The Rockwell B1-B Lancer swept wing supersonic bomber is an awesome machine. Visually, it harkens back to when jet aircraft were supposed to be ungodly fast, when speed was absolutely key for survival. In some small aspects, the Lancer owes it’s genes to the large by huge by visually striking XB-70 Valkyrie prototype bomber: Both aircraft are pencil designs with under-wing engines, and without a doubt, when those afterburners lit off, people believed that the planet was a technological leap or two away from spaceplanes. Seeing a Lancer take off at night with the afterburners on is a striking demonstration of fire and noise equating awesome speed…and that noise is something to behold, coming somewhere between a shriek and the sound of the atmosphere being ripped apart.

But as with all aircraft, there is that one picky universal rule that always rests in the dark, fearful corner of a pilot’s mind: “what goes up must come down”. Gravity is merciless and will have it’s way, regardless of the circumstances. The Lancer has had it’s fair share of incidents, but most of them involved either engine fires (an issue that popped up around 1990). Unfortunately for the crew of aircraft 85-0070, they had a hydraulic malfunction pop up for a B1 crew from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas during a training flight on October 5th, 1989. After three hours into the flight, the crew of four realized that hydraulic system #2 had failed. After switching to hydraulic system #3 to lower the gear, it became apparent that the nose gear was not going to come down. For four hours (and two airborne refueling) the crew, which consisted of pilot Captain Jeffery Beene, co-pilot Captain Vernon Benton, Offensive Systems Instructor Lt. Colonel Joseph Day, and Offensive Systems Officer Robert Hendricks, circled Dyess, working in conjunction with mechanics and technicians on the ground to find some way to get the landing gear to drop before the decision was made to fly the aircraft to Edwards AFB, California. The three-hour flight to California had one benefit that would be used as a last resort: Rogers Dry Lake, a salt pan that was an optional Space Shuttle landing point during the spacecraft’s career.

To understand why this was preferential over landing the B1 at Dyess with no gear, you have to look at the aircraft’s dimensions: it’s freaking huge. A B1-B Lancer is roughly just smaller than a McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 and has an MTOW (maximum take-off weight) of 477,000 pounds. It’s not like landing a Cessna with a flat tire. There is also the issue of the long, skinny fuselage and the pointed nose digging in. Since Rogers Dry Lake has a section of runway that is 7.5 miles long, the B-1 could do a rear-bogie touchdown and scrub speed before having to drop the nose into the dirt, lessing the chance of doing some serious damage.

Upon arrival at Edwards, the crew tried again to get the nose wheel to drop for two hours while they circled the dry lake. As a last-ditch effort, a touch-and-go landing was performed to attempt to shock the gear loose. When that failed, the decision was made and at 6:15 pm, the B-1 B came in for it’s touchdown.

Amazingly, damage was minimal, restricted to the lower portion of the forward bulkhead, where the radar antenna was mounted, and the Lancer was returned to service in 1990 and remained in service until 2002, when it made it’s way to AMARC in Arizona, where it currently sits.