Debunkers, What about the E4B Doomsday Plane

Originally posted by neformore
Just because its a 747, doesn't mean it can't have some limited A2A capacity. The RAF has routinely equipped Nimrods with heat seeking Sidewinders, and I see no reason why the E4B couldn't have the same.

Airliners and even small civilian planes can carry recon, weapons, and drone pods.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


There were two other training ops running concurrently with the Northern Vigilence. The E-4B may not have been tasked to Northern Vigilence.

Originally posted by six
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There were two other training ops running concurrently with the Northern Vigilence. The E-4B may not have been tasked to Northern Vigilence.

But why would they need an E-4 for a local exercise?

Originally posted by neformore

Just because its a 747, doesn't mean it can't have some limited A2A capacity. I also imagine it has some electronic and possibly small laser anti-missile countermeasures on board,

The electronic and laser countermeasures are on board, but it is simply unpracticle to modify a 747 for a2a combat. The Nimrod is a warplane and much like the P-3 has the capacity to carry external stores. But none exists on the E-4 nor does it have a bomb bay that could hide a rotary launcher

Originally posted by FredT
The electronic and laser countermeasures are on board, but it is simply unpracticle to modify a 747 for a2a combat.

Airliners and civilian aircraft can be made to carry pods.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


Yes they can but they require extensive modification. Also the E-4 do not have anything that resembles a hardpoint on its wings. These are very difficult structures to add into an aircraft design after the fact. Its far easier to have an escort and more tot he point it defeats the purpose of such an aircraft to have it loitering in hostile airspace.

Originally posted by FredT
Yes they can but they require extensive modification.

i114.photobucket.com...

reply to post by ULTIMA1


As was stated earlier..People have to keep thier skills up. You cant just have people sit around without practice. Thats why fighters fly practice sorties. Same with bombers. They are all intergrated into one big unit, so they need to practice as much as possible. I dont think the two exercises were just local either..Could be wrong.

Heres a interesting thought though....The FAA claims that they werent able to locate flight 77 as it was coming into DC untill the very end. If my memory serves me correctly they then asked the C130 to do a fly by and see if it actually crashed. So this got me thinking...Cheney and the whitehouse command were supposedly tracking flight 77 from pretty far out(if not the whole entire time) Everyone remembers the remarks about the plane being 50 miles out then forty then thirty and so on. I wonder if the reason there is complete denial about the E4B being over the capital at the time of the explosion/crash is because they used the E4B to follow flight 77 all the way to the pentagon. This could be the reason for the secrecy surrounding its role that day at that exact time.

Originally posted by six
As was stated earlier..People have to keep thier skills up. You cant just have people sit around without practice. Thats why fighters fly practice sorties. Same with bombers.

Yes i know how pilots have to keep thier skills, i was in the Air Force.

But the problem with the E-4 is that you only have a couple and they have to be kept in alert shape.

[edit on 23-10-2007 by ULTIMA1]

We used to have an E-4 go through just for the simple reason that they had to do over water navigation training, so they'd fly to Hawaii and back, or they'd fly to Asia, or somewhere farther West. Yes, you have to have one standing on Alert, but the crews also require a certain amount of training per year or they can lose their flight crew status. Just because they have the alert mission doesn't mean that the other three are going to be sitting on the ground all the time as well.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


Thats a recon / radar pod. The E-8 JSTARS has the same thing I was taking about hard points on the wings or the belly for that matter. Look Im not always right, but I have NEVER seen a E-4 with any sort of a2a or a2g missile period. If you have a picture Im all ears adn eyes for that matter

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Just because they have the alert mission doesn't mean that the other three are going to be sitting on the ground all the time as well.

But they are not going to be used for a local exercise that involves hijacked aircraft either.

No, but they weren't BEING used for a local exercise that involved hijacked planes. There are several sources that have said that it was being used to take people to Omaha after having flown to Andrews on a routine flight, or that it was participating in a nuclear exercise that day. There's nothing that says anything about it being used in a hijacking exercise.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
No, but they weren't BEING used for a local exercise that involved hijacked planes.

But wasn't the main NORAD exercise to monitor the Russian exercise in Alaska and Canada?

The only local exercise i heard of was the 1 for hijacked planes, why would you need an E-4 for that?

So because you only heard of those two, they were the only ones going on? I've seen a couple of sources over the last year or so that mentioned an exercise going on that involved the E-4, as someone else pointed out in this thread earlier. And monitoring a Russian exercise isn't an exercise.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


How do you keep in alert shape without constant training? If there are 4 E4Bs', and one is kept on alert status at all times, the other 3 can be running training scenarios, in for maintenence etc.

I honestly don't know where we're going with this. The fact that an E-4B was seen over DC on September 11th is not some amazing new revelation. It was mentioned live on air by news reporters at the time ("white 'plane in the sky") & explicitly reported by the BBC five years ago in their "Clear The Skies" documentary.

3 of the 4 E-4B's were participating in the Vigilant/Global Guardian exercises that morning. One carrying civilian & military personnel & taking off from an airport "outside Washington" at the time of the Pentagon attack (09.37hrs) - presumably the one in the video over DC, the second was on route to Offutt carrying Brent Scowcroft and a team of military observers & the third I can't find any reference to at all - any suggestions welcome.

The fourth was ordered into the air from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, in response to the attacks.

The exercises were aborted at 09.03hrs so you have to wonder whether the E-4B we see in the video was strictly speaking participating in an exercise or had been ordered, like the fourth, just to get airborne and act as a hub for communications etc.

Why wasn't the DC E-4B mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report ? I think it's a deliberate omission, not a denial & probably made for the best intentions. Maybe this is one of the few aspects of 9/11 they truelly don't want us to know about. In wartime these 'planes are high priority targets & the government doesn't want potential adversaries to know their likely flight plans, crew complement, mission orders etc when "doomsday" comes.

Although no doubt some of you have your own theories.

This has been one of my rare forays into the protected world of the 9/11 forums. And it's my last, unfortunately. Because the world of Truthers and Sceptics I find quite bizarre. On one side a group of individuals whose legitimate questions & doubts about that day are completely sidelined by ridiculous theories and fanciful notions from those with a different agenda. And on the other a hard core who believe everything they're told by the idiot lantern that is television.

It's quite depressing.

i agree with ultima...why was it over dc when the everything else up there was in canada and the artic...kinda strange...talk about being a little lost..

All 4 E-4's are stationed at Omaha. One is for the use of the SAC commander. Another one is sent to where ever the President is in a time of national crisis.

As for the restricted airspace question, It is only applied to civilian aircraft, not military.

I know of 4 pilots that have busted the airspace aroung the president's ranch. 3 of the 4 were vectored there by ATC.

It would be logical to assume that if a large military airplane were in the area, at a time when the ATC is trying to land every plane in the sky, that it would be vectored to a place where it was out of the way, i.e. restricted airspace.

It would also be logical to assume that the back up plane for Airforce One would be launched in a time of crisis from Andrews Airforce base. The plane may have been mistaken for an E-4 while loitering in the area waiting for orders on where to go next.

To the best of my knowledge, I know of only one offensive version of the 747. It involved carrying and deploying cruise missiles far from hostile territory. The idea was dropped, as the B-52 could already take on that roll without the need for a new airplane ( B-52's were designed to launch weapons from the outset, 747's were not).

If our government was involved with tracking plane into the Pentagon, why not use an AWACS plane? If the government was controlling flight 77, why have any military planes in the area at all? Predetor drones can be controlled from thousands of miles away.