Subject: Air Force One article Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 15:20:46 -0400 From: KFITZ Organization: Prodigy Internet Newsgroups: startext.jfk Air Force One article that may be of interest. Kathlee Fitzgerald Saturday, May. 16, 1998 Boeing 707 that served presidents from Kennedy to Clinton makes final flight to museum By Steven Thomma Knight-Ridder News Service ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- The familiar blue and white fuselage with the words painted boldly for the world to see -- United States of America -- still glistens in the sun the way it did the day President Kennedy first boarded it in 1962. The leather swivel chairs in the stateroom still beckon, the communications gear still stands ready to link the VIP passenger to any point on the globe. But underneath, the modified 707 that served as Air Force One for presidents from Kennedy to Clinton, is very, very old. On Tuesday, it will make its last flight, to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where it will be put on display. "When they retire that plane, they retire a piece of history," said Gerald terHorst, ]former press secretary to President Gerald Ford and author of a book on Air Force One, The Flying White House. In its day, the plane with the tail number 26000 was a symbol of the power and the glamour of the presidency when that power seemed greater and that glamour was unsullied by scandal. It carried Kennedy to Berlin in June 1963 to defy the Soviets with his "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech. It carried him as well to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, then carried his body home that night. With window shades drawn to guard against snipers, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president aboard it. Ten years later, it would also carry his body home to Texas after a state funeral in Washington. It took Henry Kissinger to Paris for secret negotiations to end the Vietnam War, took Richard Nixon on his ground-breaking trip to China in 1972, and former presidents Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter to Egypt in 1981 for President Anwar Sadat's funeral. Crew members later described the unlikely sight of three former presidents and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger all standing in line to use the rest room. First used by Kennedy in November 1962 to attend the funeral of Eleanor Roosevelt, the plane served, in recent years, only as a backup for the president who has had the use of two other planes since 1990. It was last used by President Clinton on Jan. 28 when a wheel of his newer 707 got stuck in the mud on a runway in Illinois. "It was one of the best airplanes to ever came off the production line," said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Joe Chappell, the chief engineer who was with the plane from its delivery in 1962 to his retirement in 1980. It was also the first jet designed and built specifically for the president. It included state-of-the-art communications gear that could link Kennedy with any spot on the planet, most importantly U.S. nuclear forces at the height of the Cold War. It had a stateroom with chairs and twin beds at the rear -- a design holdover from the pre-jet era when propellers threw more noise at the front of the plane -- and a conference room. It was probably the safest plane in the sky, stripped down to bare metal every six months, and every nut and bolt checked, Chappell said. It also had special safety features, he said, although he refuses to this day to discuss them. It was fast. In May 1963, it broke 30 speed records while carrying a U.S. delegation to Moscow. And it was beautiful. Until then, presidents' planes were standard military design. Eisenhower's had an orange fuselage. The White House invited designers to submit recommendations and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy picked the elegant blue-and-white design that is still used today. Chappell remembers watching the Kennedys board their open limousine and ride into Dallas on that sun-drenched November day in 1963. He was waiting with the flight crew for the Kennedys to return and fly to Austin where they planned to spend the weekend at the Johnson ranch. Then, the pilot suddenly told him to get the plane ready to go immediately. "We were guessing that it was some international crisis," Chappell said. "We had just been in Berlin shortly before. We didn't know if the Russians were rattling their swords." When they heard that Kennedy had been shot, some feared a broader conspiracy that could target Johnson upon his arrival at the plane. "We were told to hide the airplane," Chappell said, "but there was no place to hide a 707. Johnson's Secret Service agents came through and closed all the shades." As they waited for Kennedy's body to arrive, Chappell said he thought about putting the casket in the cargo hold as the crew had done several times before with other caskets. Chappell, for instance, was with the crew that had flown Gen. Douglas MacArthur's body in the cargo hold to Norfolk, Virginia. "It just hit me that we can't put the president's body in the cargo hold," he said. "I just didn't think that was correct. So we decided to put the casket in the passenger compartment." Chappell removed a bulkhead and two rows of seats to make room. "Mrs. Kennedy took a seat across the aisle from the casket," he said. Johnson held the plane until federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes could arrive and swear him in as president, with a dazed Jacqueline Kennedy looking on. After that, the plane took off for Washington. In the years that followed, the plane was a flying office for presidents, a welcome respite where they could do business or relax. But more than that, it was one of the most recognizable symbols of the office. "Whenever you saw that airplane, it symbolized the presidency and the United States of America," said terHorst. "Nobody ever had one before this plane. Now, every leader in the world worth his salt has one or wants one."