that gut feel of when to pull the ejection handle.

And don't forget, the Air Force wants these pilots to eject and save themselves.

There is no shame in ejecting ever, even from a billion-dollar bomber.

NARRATOR: Grieve doesn't have time to think about his decision.

The B-2's left wing is now scraping the ground.

GRIEVE: We gotta get out.

NARRATOR: Explosives tear a hole in the fuselage above the cockpit,

and rockets eject the pilots from the aircraft.

The Stealth Bomber hits the ground and bursts into flames.

Alert 1, alert 1, Runway 6 Romeo, Runway 6 Romeo.

GRANT: I'm stunned.

The B-2 has gone through 19 years and three wars without a crash.

This is unheard of.

NARRATOR: One of the world's most advanced warplanes

has been incinerated during a routine takeoff.

The whole world is left wondering what went wrong.

For two straight days, firefighters at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam

battle the flaming wreckage of B-2 Bomber Spirit of Kansas.

With a price tag of two billion dollars,

this is the most expensive aviation accident of all time.

MONETTI: The crash at Guam did shake us to the core

in that we wanted to know what they heck just happened.

NARRATOR: Operations of the entire B-2 fleet are suspended

even before an investigation is launched.

GRANT: It's bad to have to stand down the B-2 flying operations.

On the other hand, they have no choice.

They have no idea what's gone wrong inside that B-2,

and they have to find out before they risk any more B-2s in flight.

NARRATOR: The U.S. Air Force appoints the well-respected General Floyd Carpenter

to lead the investigation.

CARPENTER: Because of the high-profile nature of this accident,

I think they expected a lot of media interest.

And so as a senior brigadier general,

I was picked, I think, to get the airplanes back operational

and clear to fly again.

You're never gonna believe this.

NARRATOR: Investigators watch the accident unfold on security video.

CARPENTER: Great to have the video,

and we were able to glean a lot of information from it.

NARRATOR: Video of the takeoff shows that as the plane lifted off,

it pitched nose high.

CARPENTER: Your first reaction when you see

that airplane pitch up is like, "What are they doing?"

NARRATOR: The plane then drifts left before the left wing scrapes the ground.

CARPENTER: The left wing falls off and hits the ground.

And through that whole thing, you were thinking, "Where is the crew?"

The first time you see it, you probably don't realize the crew actually ejects.

CARPENTER: Can you take it back for me, please?

Stop.

That's the pilots. One and two.

NARRATOR: The video shows the pilots ejecting

just as the plane hits the ground.

Both pilots have been taken to hospital for evaluation.

Justin Grieve has suffered a serious back injury

from the forces of the ejection.

CARPENTER: It was a waiting process for us

and gathering all the other information while we waited to talk to them

and hear their side of what really happened.

NARRATOR: Investigators study the mechanical and computer systems

that control the jet.

Perfect. What about the actuator?

We had so much of the aircraft already available.

Actuators, engines, all those things

are what you're really looking for in this type of accident.

NARRATOR: They quickly determine that all of the plane's flight control surfaces

were functioning on takeoff.

CARPENTER: Pretty quickly we were able to rule out the fact

that the engines were not a problem, the hydraulics weren't a problem,

the flight controls were not a problem.

We pulled these from the video.

Up, up, up.

GRANT: It's a beautiful sunny morning.

Why does a bomber pitch its nose up and crash

in a fireball on the runway at Guam?

Is this a weight and balance issue?

In any deployment like that, it's not uncommon

to load aircraft with spare parts or other equipment

that you might wanna get home but not wait to ship home.

Some classified material going back to Whiteman,

personal belongings, gear.

So center of gravity became a big issue for us.

Could it have been that?

Not enough to disrupt their balance, sir.

NARRATOR: The B-2 is capable of carrying 40-thousand pounds of weaponry.

But Spirit of Kansas wasn't carrying any bombs

or other heavy cargo that could have shifted on takeoff.

CARPENTER: We found out that there really wasn't a lot of equipment.

There were no munitions being carried.

So everything was in balance, as it should have been.

And so center of gravity was ruled out pretty quick.

NARRATOR: Investigators look more closely at the takeoff rolls

of both B-2s on the day of the accident,

for clues as to why Spirit of Kansas couldn't get airborne

like the plane just ahead of it, Spirit of South Carolina.

Okay. Pause it, right here.

Okay.

So South Carolina lifts off just past that taxiway.

Right about here.

Because we did have video, we were able to look at

the takeoff roll of the lead aircraft compared to the second aircraft.

And... stop.

Okay. Our guys lift off just past that runway light,

which is this guy, right here.

Look at that.

