Navy’s ‘Doomsday’ Plane Hits a Bird, Suffers $2M in Damages
(October 17, 2019) — A Navy doomsday aircraft that would play a vital communication role in the event of a nuclear war had one of its four engines replaced this month after it struck a bird at a Maryland air station.
An E-6B Mercury, a nuclear command-and-control plane, hit the bird at Naval Air Station Patuxent River on Oct. 2. The aircraft, which belongs to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Twenty, was landing on a runway while conducting a touch-and-go, said Tim Boulay, a spokesman for Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division.
Touch-and-go landings are a routine part of aviators’ training in which they land and take off again without stopping.
Boulay said the aircraft landed safely after the bird strike around 3:12 p.m. There were no injuries reported.
“The engine has been replaced, and the aircraft has been returned to service,” he said. He declined to answer several other questions about the incident, including how many people were on board and what kind of bird the plane struck, citing the ongoing investigation into the mishap.
The Naval Safety Center classified the incident as a Class-A mishap, which means there was at least $2 million in damage to the aircraft.
This is at least the second Class-A mishap for an E-6B Mercury in 2019. In February, one of the planes clipped a hangar as it was being moved at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. That incident also led to millions of dollars in damages.
One of Navy’s Nuclear War Contingency Aircraft Damaged in Hangar Incident
(February 17, 2019) — A Navy plane was being towed out of a hangar last week when its tail clipped the top of the structure, leading to what could amount to millions of dollars in repairs.
An E-6B Mercury, a nuclear command-and-control aircraft, was being moved at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, on Thursday as part of its daily operations when the vertical stabilizer at the rear of the aircraft struck the hangar, said Lt. Travis Callaghan, a spokesman for Naval Air Forces. The incident has been labeled a Class-A mishap by the Naval Safety Center, meaning the damages to the aircraft likely total at least $2 million.
One person was aboard the Mercury at the time of the mishap, Callaghan said. It’s standard to have a “brake rider” on board any time an aircraft is towed out of a hangar, he added.
The incident remains under investigation. Once that process is complete, Callaghan said a determination will be made “as to what repairs are required and a way ahead for the aircraft.”
Photos of the damaged aircraft posted on social media the day of the mishap appear to show the vertical stabilizer broken away from the rest of the plane after it struck the top of the hangar.
The Navy’s E-6B Mercury is based on a Boeing 707 commercial plane. The aircraft is part of the Navy’s “Take Charge and Move Out” community. Its mission, Callaghan said, is to enable the president and defense secretary to directly communicate with U.S. submarines, bombers and missile silos during a nuclear war.
This marked the Navy’s fifth Class-A aviation mishap five months into fiscal 2019, according to Naval Safety Center data.
Insiders Confirm ‘Doomsday Plane’ Was Mysterious Airplane Seen Flying Over Denver
Stefan Stanford / The Daily Coin
(November 18, 2016) — In today’s ‘mystery story’ of the day over at the Daily Mail, we learned about a mysterious airplane spotted flying at 32,000′ over Denver, Colorado that has allegedly left military officials baffled and Internet sleuths trying to figure out what thousands of people in the area witnessed.
While the ABC15 story in Denver tells us the flight called IRON99 has a ‘host of federal organizations’ grasping for answers, if we dig a little bit deeper, we may get all of the answers that we need. And if the facts we prove to you along with our speculation is correct, we have more proof that America is nowhere near out of the woods with the recent election of Donald Trump as president.
You can see this mysterious plane making its way through the skies in the 1st video below. And as we learn from aviation insiders at The Aviationist, this mysterious plane circling Denver was “JUST” an E-6B Mercury ‘doomsday plane’. . . .
And according to those paying attention to the mysterious plane in Denver, the E-6B Mercury, otherwise known as a TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out), is a Boeing aircraft originally developed for the US Navy as an airborne communications platform.
The Wikipedia page entry for the TACAMO gives us the news that the Daily Mail story refuses to mention: TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) is a US military system of survivable communications links designed to be used in nuclear war to maintain communications between the decision makers (the National Command Authority) and the triad of strategic nuclear weapon delivery systems.
The E-6B has also been hardened against any possible electro-magnetic pulses…the E-6B is EMP-proof . . . .
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
