U.S. Air Force / NASM SI 9A-00007From Air And Space:
In this post-election season, we offer a look at the airplane that serves as both transportation and command center for U.S. presidents—Air Force One.
The first military transport officially assigned to a president was a Douglas DC-4—popularly known as the Sacred Cow—used by Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1944. Prior to World War II, only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had left the country during their presidencies—to significant criticism at home. Public opinion would soon change.
The Sacred Cow gave way to Harry Truman’s Independence (a Douglas DC-6 named in honor of the president’s hometown), and Dwight Eisenhower’s Columbine II and Columbine III (a Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation). Eisenhower would also be the first president to travel by jet, on a Boeing 707 nicknamed “Queenie.” It was during Eisenhower’s era that “Air Force One” was first used to identify any airplane carrying the president. As Kenneth Walsh writes in his book Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes, “Columbine II, known as Air Force 610, was carrying Eisenhower to Florida when air traffic controllers briefly confused it with Eastern 610, an East
The first military transport officially assigned to a president was a Douglas DC-4—popularly known as the Sacred Cow—used by Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1944. Prior to World War II, only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had left the country during their presidencies—to significant criticism at home. Public opinion would soon change.
The Sacred Cow gave way to Harry Truman’s Independence (a Douglas DC-6 named in honor of the president’s hometown), and Dwight Eisenhower’s Columbine II and Columbine III (a Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation). Eisenhower would also be the first president to travel by jet, on a Boeing 707 nicknamed “Queenie.” It was during Eisenhower’s era that “Air Force One” was first used to identify any airplane carrying the president. As Kenneth Walsh writes in his book Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes, “Columbine II, known as Air Force 610, was carrying Eisenhower to Florida when air traffic controllers briefly confused it with Eastern 610, an East
The Sacred Cow gave way to Harry Truman’s Independence (a Douglas DC-6 named in honor of the president’s hometown), and Dwight Eisenhower’s Columbine II and Columbine III (a Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation). Eisenhower would also be the first president to travel by jet, on a Boeing 707 nicknamed “Queenie.” It was during Eisenhower’s era that “Air Force One” was first used to identify any airplane carrying the president. As Kenneth Walsh writes in his book Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes, “Columbine II, known as Air Force 610, was carrying Eisenhower to Florida when air traffic controllers briefly confused it with Eastern 610, an Eastern Airlines plane on a commercial flight in the same area. Ike was never in danger, but [William] Draper, his pilot, decided from then on to call the president’s plane Air Force One, and the name stuck.”
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