Meet the E-2C Hawkeye: the Screwtops, by the numbers 2e1b3aa

She’s the newest silhouette over the bay and the highest flier in the pattern: the Grumman E-2C Hawkeye of Airborne Command and Control Squadron 123 — VAW-123, the SCREWTOPS — now wears her squadron mark, the black corkscrew around the rotodome. The dome itself got its geometry sorted this push: a horizontal pancake on its twin struts, spinning about its vertical axis exactly as the real radar does. Her card:

1. Crew: five. Two pilots up front, three mission specialists in the back — radar officer, control officer, radar operator — the team that talks the fighters onto the bandits.
2. Powerplant: two Allison T56-A-427 turboprops, 5,100 shp apiece, driving four-bladed props. Max speed around 350 kt, but her living is the loiter: five to six hours on station.
3. Dimensions: 80 ft 7 in span, 57 ft 9 in long — and the rotodome spans 24 feet, bigger than some fighters’ wings.
4. Ceiling: 34,700 ft. Range: about 1,460 nautical miles. High enough and patient enough to see the whole theatre.
5. The kit: AN/APS-145 radar in the dome — tracks thousands of contacts out past 300 miles, friend or foe, sea level or stratosphere.
6. The squadron: VAW-123 “Screwtops,” established 1967 out of Norfolk — hence the black barber-pole spiral painted around the dome rim, three turns of pure squadron pride. It spins with the radar.
7. In the bay: she orbits at angels 23 and works the radio the way a real Hawkeye does — BOGEY with clock code, miles and angels; CIVIL TRAFFIC conflicts; FRIENDLIES round-ups; a PICTURE every couple of minutes. Bullseye is Alcatraz. Find her on gallery page 14/14, or spectate her wheel with J.