An engineer marking his wedding anniversary, service members and Boeing employees among victims of B-52 bomber crash

By Hanna Park, Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — A crew of military service members and government contractors was among the eight people killed when a B-52 Stratofortress crashed shortly after takeoff Monday in Southern California.

The mammoth military plane took off at 11:20 a.m. on a routine test mission from Edwards Air Force Base, the storied desert base about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The plane was carrying eight people, though it typically flies with a crew of five, and was supporting a program to modernize the aging fleet.

The Air Force released the names of all eight victims Wednesday, after notifying their relatives:

• Col. Gregory Watson, 53, of Shreveport, Louisiana. He was at his civilian job with Boeing at the time of the crash, but he was also an Air Force reservist who served as a weapons systems officer assigned to the 10th Air Force, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas.
• Lt. Col. Gabriel Estrella, 40. He was a weapons systems officer with the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, Detachment 5 at Edwards Air Force Base.
• Retired Lt. Col. Miles Middleton, 50, a resident of Tehachapi, California. He was a pilot working for Boeing.
• Maj. Alexander Davis, 34. He was a weapons systems officer with the 419th Flight Test Squadron in Lancaster, California.
• Maj. Robert Dee, 40. He was a pilot with the 419th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base.
• Maj. Brad Hovey, 35. He was a pilot with the 419th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base.
• Christopher Rischar, 41. He was a flight test engineer who was an employee of the defense contracting firm JT4.
• Jeromy Smith, 32. He was a flight test engineer with the 419th Flight Test Squadron in Rosamond, California.

“These Airmen were more than coworkers. They were friends, mentors, teammates and valued members of our Edwards and Air Force family,” Col. Thomas Tauer, 412th Test Wing commander, told workers and families at the base, according to a statement shared by the Air Force.

“The loss of Miles and Greg is deeply felt across our teams, and our hearts remain with their families, loved ones and those who worked with them,” Boeing said in a statement.

The deaths mark the deadliest B-52 crash since 1982, when nine crew members were killed in test training at Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento. The most recent fatal B-52 accident before Monday was in 2008, when six Air Force personnel died after their bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Guam.

A father of two young sons

Smith, a civilian flight test engineer for the Department of Defense, had worked at Edwards for 10 years, his wife, Lauren Smith, told CNN affiliate KBAK/KBFX.

“He’s a hero. He is someone that people look up to, and just an all-around amazing person,” his wife told the station. “He died doing what he loved.”

The couple had marked their fourth wedding anniversary days before the crash, and were raising his two sons – a 2-year-old and an infant just 4 months old, she said.

“I want them to know how much my husband loved his country, and how much he’s done for this community,” she said.

Her husband had flown several missions, she said, and bombers were, as she put it, his second love. He had been due to fly earlier in the week, but the flight kept slipping.

He was teaching his daughter how to drive

Rischar loved taking his two children, ages 15 and 14, to aviation museums, teaching them about different types of aircraft and how they worked, his wife, Rebecca Rischar, told The Associated Press.

He and his wife met a church youth group while attending high school in Lancaster, California. In April, they celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary, and Rischar had just started teaching their daughter how to drive, his wife said.

“Our marriage is not just for this life here on Earth but for eternity, so we are sealed together,” she said.

For a decade, the flight test engineer with contractor JT4, had worked at Edwards, where his father also works.

“I knew he was on that flight,” Rebecca Rischar said about receiving a call from his father-in-law about the crash. “It was routine, and if the plane went up, he was going up with it.”

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CNN’s Davis Winkie and Holly Yan contributed to this report.