The origin of the B-1 began as a US Air Force (USAF) funded 1965 study to examine the replacement of the ill-fated North American B-70 Valkyrie and relatively slow B-52. The first prototype rolled out of Palmdale, California on October 26, 1974, and made its first flight on December 23, 1974. The B-1 flight test program continued until June 30, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter halted the production of the B-1.

Four prototypes of this long-range, high speed (Mach 2.2) strategic bomber were developed and tested in the mid-1970s.

Given the B-1A high speed, the first three prototypes relied on encapsulated emergency egress system.

On October 2, 1981, President Ronald Reagan resurrected the B-1 program and approved the construction of 100 B-1s as part of his defense buildup initiative.

B-1A Air Vehicle 2 crash

As told by John Fredrickson in the book North American Aviation In the Jet Age, The California Years 1945-1997, meanwhile, B-1As numbers 2 and 4, built as prototypes before President Carter canceled the project, were utilized for flight testing. It was on August 29, 1984, that B-1A aircraft number 2 (B-1A 74-0159, known as Air Vehicle 2, AV-2) was scheduled to perform a flight to evaluate minimum control speeds. These tests involved cutting engine thrust on one side to evaluate aircraft controllability. Rockwell chief test pilot Doug Benefield was in the copilot seat, with two Air Force officers also aboard. The chase aircraft was an F-111D flown by Rockwell test pilot Merv Everson.

Takeoff from Edwards AFB was at 9:29 a.m. Fuel was pumped aft to configure the aircraft in a tail-heavy mode, and the scheduled tests began. Events began to go awry at about 10:23 a.m. The aircraft went into an uncontrolled nose-up attitude and the pilot-initiated ejection. The B-1A escape capsule malfunctioned, and the capsule hit the ground in a nose-down attitude and very hard on the right side. Everson put his F-111D into an orbit above the crash site to vector the rescue team.

Doug Benefield was killed, and the two Air Force officers were seriously injured. Postcrash investigators determined that a malfunction with the B-1A fuel management system left the aircraft too tail heavy and out of limits for continued flight. A failure of one of the parachute-repositioning explosive bolts caused the escape capsule malfunction.

B-1 four-person escape capsule

The technical problems of a four-person escape module proved to be overwhelming. Its promise to provide everything to everybody made it a victim of its own size and complexity before the production contract was awarded. The operating scenario begins when the pilot warns the crew of an impending ejection by depressing a push button on his instrument panel, which illuminates a warning light on each crew member’s instrument panel, sending a bailout signal to each crew member’s headset and by activating an alarm bell in the cabin. Upon squeezing the ejection handles, the completely automatic ejection sequence begins.

The first step is retraction of the shoulder harness inertia reel on each seat. This properly positions and restrains each crew member in his own seat. The emergency oxygen and maneuvering rocket-control systems are activated. A linear-shaped charge, together with the guillotines, lanyards, and explosive bolts, severs the crew module from the airframe as the pitch-and-roll rocket motors ignite. When adequate structural clearance is achieved, the nose spoiler and two stabilizing fins pop erect. A mortar is fired to deploy a 9-foot conical drogue ribbon chute, Upon safe “Q” limits, the two side spoilers are deployed and the drogue chute is released.

B-1 escape capsule doomed

Then, twin mortars deploy the two pilot chutes, thus extracting the three 50-foot ring-sail main chutes, which open in a reefed condition (“reefed” condition means there is a band around the canopy, preventing full inflation). At this point the module is in a nose-down attitude.

Reefing cutters then allow full inflation of the main parachutes, and explosive bolts are fired to reposition the module into a stable, level attitude. The jettisoning of the two rocket motors and the inflation of the five landing-attenuation bladders follows. The crew escape module is now ready to impact the ground at approximately 29 feet per second. Manual controls allow for jettisoning the main parachutes after landing. Manual controls also provide for inflation of flotation and upright bladders in case of water landing.

The escape capsule on the B-1 was riddled with complexity and further doomed by the great expense of frequently replacing the labyrinth of age-sensitive explosive components.

The B-1 escape capsule was replaced by four ACES II ejection seats manufactured by Weber. Conventional ejection seats were deemed adequate after the top speed of the B-1B was reduced to Mach 1.2 from Mach 2.2 on the B-1A.

Photo credit: U.S. Air Force and Rockwell / North American