Today we’re looking at E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes – they’re really just Boeing 707s with a 9.1m diameter rotating radar strapped onto the back, which provides airborne surveillance and battle management.

Starting in Britain there’s an E-3 Sentry at RAF Mildenhall. This is one of seven that the RAF purchased and named Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful and Doc.

Hopping over to France we see 3 of 4 E-3s owned by the Armée de l’Air.

Further afield there’s Khorat airfield in Thailand. I think this is actually a US E-3 and part of “Cope Tiger”, an annual, multinational exercise for practising interoperability with U.S. Forces. There’s also various fighter planes to see just to the South.

The US Air Force owns 34 E-3s in total and 28 of them are stationed at Tinker AFB (although I only count 13). Tinker AFB’s claim to fame is that in 1948 the first ever Tornado warning was issused from here (about 3 hours before it hit).

Also worth seeing while we’re in the area is another Children’s Play Area and [B-52 and B-1B bombers](http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=951&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=35.411464,-97.378006&z=17 ) which, according to submitter “West,” are being refitted with new electronics to allow them to carry and drop JDAM munitions.

Thanks: Don Mecoy, Mike, DFarmer, DDA, Grant hutchins, West, pooms, CraX & teuf

The Oklahoma City National Memorial honours the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were changed by the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 19, 1995. It stands on the site of the Alfred P. Murrah building and is the largest memorial of its kind in the U.S.A.

At the top of the thumbnail you can see the rectangular reflecting pool with the “gates of time” at either end. In the southern half is the “Rescuers’ Orchard”, a grove of fruit and flowering trees that surround the “Survivor Tree”, an elm that survived the bombing.

Thanks: icky