Just Plane Weird: Mysterious Aircraft Seen Hovering Around Denver Airport Identified
The aircraft left the military baffled until Thursday afternoon.
A mysterious white plane left Denver residents baffled after it was spotted flying over the city for hours on Wednesday.
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But it has now been identified; U.S. Pacific Fleet told Inside Edition the plane was a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury.
According to the Naval Air Systems Command website, “The E-6B is a dual-mission aircraft capable of fulfilling either the E-6A mission or the airborne strategic command post mission and is equipped with an airborne launch control system (ALCS).”
The planes play an important role in the military as they are used to relay instructions to ballistic submarines in case of a nuclear war.
Concerned residents called local TV stations and took to social media to express their concern.
In addition, officials at Buckley Air Force Base in nearby Aurora told The Denver Channel that the plane never checked in with radar towers in the area.
The plane's flight path began southeast near Oklahoma. It was reported that the plane, flight number IRON99, was coming from California and headed over the Pacific before turning west and heading to Denver.
The plane flew at 32,000 feet at a speed of 450 miles per hour.
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The FAA, NORAD and the Strategic Air Command all said they had zero information about the flight.
Aviation expert Ross Aimer told Inside Edition: “It is in a holding pattern. That is a typical racetrack holding pattern that even commercial aircrafts do when there [are] delays into and out of an airport.”
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