We found out that Spirit of Kansas took off 1,500 feet shorter

than its lead aircraft.

What is going on?

Again, video helped us understand that the takeoff roll was shorter

but didn't understand why.

NARRATOR: The investigators turn to data

from the bomber's flight recorder for answers.

The plane is still on the ground, 546 feet above sea level,

not 682.

So the altitude is off by... 136 feet.

Now, sir, there is no way he got up to 145 knots

using only this much runway.

Agreed.

CARPENTER: Something happened to cause this airplane to pitch up.

But so far, we've ruled out all the easy stuff,

and so now we start looking into other situations

that could have caused an aircraft to do what it did.

ENGINEER: Now here, sir, the nose is lifting off the ground,

but the plane registers a pitch down of minus eight degrees.

Now, obviously, this plane is not pitching down,

but the computer thinks it is.

That is why it tried to lift the nose higher and higher and higher.

Until it stalled.

Once we got the performance parameters of the aircraft

and we were able to determine that the airplane thought

that it was negative eight degrees angle of attack,

then you start going back to say, "Why did it think that?"

NARRATOR: The heart of the B-2 Bomber is its sophisticated onboard computer,

known as its Flight Control System, or FCS.

Without it, it would be impossible for pilots

to make all the calculations necessary to keep the unusual aircraft flying.

MONETTI: You don't have a tail. Think about that.

You don't have any kind of vertical empennage.

It's just a big flying wing.

NARRATOR: Accurate data is crucial.

On a B-2, pilots tell the computer what they want the plane to do

and the computer determines how to accomplish that.

HARENCAK: The flight computers move the surfaces of this airplane,

um, in a way that's not intuitive to any pilot of any other aircraft.

Simply put, it'd be nearly impossible

to fly this airplane safely without flight computers.

So... airspeed, climb angle and altitude are all off.

How does that happen on this plane?

NARRATOR: Investigators need to determine

why the Stealth Bomber was getting faulty data.

Let's see what the pilots can tell us.

We weren't looking to blame them or, you know,

point the finger at them but there were tough questions to ask.

NARRATOR: Three weeks after the accident, the pilots of Spirit of Kansas agree

to be interviewed by investigators.

Okay, Captain. How about we take it from the top?

We started up at 9:15.

A few minutes later, Major Link saw the calibration message during start-up.

NARRATOR: The pilots tell investigators that they received

an unusual computer message shortly after start-up.

I've never seen that.

MAJOR LINK: Me neither.

Hey, Chief, we're seeing an air data cal message.

Can you send someone up here to clear that up?

NARRATOR: "Air data cal" stands for air data calibration.

HARENCAK: In the simplest terms, the air data calibration,

gives the aircraft its orientation to the universe.

NARRATOR: There are 24 sensors flush mounted near the nose of the B-2

that constantly measure air pressure.

The plane's computer uses those readings to calculate altitude,

air speed and angle of attack.

CARPENTER: All 24 systems have memory in 'em,

and they're measuring themselves against all the others.

And so if they get out of balance, if one is reading too low or too high,

it calls for an air data calibration and the pilots see that.

When that occurs, they call up maintenance.

Okay.

Let's see what we can do to clear this for you.

Can you put it in maintenance mode for me?

That's good.

You're good to go, sir.

LINK: Thank you.

MONETTI: So they have these 24 sensors,

they make sure they're communicating correctly.

And if they do, they let it go forward.

(engine hissing)

Pitot heat is on.

NARRATOR: Less than an hour later...

Clear right. Good to line up.

NARRATOR: ...the pilots maneuver the massive bomber to the start of the runway.

Okay. Go on.

Everything was 100% routine until we hit 100 knots.

That's when we got the FCS Master Caution.

You got a Master Caution while you were still on the ground?

Yes, sir. Just a flicker.

GRIEVE: 100 knots.

(beeps)

(alarm beeping)

Before I could even push the button, it rescinded itself.

LINK: What was that?

GRIEVE: FCS Caution.

MONETTI: After a hundred knots, to our decision rotate speed,

we will abort for safety of flight items.

We define safety of flight as we are unable to control this airplane

or there's something on the runway you're gonna hit.

LINK: Stop or go?

GRIEVE: Go. Warning rescinded.

MONETTI: In that scenario, if I was the pilot in command, I would continue.

Why? It's not safety of flight.

GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

When we hit one-forty-five, I called for Major Link to rotate.

Then it all very quickly went to hell.

MONETTI: They liftoff.

The Flight Control Computer senses a problem, so it pitches up.

The pilots try to go nose down.

GRIEVE: Full power.

MONETTI: They go max power, but the airplane is trying to stall.

