Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [81]
Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to fly in office when he took a Boeing 314 Clipper Ship to the Casablanca Conference in 1943. Named the Dixie Clipper, the plane was operated by Pan American Airways. After Casablanca, military leaders thought better of having their commander in chief fly commercial again, so the Army Air Forces specially modified a C-54 transport plane for Roosevelt and delivered it to him in 1944. Nicknamed the Sacred Cow by either the White House press corps or AAF personnel, the plane featured a small elevator behind the passenger cabin to make it easier for the president to get on and off the plane in his wheelchair.
Roosevelt used the plane just once, to attend the Yalta Conference in February 1945. When Truman became president, he inherited the Sacred Cow and, on June 19, 1945, a little more than two months after taking office, he flew to Olympia, Washington, on the plane. It was the first domestic flight in the history of the presidency.
Whenever he flew, Harry liked to hang out in the cockpit and chat with the crew. He also liked to have a little fun. The plane’s pilot, Lt. Col. Henry Myers, said the president asked to be notified whenever the Sacred Cow flew over Ohio, the home state of Truman’s nemesis in the Senate, Robert Taft. In The Flying White House, J. F. terHorst and Ralph Albertazzie explained why:
Duly alerted by Myers that the Sacred Cow was flying over Ohio, Truman would walk aft to his lavatory. Moments later, after the president had returned to his seat, Myers would get a presidential command over the intercom to activate the waste disposal system…. The discharged liquids, of course, evaporated quickly in the cold, dry air outside. But it was Truman’s way of having a private joke at Taft’s expense.
By late 1946, the Sacred Cow was already showing its age, so the air force decided to replace it with a Douglas DC-6, the most advanced longrange airliner then in production. The new plane was even more luxurious than the Sacred Cow. Mounted on the wall of the stateroom were instruments—a compass, an altimeter, and a speedometer—that the president could monitor in flight. Powered by four 2,400-horsepower prop engines, it had a cruising speed of 320 miles per hour and a range of 4,400 miles. (The Sacred Cow, by comparison, had a cruising speed of 245 miles per hour and a range of 3,900 miles.) The new plane was also equipped with the most modern communications equipment, including a teletype system that could send and receive coded messages. It seemed to have everything—except a name.
The White House and the air force had always hated the name Sacred Cow, which they regarded as undignified. Truman’s press secretary, Charles Ross, never failed to point out that “Sacred Cow was a nickname for which the White House had no responsibility.” According to Ross, Truman simply called the plane “the C-54.” The air force wanted to call the new presidential plane the Flying White House, or simply refer to it by its air force number (46–505). But Henry Myers, the pilot, suggested the Independence, a name that evoked the nation’s history and ideals. Of course, it also happened to be the name of the president’s hometown. The air force didn’t care for the name, but Harry liked it, and that was all that really mattered.
The most striking thing about the Independence was its two-tone blue paint scheme. While the Sacred Cow looked like every other C-54 (on the outside anyway), its replacement was painted to look like an eagle. The nose was the beak, and the cockpit windows were the eyes. Stylized feathers swept down the fuselage. Douglas Aircraft had come up with the design for American Airlines, whose logo was an eagle. American rejected it, but air force officials who happened to see the design thought it would be perfect for the new presidential plane. The Independence looked unlike any other plane in the world. It was flashy, and Harry loved it.
The Independence was officially commissioned on the Fourth of July in 1947. Two months later, Harry, Bess, and Margaret flew it