Originally Posted by
Alan Baker
SAM 26000 was in service until 1998 before going to the USAF museum at Wright-Patterson.
I was able to walk through 26000 at the museum a few years ago. There was a famous cutout in one of the cabin bulkheads to accommodate President Kennedy's casket on the return from Dallas in 1963. Was it still there or had it been repaired? I'm not sure.
Originally Posted by
kcockayne
Thanks for all that info., but do you know when 86970 entered service & was retired ?
I saw 970 land in Damascus in 1993 carrying Secretary of State Warren Christopher. He was doing some shuttle diplomacy with Hafez al-Assad.
A colleague who used to fly out of Andrews says he carted Al Gore to climate conferences in that plane before the 757's (C-32's) arrived. A lot of smoke and carbon credits from those Pratt JT3D engines.
Originally Posted by
Warmtoast
So what was AirForce One in August 1959 when President Eisenhower came to the UK for talks with PM Macmillan and visited HM the Queen at Balmoral?
According to
Air Force One by Robert F. Dorr (2002), 970 (aka 'Queenie') was used to take the President and First Lady on that August 1959 trip to Germany, England and France.
Originally Posted by
Warmtoast
Wearing uniform and with a rather large "professional" camera around my neck it was assumed I was an "official photographer" and I was ushered to the scaffolding erected for photographers and duly took my photographs.
I had a similar experience three decades ago watching 'The Reverend' Jesse Jackson speak outside IAM headquarters on 36th Street in Miami. Jesse had Secret Service protection as a presidential candidate and I brought a scanner radio to listen to comm traffic on the old analog channels. I guess they assumed that I was some plainclothes local law enforcement guy and I was herded inside a cordon right next to the Reverend.
Originally Posted by
WHBM
82-8000 and 92-9000 are the two current 747s which came at the end of 1990. With the much larger size, an equivalent sized backup aircraft was chosen.
29000 seems to be the favored long range Air Force One these days although I believe 28000 was used with a C-32 backup earlier this year, perhaps for maintenance considerations. The backup plane currently uses the callsign of SAM 45 (not, for example, SAM 28000 as before).
Also, for domestic trips, one of the C-32's is often used as Air Force One. Some of the C-32's have the extra comm package with the satcomm radomes on top of the fuselage for the presidential mission.