B-2 Spirit stealth bomber burnt down in 2010 brought back to operative status

The U.S. Air Force has recently announced that the 4 year repair process of the B-2 Spirit of Washington has been completed.

The plane burnt down back in February 2010 during a take-off from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. A minor engine fire turned out to be disastrous for the airframe and all four powerplants of the stealth bomber.

The process took so long mainly due to the complicated structure of the bomber that is based on a composite airframe.

USAF did not publicize the estimated costs of the repair.

Both USAF engineers and Northrop Grumman professionals were involved in the process. The repair made the B-2 reachieve its full operational capability with the entire USAF force of stalth batwing planes back to 20 Spirit bombers out of 21 delivered (one was lost in an accident at Andersen AFB on Feb. 23, 2008).

It was on Dec. 17. last year that Northrop Grumman celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first B-2 delivery.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force

Jacek Siminski for TheAviationist

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Standing contributor for TheAviationist. Aviation photojournalist. Co-Founder of DefensePhoto.com. Expert in linguistics, Cold War discourse, Cold War history and policy and media communications.