A US AIR Force Aircraft stopped in the skies over Ireland this morning landed at the Irish Air Corps airfield in Dublin as it made its way to Britain.
The massive C17 Globemaster was spotted in the skies over Galway, the midlands and South Dublin. Eagle-eye plane spotters posted on social media their sightings and many wondered why such an aircraft would be in Ireland.
It is the second such flight by a US military aircraft in Ireland in recent days as a US Navy Seahawk was spotted over County Clare last Friday.
On that occasion the chopper was ferrying personnel from a US Navy destroyer off the West Coast to catch a commercial flight back to the US.
An Air Corps spokesperson said that the C17 made its stop at Casement Aerodrome for technical reasons.
“A USAF C-17 landed at Baldonnel at 0850 on a technicality stop en-route to the UK as part of a crew training mission,” he said.
Enquiries by The Journal determined that the C17 left an airbase in Washington State on the North West coast of the United States, before stopping at an Air National Guard base in Bangor, Maine.
It then traveled across the Atlantic and was spotted flying up the West Coast and across the midlands into Dublin.
It spent a few hours on the ground in Baldonnel before taking off again and heading East towards the UK.
There has been much speculation but sources have said that there could be any number of reasons for the C17′s arrival into Irish airspace.
There has been a massive exercise in Scotland in the last week which involved large amounts of US and British forces testing interoperability.
This included naval ships and US Marine amphibious vessel with harriers and other aircraft on board.
The USS Paul Ignatius, which the helicopter originated from, was also on this exercise.
The United States Military uses the C17 as a heavy lift cargo aircraft and the massive four engine plane carries anything from personnel to tanks and can even fit a helicopter in its bay.
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