GRIEVE: Major Link was trying to push it back down,

but it wasn't working. He wasn't having any effect on the plane.

We were basically just along for the ride. Then the left wing just drops,

and I know we're done.

We gotta get out.

Then I pulled the handles.

MONETTI: If the airplane did not perform as advertised,

it was time for them to get out and give the aircraft back to the taxpayers.

Thank you for your time today, Captain.

Thank you, sir.

CARPENTER: They were extremely forthcoming in their testimony.

They survived it, but they had no understanding of what happened either.

NARRATOR: Investigators need to know more about the calibration

that Grieve reported in his testimony.

It's not part of the plane's regular start-up procedure.

If a sensor provides a reading that differs significantly

from the others, a recalibration is done

that tells the wayward sensors how much they're off

in order to bring them back into agreement with the others.

ENGINEER: These three weren't just off by a little. They are way off.

And they need a very big adjustment to get them in line with the rest.

And we're not sure why, sir.

(airplane engine roaring)

GRIEVE: 100 knots.

NARRATOR: A Master Caution alarm that flickered on

for a few seconds just before takeoff becomes a key piece of the puzzle.

CARPENTER: At that point, we really didn't know

how they were related, but we figured they might be.

There was too much coincidence starting to happen,

that pointed to these things.

- What was that? - FCS Caution.

ENGINEER: The recalibrated sensors started providing faulty air data again.

NARRATOR: Six seconds later...

- LINK: Stop or go? - GRIEVE: Go.

NARRATOR: ...the flight computer resolved the discrepancy

between the sensors and canceled the warning.

What is going on with this plane's sensors?

GRANT: To have a mystery flaw in the B-2

puts the 509th and the Air Force under a lot of pressure.

They have to find out exactly what went wrong with the flight controls

in order to return that fleet to safe operations,

and the world will be watching them.

Okay. So let's start at the top.

Why the need to recalibrate in the first place?

It was a procedure that a lot of pilots had never seen,

and maintainers didn't do very often.

NARRATOR: Investigators look for any abnormalities in the mission

that might have had an effect on the B-2's sensors.

Huh. So they got delayed by a day.

HARENCAK: What had happened was, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri

had a severe snowstorm.

It was snowing quite heavily. Visibility was near zero.

So what we did is we delayed the mission to come home 24 hours.

NARRATOR: Spirit of Kansas was left on the tarmac

while the pilots waited to resume their mission.

CARPENTER: Okay.

So the jet was left outside for 24 hours because of the delay.

- So what? - Check the weather. Second last page.

CARPENTER: Holy smokes. That is one hell of a lot of rain.

NARRATOR: Weather records show that a tropical rainstorm

settled over the air base the night before the accident.

Tell me, a rainstorm didn't take down a two-billion-dollar airplane.

HARENCAK: Decisions were made, and these B-2s were left outside

in this particularly, um, heavy rainstorm.

ENGINEER: Okay. Let's flood these two.

NARRATOR: Investigators run tests on B-2 sensors

to determine the effect rain may have had on them.

And... stop. You gotta be kidding me.

NARRATOR: Tests confirm that the sensors exposed to the heaviest rainfall

got saturated and needed recalibrating.

HARENCAK: Even prior to that, when it was in test and development,

we'd never experienced that much rain on the system,

so no one really knew how that would

adversely affect the operations of the B-2.

NARRATOR: The reason no one realized how heavy rain affects the B-2

is that it's almost always parked inside a hangar

at Whiteman Air Force Base overnight.

Even if it's flying a mission over Afghanistan or Libya,

it returns to Missouri.

The B-2's occasional deployment to Guam, presented different weather conditions.

Could heavy rain be the simple explanation for this accident?

GRANT: This would not have happened in a desert environment.

This would not have happened at Whiteman. But Guam is very unique.

They left the B-2 parked out all night in the rain.

The moisture got in there.

See, something just doesn't add up.

They did the recalibration.

You're good to go, sir.

But they still ended up with faulty data.

And it nearly killed them. Yeah.

GRIEVE: Full power.

NARRATOR: A state-of-the-art military jet put itself into a stall

because it was getting faulty data about its climb angle.

Investigators still don't know why.

GRANT: The B-2 has always operated under so much pressure and scrutiny.

If they can't figure out what went wrong that morning on Guam,

honestly, this could be the end of the B-2 Bomber program.

Okay. So, they re-calibrate at...

0934.

Nearly an hour later, the master caution lights up because of an air data issue.

So what happens in those 56 minutes?

NARRATOR: Investigators review what the pilots told them about the flight.

Routine taxi, they hit the pitot heat, wait for the timer, and they're off.

