Operation Looking Glass: America’s Terrifying Doomsday Plane
This day in history
On this day in history, February 3rd, 1961, the United States launched Operation Looking Glass in a bid to ensure that the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) could never be interrupted. The operation put a plane in the sky that was integrated with the nuclear command on the ground. This would ensure that even if the entire US command was destroyed in a nuclear attack, the airborne crew would be able to coordinate a retaliatory strike.
From this day forward,there was a Looking Glass plane circling in a secret flight path over the United States for 29 continuous years and is still ready to take flight at a moment’s notice today.
The mission
The planes used by Operation Looking Glass were Boeing EC-135Cs. They were designed as mobile airborne operations units specifically designed to emit command and control codes to the United States intercontinental ballistic missile systems (ICBM) on the ground in the event of an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union.
