The Flying White House
Presidential airplanes, past and present.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, November 06, 2008
Cecil Stoughton, White House
With the John F. Kennedy administration, a Boeing 707-353B airliner became the new presidential transport, and the call sign “Air Force One” entered popular culture. The aircraft served for 35 historic years, carrying JFK to Berlin, West Germany in June 1963 for his famous speech, and, tragically, serving as somber transport for the slain president on November 22, 1963. Merriman Smith, UPI’s White House reporter who was riding in the press car behind the president’s motorcade, received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on that day. Smith was one of two journalists allowed to fly back to Washington, D.C. aboard Air Force One. Read his account of Lyndon Baines Johnson being sworn in on board the aircraft. In his book Air Force One, National Air and Space Museum curator Von Hardesty describes the preparation of the aircraft: “The idea of placing the corpse of the slain president in the hold of the aircraft was rejected out of hand. The only alternative was to place it in the rear passenger compartment, which required some instant hands-on redesign of the relatively small space. A partition was removed, along with four seats, to allow the casket easy entry and placement. It took no small amount of energy to move the nine-hundred-pound bronze casket up the narrow ramp into the compartment, where it rested across from the galley. It would be here that Mrs. Kennedy chose to seat herself, surrounded by a host of her husband’s former staff, for the long flight home.”
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Comments (1)
Thanks for the interesting article on presidential planes, well done. It is by accident I learned of President Franklin Roosevelt's trip to the Casablanca Conference by seaplane, and if I have done my homework correctly the first trip by airplane by a sitting president. My uncle was in World War 2 and I was reading a letter he had sent to his parents. He said he was preparing for an inspection and recalled that his previous inspection was by the president. I thought it a bit strange that the president would be inspecting a Navy unit in Brazil. After doing a little research I learned that Roosevelt's plane had landed at Natal on his trip home from the conference and had indeed inspected the VP-74 Squadron. According to squadron members he met with some of the officers following the inspection and talked to them about the war. The few remaining squadron members still take a great deal of pride that they were inspected by President Roosevelt. I found it fascinating that a small piece of American history would become a part of our family history.
Posted by Bill DeArmond on December 28,2008 | 01:50 PM
When I was 18 years old, I had the priviledge of flying in the Sacred Cow as A Civil Air Patrol Cadet. Myself and five other cadets had won a trip to Mexico on the Cadet Exchange program in 1957. We flew from Andrews AFB to Mexico City. We were allowed to sit in the Presidential compartment with its bullet proof picture window and play cards with a deck provided by the sergeant who had been assigned to the plane from the beginning. The cards had the presidential seal on them. I don't recall whether we were shown the elevator, but it was such a pleasure to fly on the plane. You can probably verify my story through CAP records. Glad to hear the plane is now at the Air Force Museum. My CAP Squadron at Gentile AF Depot in Dayton had a small part in the initial fund-raising for the Museum.
By the way, our return from Mexico was on a C-47 flown by Air Force Reserve pilots who had never flown out of a 7,000-foot-high airport. They attempted to take off too soon, and our plane came up, dropped back down on the right wheel, bounced across the runway and hit a landing light with the left wheel, which shattered. We made it back into the air, then proceeded to Brownsville for customs, then on to Maxwell AFB for an overnite. Then we flew to Andrews, where I caught at C-119 to fly back to Wright-Patterson. I'd taken pictures throughout the trip. When we arrive at WPAFB, I snapped a picture of the C-119. An Air Policeman grabbed my camera and rolls of film and exposed them, scolding me for taking pictures in a classified area. Oh well.
Posted by Tom Suitts on May 18,2009 | 06:06 PM