Features
The WC-135W (tail number 61-2667) is a modified C-135B. The WC-135C (tail number 62-3582) is an extensively modified former EC-135C Looking Glass aircraft. The Constant Phoenix’s modifications are primarily related to the aircraft's on-board atmospheric collection suite, which allows the mission crew to detect radioactive debris "clouds" in real time. The aircraft is equipped with external flow-through devices to collect particulates on filter paper and a compressor system for whole air samples collected in high-pressure holding spheres.
The interior seats 33 people, including the cockpit crew, maintenance personnel, and special equipment operators from the Air Force Technical Applications Center. On operational sorties, the crew is minimized to just pilots, navigator, and special equipment operators, to reduce radiation exposure to mission-essential personnel only.
Read more about this topic: Boeing WC-135 Constant Phoenix
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“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
““It looks as if
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Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)