Lockheed Constellation WV-2 Warning Star

Airborne early warning was born in the United States with Project Cadillac, which the Navy entrusted to the MIT Radiation Laboratory during the Second World War so that the fleet could spot enemy aircraft, kamikazes included, from far away. Its APS-20 radar first flew on 5 August 1944 aboard a modified Avenger, the XTBM-3W; General Electric and Hazeltine built it in series, and the set then went into several Navy carrier aircraft. What was missing was a large, long-endurance aircraft able to carry that equipment far from the coast for many hours. The two L-749-based PO-1Ws proved in 1949 that a Constellation could lift huge radars, and the Navy then ordered the definitive version on the L-1049 Super Constellation airframe: the PO-2W, renamed WV-2 in 1954.

The Navy received 142 aircraft of this series, with deliveries from 1953. The variant list in the same source puts the original order at 244, of which the Navy kept those 142 while the rest were diverted to the Air Force, which from October 1953 drew its own radar aircraft from those contracts. The first operational WV-2, BuNo 128323, a Model 1049C, reached Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii, in April 1954 for Airborne Early Warning Squadron One (VW-1). In 1962, when the Department of Defense standardised the designations of its three services, the WV-2 became the EC-121K: it is the same aircraft, which is why this page treats both names as one. Naval crews called it “Willie Victor”, a slang reading of the letters WV in the phonetic alphabet.

The WV-2 carried an AN/APS-20 search radar in the large ventral radome and an AN/APS-45 height finder in the dorsal one; it later received the AN/APS-95 and AN/APS-103, although not simultaneously. The usual crew numbered 18: six officers (two pilots, two navigators and two weapons controllers) and twelve enlisted men (two flight engineers, one radio operator, two crew chiefs, five radar operators and two radar technicians). Power came from four Wright R-3350-34 turbo compound 18-cylinder radial engines of 3,400 hp (2,536 kW) each. For the WV-2/EC-121D, the source gives a length of 35.40 m, a wingspan of 38.45 m, an empty weight of 31,387 kg, a maximum take-off weight of 65,000 kg, a top speed of 481 km/h, a cruising speed of 410 km/h, a range of 6,843 km and a service ceiling of 7,620 m. The Museum of Aviation at Robins puts the cost of an EC-121K at 2,031,000 dollars.

From 1954 to 1965 the WV-2s held two warning barriers, one off each coast of North America, as an extension of the DEW Line. Each barrier combined five surface picket stations, manned by radar destroyer escorts, with a wing of WV-2s patrolling at 1,000 to 4,000 m in missions of 6 to 20 hours. The Atlantic barrier, BARLANT, drew on rotating detachments from squadrons VW-13 and VW-15 at Patuxent River, Maryland, and on VW-11, permanently based at Argentia, Newfoundland; its orbits ran out to the Azores and back. It became operational on 1 July 1956 and kept continuous coverage until early 1965. In June 1961 it shifted to cover the gap between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, and aircraft from Argentia staged through Keflavik to extend their time on station.

VW-1 was the first operational early warning squadron and received the first EC-121K; VW-3 followed, then VW-12, VW-14 and VW-16. In January 1958 VW-1 and VW-3 moved to Agana, Guam. The Pacific barrier, BARPAC, became operational on 1 July 1958 with VW-12 at Barbers Point, deployed to Midway, and later grew to include VW-14 and VW-16. Its orbits overlapped the pickets of Escort Squadron Seven, roughly from Adak Island to Midway, and five aircraft had to be airborne at any one time to cover the whole line. The Hawaiian barrier was discontinued by September 1965 and its EC-121Ks went into storage. VW-1, which on 30 June 1960 had absorbed aircraft and crews from the disbanded VW-3 along with its “Typhoon Trackers” title, kept flying until 1972 on weather missions and early warning for the fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The WV-2 airframe produced thirteen WV-2Q electronic intelligence aircraft (EC-121M from 1962) and nine WV-3 weather reconnaissance aircraft (WC-121N), the machines with which VW-4 hunted hurricanes from Jacksonville. One WV-2E tested a rotating radome with an AN/APS-70 radar, others were modified for anti-submarine work as the EC-121P, and one served the Army as an avionics testbed (JC-121K). In 1962 the Air Force received seven WV-2s for its EC-121H programme, and in 1966–1967 another 30 EC-121Ks and EC-121Ps passed to it to become the EC-121R sensor-monitoring aircraft of the Vietnam War.

Training Squadron 86 (VT-86) flew the EC-121K at Glynco, Georgia, to train naval flight officers bound for the EC-121 and the E-2 Hawkeye; when Glynco closed in 1973 the squadron moved to Pensacola and its last EC-121, BuNo 143221, joined the National Naval Aviation Museum. A single NC-121K, BuNo 141292, served with electronic warfare squadron VAQ-33 at Key West and was the last EC-121 in service, flying until 25 June 1982. The Navy lost 20 EC-121s in accidents, with 113 aircrew killed; fifteen of them were WV-2s or EC-121Ks. Besides the Pensacola aircraft, survivors include BuNo 141297, flown to the Museum of Aviation at Robins in 1987; BuNo 137890 at Tinker and BuNo 141309 at the Aerospace Museum of California, both painted as Air Force 53-0552; and BuNo 141311, awaiting restoration at the Yankee Air Museum in Belleville.