Airplane of the Day - Boeing E-6B Mercury

US Navy E-6B Mercury leaving Des Moines International

The Boeing E-6 Mercury is an airborne command post and communications relay based on the Boeing 707. The E-6B provides command and control of U.S. nuclear forces should ground-based control become inoperable. - paraphrased from Wikipedia

Based on a 707? This thing must be ancient.

Land based nuclear weapons systems can be contacted by radio, but contacting submarines can be problematic. The way it is normally done is through a specialized VLF transmitters. There is one in Australia and one in my backyard.

But how is the E-6B going to contact the boomers? Hoo boy, are you ready for this? They go to an altitude of 20,000 feet, unreel a five mile long antennae out of the rear of the airplane, and then fly in tight circles at the slowest speed they can manage. For hours on end. The antennae works best when it is near vertical. Flying in tight circles allows the antennae to droop until it is pretty much vertical.

This History Channel video has a simplistic animation of this operation at the three minute mark.

TACAMO History Channel
MapleValleyMoM

TACAMO is an acronym for Take Charge And Move Out which makes no sense to me, but then this is the military. They can call it whatever they want.

The Drive has a story about this aircraft and its insanely long antennae.

This business with the antennae reminds me of a movie I saw a while back about some missionaries trying to make contact with some natives living in the Amazon rain forest. They would fly over the jungle at a low altitude and when they spot a village they would take a plastic bucket, load it with goodies, and then lower it on a rope. The pilot would fly the airplane in a circle and it worked out that the bucket would hang in one spot in the air and the natives could come and take whatever they wanted out of the bucket and put things into it, if they felt so inclined. I don't know how long the rope was but I imagine it must have been several hundred feet long at least. I mean, how tight a circle can a Piper Cub turn?

Update 2 weeks later. TACAMO shows up in Command and Control on page 273.