On the morning of 4 October 1989, a B-1B Lancer of the 96th Bombardment Wing took off from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, at 8:38 a.m. on a training flight. About three hours later the crew found that the nose landing gear would not come down. By that evening the bomber was resting on its nose in a cloud of dust on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and all four men aboard walked away from it.

Hours of Trying

The problem appeared at about 11:30 a.m. Central time. For about five hours the bomber circled Dyess while the crew, maintenance teams and engineers from the manufacturer, Rockwell, worked through every way they could think of to get the gear down. Aircraft commander Jeff Beene later described the loss of the number two hydraulic system. Nothing they tried worked.

Rather than abandon the aircraft, the Air Force chose to land it with its nose gear up, and to do it on the one surface built for that kind of problem: the huge dry lakebed at Edwards, where the Space Shuttle landed. The B-1B was refuelled in flight and flew some 1,125 miles west. Edwards had been warned almost seven hours before the landing. A T-38 and an F-111 joined as escorts, and the crew circled several times and flew at least one approach to get the feel of the lakebed.

Nose Down in the Dust

At about 6:15 p.m. Pacific time, Beene and pilot Vernon Benton put the bomber down on its main gear on the lakebed runway. They held the nose up and let the aircraft roll for several thousand feet, deliberately not touching the brakes, before easing the nose down onto the clay. It ploughed to a stop in a long plume of dust. Beene later recalled the touchdown as very smooth. Damage was minimal, and nobody was hurt.

The Line Everyone Remembers

The story that has made this landing famous online is a radio exchange: as the bomber slid through the dust, the tower supposedly asked whether the crew needed assistance, and the answer came back, “Dunno, we ain’t done crashing yet.” It is a perfect line. We could not find it in any contemporary report, in the Air Force accounts of the landing, or in the crew’s own later recollections. Treat it as aviation folklore rather than a recorded transmission.

Footage of the B-1B rolling out on its main gear and settling onto its nose on the Edwards lakebed, 4 October 1989 (video: airailimages).

The Mackay Trophy

Beene, Benton, Hendricks and Day received the 1989 Mackay Trophy, awarded each year for the most meritorious flight by a US Air Force crew or airman. The bomber was repaired at Edwards, and the following January the same crew went back to collect it and flew it home to Texas.

What the Popular Version Gets Right

The widely shared account is accurate on the essentials: 4 October 1989, a Dyess B-1B, a nose gear that would not extend, hours of attempts, in-flight refuelling, more than 1,000 miles to Edwards, a nose-up touchdown on the main gear, no injuries, minimal damage and the 1989 Mackay Trophy. Three points need care. The touch-and-go approaches were flown at Edwards to get a feel for the lakebed rather than to shake the gear loose. Two of the four crew, Robert Hendricks and Joseph Day, usually go unmentioned. And the “ain’t done crashing yet” reply is not documented anywhere we could find.

Sources: UPI, “B-1 bomber lands safely without nose gear” (4 October 1989); Air & Space Forces Magazine, This Day in Airpower, 4 October 1989; Air Force Historical Foundation, “October 4, 1989”; KSLA, “KSLA Salutes: Surviving the crash” (3 October 2019), interview with Jeff Beene.