E-2 Hawkeye Fly-By

While we were driving on the bridge to Chincoteague Island, we were "buzzed" by what appeared to be an E-2 Hawkeye. An airborne early warning aircraft, the Hawkeye is fitted with an antenna vaguely reminiscent of that on an AWACS.

A number of E-2s are based at Patuxent River, Maryland, less than 80 miles from Wallops Island, so that may be this aircraft's home base, or (given its altitude) it may have been on some sort of research flight, temporarily based at the nearby Wallops Flight Facility Airport.