So...

what about this?

NARRATOR: There are small heaters connected to each of the plane's sensors.

Just before takeoff, the pilots activate the heaters

so the sensors don't freeze up

when the plane reaches cooler temperatures at higher altitudes.

We can't take off advance to power and go down the runway

until we put the pitot heat on.

Pitot heat is on.

It's essential that those sensors are getting heated.

NARRATOR: Investigators wonder if the pitot heat

could have affected the recalibrated sensors.

Clear right. Good to line up.

CARPENTER: We didn't know enough to really put 'em together.

And so we had to go get a better understanding of the system,

and we did that through engineers that actually built the system.

When he saw the frequency of our calibrations,

he was surprised and concerned.

And then they turn on pitot heat when they get to the runway.

And then he was really concerned when he saw and understood,

like he only could, that with moisture in the system,

and the data that we were puttin' into it to fix it,

could cause such a problem.

NARRATOR: On the day of the accident, turning on the pitot heat

had a consequence that no one anticipated.

Recalibrating the sensors brought the three wet ones

in line with the others. But turning on the pitot heat

boiled away the moisture, bringing the sensors

back out of alignment.

Cross temp CT.

CARPENTER: So the data that was put in on the calibration now is invalid again,

and the flight computers are now trying to resolve the issue with these sensors.

NARRATOR: But the discovery doesn't explain another key event

during the short flight.

(alarm beeping)

LINK: What was that?

GRIEVE: FCS Caution.

NARRATOR: Why did the faulty air data warning disappear

six seconds after it came on?

- Stop or go? - Go. Warning rescinded.

It's seconds from takeoff.

NARRATOR: U.S. Air Force investigators look into the logic

guiding the B-2's flight computer.

ENGINEER: So it has to make a choice.

HARENCAK: That flight data computer needs a solution and what we mean by that is,

it can't spend even a, even a second or a millisecond

wondering where it is and what needs to be done.

NARRATOR: The B-2's flight computer is constantly receiving

four separate data streams from all 24 sensors.

If there's a discrepancy in the values of those channels,

the computer is programmed to select any two of the channels to proceed.

ENGINEER: It just chose wrong.

Yeah, we should fix that.

CARPENTER: Now it's voting, as to throw out bad data,

what they think is bad data, keep the good data,

and it resolves the issue, the light goes away,

the flight computers are now good to go.

And so the pilots are now,

"Okay, well, that must just have been a glitch, let's keep going."

LINK: Stop or go?

GRIEVE: Go. Warning rescinded.

NARRATOR: The flight computer chose the two channels

that included the faulty sensor data.

GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

NARRATOR: Twelve seconds later, the plane pitched up abnormally

because of the faulty air data readings.

CARPENTER: Once they rotated the aircraft

on speed, as they thought, and left the ground,

they were along for the ride at that point.

NARRATOR: But if recalibrating the plane's sensors

before turning on the pitot heat can be catastrophic,

why was that the official procedure?

So hardly any at all then?

NARRATOR: Investigators learn that recalibrations are rarely done

while the B-2 is at its home base in Missouri.

But during a deployment in Guam in 2006,

maintenance personnel were performing frequent recalibrations.

Copy that. I'm on my way.

CARPENTER: They knew there was a challenge,

but they didn't know what it was.

And they did speculate that because of the weather in Guam,

raining a lot more than at home, that it might be an issue of moisture.

NARRATOR: Technicians in Guam spoke to an engineer in the US

who suggested a procedure to remedy the frequent air data calibrations.

Yeah. Then we have to do an onboard recalibration.

CARPENTER: And they were able to talk to an engineer that said,

"Well, before you do a data calibration,

"try turning on the pitot heat and burning that water out of the system

and see if that'll take care of it."

I haven't tried that. Good idea though.

NARRATOR: The technician passed on the suggestion to the B-2 pilots in Guam.

TECHNICIAN (over radio): Try turning on your pitot heat for 40 seconds instead.

B-2 BOMBER PILOT (over radio): Copy.

Apparently that should do it.

Yeah, but our guys didn't do that. Can you think of a reason why?

NARRATOR: Investigators learn from technicians at Whiteman Air Force Base

that the procedure for activating pitot heat

in response to an air data calibration message was not officially adopted.

Really? Why the heck not?

NARRATOR: Some crews knew about it. Some did not.

CARPENTER: Pilots back at Whiteman who were not there,

never even heard of it, and the maintainers had never heard of it.

Oh. Yep.

There is nothing.

There's nothing anywhere about using pitot heat, when a calibration message appears.

You're good to go, sir.

