While Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to have an official plane, he used it just three times. His successor, Harry Truman, was similarly avoidant. However, Eisenhower was a seasoned pilot and relied heavily on air travel to manage Allied campaigns during World War II.
“He saw the potential of a presidential plane as a powerful tool for international and domestic relations,” says Veronico, author of Air Force One: The Aircraft of the Modern U.S. Presidency. Eisenhower traveled across the U.S. and the world to meet with leaders, logging more than 63,000 miles in the first two years of his presidency. He used Columbine II to end the Korean War and wrote his famed “Atoms for Peace” speech onboard. It helped Eisenhower “lay the foundation for how modern presidents conduct foreign diplomacy,” says Veronico.
Columbine II was later repurposed as a V.I.P. transport for Vice President Richard Nixon and visiting dignitaries such as Queen Elizabeth, and Eisenhower converted a newer, larger Lockheed Super Constellation into his next Air Force One in November 1954. Eisenhower flew on Columbine II for the last time in 1959. Then, after a brief stint as a commercial airliner, the plane was retired to an Arizona Air Force storage facility in 1968.
How did Columbine II wind up abandoned in the desert? “The short answer is, it got lost,” says Veronico. By 1968, the plane’s presidential paint job and lux accouterments were long gone. That combined with what was likely a clerical error during inventory obscured its predigious pedigree.
At a 1970 surplus auction, crop duster and fire bomber Mel Christler bought the former Air Force One in a package of five decommissioned C-121s.
“At that time very few people were thinking about the historical significance of these aircraft, much less how to preserve them,” says Veronico. Columbine II had slipped through the cracks: “By then it was just another number.”
Christler pulled parts from the former Air Force One to service his fleet of Constellations until they were retired from use in 1978. He was about to scrap Columbine II when a Smithsonian researcher called with recently unearthed news of its presidential past. Christler—a former WWII pilot and flight instructor—spent the next decade struggling to restore the plane on a shoestring budget.