Boeing E-6B Mercury
TACAMO
“If everything else goes dark, this plane is still talking.”
Boeing · military
The E-6B Mercury is the US Navy's airborne link to its ballistic missile submarines — the mission is called TACAMO: Take Charge And Move Out. It can relay orders from the National Command Authority, stand in as STRATCOM's airborne command post, and even remotely control Minuteman missiles from the air. Sixteen were built, and they exist so the chain of command survives the worst day imaginable.
With aerial refueling an E-6B can stay airborne for up to 72 hours — and the E-6 was the final new derivative of the Boeing 707 ever built.
A gleaming white 707 with almost no windows and pods on the wingtips, based at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. If one orbits the same patch of sky for hours, it is on station doing its job.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the TACAMO from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
