Grounded following a fire nearly four years ago, the B-2 "Spirit of Washington" lands following its first training flight since the blaze, at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., Dec. 16. Air Force photo / Staff Sgt. Alexandra M. Boutte
When You’ve Only Got 20 B-2 Bombers… -- Mark Thompson, Time
...keeping all of them flying becomes important
When one of a B-2 bomber’s four engines caught fire during what the Air Force called a “routine” engine start while on the ground at Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base in February 2010, the service said it was no big deal.
“Maintenance and ground crews quickly extinguished the engine bay fire, which the 36th Wing Public Affairs Office described as minor,” the Guam-based Pacific Daily News reported the next day.
So it might come as a surprise to learn that the $2 billion plane only rejoined its flock Dec. 16 — nearly four years after the blaze. “It was a very cool experience to see the excitement in the maintainers when an aircraft many of them thought would never fly again returned to service as part of the 509th Bomb Wing,” Colonel Chase McCown, the bomb wing’s maintenance chief, said in an Air Force report on the plane’s resurrection.
Read more ....
Update #1: "Spirit of Washington" rises from the ashes -- Air Force Global Strike Command
Update #2: B-2 Returns to Flight Nearly 4 Years Later -- Defense Tech
My Comment: No mention on how much it cost to restore this plane .... but I suspect that the number is a hundred million plus.
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