Boeing E-6 Mercury —

Excellent

Looking Glass was a SAC airplane. This one is TACAMO.

Spectacular image...

I remember when they showed up at our squadron (force warfare) NAS pax for flight testing, that antenna that reeled out of the tail was pretty long

TACAMO (Take Charge And Move Out) is a United States military system of survivable communications links designed to be used in nuclear warfare to maintain communications between the decision-makers (the National Command Authority) and the triad of strategic nuclear weapon delivery systems. Its primary mission is serving as a signals relay, where it receives orders from a command plane such as Operation Looking Glass, and verifies and retransmits their Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) to US strategic forces. As it is a dedicated communications post, it features the ability to communicate on virtually every radio frequency band from very low frequency (VLF) up through super high frequency (SHF) using a variety of modulations, encryptions and networks, minimizing the likelihood an emergency message will be jammed by an enemy. This airborne communications capability largely replaced the land-based extremely low frequency (ELF) broadcast sites which became vulnerable to nuclear strike. (Wikipedia)

Sinister and yet so elegant. Amazing photo!

New engines on a 707 - looks really great.

Hey Joe, you left out a last ditch form of communication: the CB on the overhead of the cockpit with the mike hanging down within arms length. BREAK ONE NINER, this is DOOMSDAY 1. (Not On Wikipedia)