The first Air Force One

[spongebobiwan]

Came across this online. A Lockheed Constellation, this plane became the very first Air Force One, because of a near mid-air over New York city due to confusion over identical call signs. Thus the renaming of its call sign to Air Force One, according to the video. A restoration project is being attempted. Anyway, I found it to be fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ehwvZXVKmPU

[Gunslinger37]

Here is a photo that I shot last week of the airplane. It has been sold to a museum back east and a crew is here in Marana, AZ getting it ready for the flight.

[spongebobiwan]

Greatly looking forward to seeing this one in the air. Thanks.

[Glider-Rider]

Nice! Just this morning I picked up a book titled "Air Force One" by Robert F. Dorr. 156 pages with many (mostly) color photos of presumably all presidential aircraft. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. It does show the above "Columbine", Marine One, Andrews AFB, etc, lots of good info.

[Gunslinger37]

I work as a docent here at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson where we have several of the Presidential aircraft on display. Here is "ARMY ONE" a Sikorsky VH-34 used by President Eisenhower.

[FlyingRon]

Love Pima. Say "Hi" to Yvonne for us.

Yep, the Air Force One callsign did stem from this incident. This plane technically was the first to bear that designation even though it was in the second plane to be pressed into presidential service. The first was "Sacred Cow" which was a C-54 used to take Roosevelt to Malta and subsequently used by Harry Truman.

Neat to go to the Air Force Museum in Dayton where many of the former presidential planes are including the 707 where LBJ was sworn in and carried JFK's body back to DC. Unlike the Smithsonian that locks up everything tighter than a drum in the name of preservation, you can stand where Johnson took the oath and see where they cut the bulkhead to get the casket in the plane.

An amusing story on AF1 is that the original 707 pressed into service during the Kennedy administration was painted in rather drab military design. My hero, industrial designer Raymond Lowey (who designed everything from Studebakers to the Coke bottle to the word Exxon) reworked the design to be more diplomatic in appearance. Allegedly the Lowey and JFK spread the drawings out on the floor of the oval office to work out the details.