Was this the original ABCCC? The capsule was built it ~90 days for ~$90M back in 1964. That's ~$630M in today's Monopoly $! I, as a lowly A2C Loadmaster, was sent to LTV near Dallas to learn how to load the thing. With their help I wrote the "offishull" loading instructions, which I aSSumed would forever be followed to the letter. I just do not remember the tail no.
At the time, the airplane was a Dyess bird, which was sent along with 5 others and 9 combat-ready aircrews to the brand new 4486th Test Squadron, of the also brand new 4485th Test Wing, at Eglin. I only flew a few test rides around Eglin in it, and the capsule was then pulled and set on the ground for some testing. IIRC, I got to sit up on the flight deck on those flights. That ended my association with it.
Just remembered, we did fly it to Langley once, to show it to all the TAC brass. It was a fun experience, as TAC officers would come over, look around, and if they were the ranking dude they assumed their role as being in charge of everything. As soon as someone who outranked them arrived, they lost the attitude and just started talking to us aircrew like one of the boys.
LTV installed 4 weird looking pods on the outboard wing sections, 2 per side. They had little propellers at the front, for self-contained electrical power (mini RATs). I was told they were to help ground troops communicate, as the dense 'Nam jungle sucked up their radio waves. The pods were supposed to receive, amplify, and retransmit their messages automatically, AM, FM and whatever else was being used. None of this was classified back then, dunno about them after they went to 'Nam. For me, 4 years was enough.
I had a bunch of slides of it, but unfortunately lost all of them because of mildew. Wonder if anyone has any good photos of it.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2533[/ATTACH]