NARRATOR: Neither Ryan Link, Justin Grieve,

nor the maintainer assigned to their plane was ever told about the moisture issue

or the informal procedure for rectifying it.

- Better? - Yeah, it looks good.

GRANT: The maintainers that morning were following the tech orders,

which tell 'em exactly what to do in the preflight.

But for some reason, this new workaround to compensate for the moisture

just hadn't made it into the manual. And that's a little bit of a tragedy.

CARPENTER: So these three are wrong.

What if they'd used pitot heat instead of recalibrating?

It would have burned off the excess moisture and solved the problem.

No faulty air data. No accident.

CARPENTER: If information had been shared from previous deployment, 2006 to 2008,

this accident could have been prevented.

LINK: Hey, Chief, we're seeing an air data cal message.

Can you send someone up here to clear that up?

CARPENTER: The maintenance personnel that came out

to the aircraft that day of the accident did everything exactly right.

They were just doing the procedure they were taught.

I mean, it doesn't seem like anybody understood

what these recalibrations could do.

NARRATOR: The investigation has uncovered a catastrophic gap

in the B-2 crew's understanding of the link

between calibrating sensors and flight controls.

GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

CARPENTER: There's no way a pilot or a maintainer

would understand the system well enough to realize what could have happened

when they did that data calibration.

NARRATOR: That lack of understanding left the crew of Spirit of Kansas

vulnerable to the effects of the faulty data.

Investigators now wonder if there was something

the pilots could have done to save their plane.

Eighteen seconds to get this plane under control.

Was it even possible?

NARRATOR: Investigators reexamine the crash sequence

to see if the pilots of the B-2 Bomber, Spirit of Kansas,

could have prevented their aircraft from crashing at Guam.

GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

HARENCAK: Certainly, no B-2 pilot wanted to be the first to eject from a B-2.

The plane goes full nose up.

He pushes full forward and goes full power.

(rattling)

The plane starts yawing and rolling left. He applies right stick.

He's fighting.

NARRATOR: Investigators determine that Major Link

took the correct action to save the B-2 Bomber,

but because of its low altitude and slow speed,

disaster was unavoidable.

HARENCAK: Ultimately, this was a no-win situation for the crew.

As we determined with hundreds and hundreds of simulations afterwards,

no one could have flown this aircraft out of that situation.

NARRATOR: The data also shows

just how close the pilots came to losing their lives.

See, they are seconds away from impact,

and... they still hadn't pulled the handle.

HARENCAK: If they had delayed even a fraction of a second later

to eject, um, they most likely would not have survived.

NARRATOR: The video of the accident shows that the plane's left wing

was already scraping the ground when the pilots ejected.

GRIEVE: We gotta get out.

MONETTI: They are heroes in the sense that

these guys waited till the very last possible second.

I don't know of many other people that can say that they waited

till the wing tip hit the ground before ejecting.

Can you imagine that?

HARENCAK: All pilots in the Air Force

are good or maybe even great, but these guys were truly outstanding.

And they were very, very close, despite everything,

to actually saving that aircraft.

NARRATOR: One of the most sophisticated warplanes on Earth

was brought down by a combination of poor weather...

Who would have guessed,

that a bit of moisture would have led to all this?

NARRATOR: ...and poor communication,

which left Grieve and Link without an understanding

of how recalibrating their sensors

could lead to a serious flight control issue.

GRIEVE: One hundred knots.

CARPENTER: This accident didn't happen because of bad data,

not because of bad software, not because of bad weather,

not because of bad decision-making.

GRIEVE: One-forty-five. Rotate.

CARPENTER: It happened because of bad communication.

GRANT: In the end, safety is everything. It doesn't matter if it's an airliner,

a fighter jet, a space plane, or a Stealth Bomber.

GRIEVE: Full power.

GRANT: Safety is critical, and safety depends on communication.

NARRATOR: The Air Force investigation underscores the need for pilots

to be kept informed about the technology controlling their airplanes.

HARENCAK: Do you really, really want to leave

the defense of your families, your children, your grandchildren

to a computer?

Or do you want to leave it to the greatest asset that we have,

and that is the human brain?

NARRATOR: In spite of being involved

in the most expensive aviation disaster in history,

Major Ryan Link and Captain Justin Grieve

went on to have successful military careers.

The B-2 was back in the air two months after the crash.

The flight computer was redesigned to prevent faulty air data.

The procedure for using pitot heat instead of recalibrating the sensors

is documented in Air Force manuals and technical documents.

There hasn't been an issue with faulty air data since.

MONETTI: Northrop produced an amazing aircraft

and I commend them and the maintainers and the aviators

that continue to make the B-2 the envy of the world.