Why the Qatar jet gift controversy hits home

Presidents and their planes

Air Force One, flying over Mount Rushmore (Air Force photo)

The first airplane specially built to fly a president was the “Sacred Cow,” a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster that took President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta conference in early February 1945.

The next one, a Douglas VC-118 introduced in 1947, was named “Independence,” after President Harry S. Truman’s Missouri hometown.

In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower was flying back to Washington on his plane after giving a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Lockheed VC-121A, informally named “Columbine II,” was using its usual radio call sign — Air Force 8610 — while air traffic controllers were also fielding calls from a commercial flight with the same number, Eastern Airlines 8610.

Determined to avoid any future confusion, the president’s pilot, Col. William Draper, “called a meeting to always identify the flight carrying the president: It would be Air Force One,” according to Lowen Baumgarten.

And so it remains.

Air Force One, now …