As soon as my photographer’s alarm went off at 6:00am in our Dayton, Ohio hotel room, I couldn’t wait to hit the road. It was Friday November 25, 2022; which was more than just Black Friday to me. That’s because 59 years ago, November 25th was a day of national mourning – President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery after an emotional funeral procession through Washington D.C. I’ve heard my camera guy’s story many times about how his family was glued to their black and white television set as JFK’s horse-drawn flag-draped casket slowly made its way to Arlington. He recalled being a seven-year-old kid coloring in a Bugs Bunny coloring book as he sat on the floor in front of the TV.Exactly 59 years later, on a nearly cloudless morning in Dayton, Ohio, the JFK assassination was about to come back to life for us once again. And I couldn’t wait!
My companions had the Jeep packed and we were mobile by 8:30am. During the 11-mile trip from the hotel to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, I laughed to myself when Tom once again recited his “Bugs Bunny coloring book” story. I could tell my photographer was just as excited as I was to get back to the museum. After all, it had been over eight years since we last saw SAM-26000, which was Air Force One that transported President Kennedy to Dallas on November 22, 1963. But this visit would be different – we would have an unlimited amount of time to see Air Force One, as well as the other Presidential airplanes that were on display.
In 2014, my photographer and I, along with our favorite travel companion Bob Moldenhauer, went through a required security protocol before we were shuttled onto the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the Presidential planes were housed in a special hanger. Once inside that hanger, the three of us, along with about 30 other tourists, had roughly 45 minutes to see all of the aircraft – and that wasn’t nearly enough time. Tom and I managed to get onboard JFK’s ‘SAM-26000’, Eisenhower’s ‘Columbine III’, and Truman’s ‘Independence’, but that was about it. Things have changed since then, and in my opinion, they’ve changed for the better. Roughly two years after our visit, all of the Presidential airplanes were removed from the highly secured Air Force Base and relocated in the public museum on the base’s property where they’re displayed today.
Vicki pulled into the parking lot of National Museum of the United States Air Force at 8:45am. We had 15 minutes to wait before the doors opened, but there was already a small handful of folks waiting at the entrance. Once the doors opened and we made it through security, the three of us high-tailed it towards the furthest building on the sight – the place where the Presidential airplanes were on display. Once inside that large building, we had the entire place to almost to ourselves. There were a couple of other tourists in the area – ones who were a bit quicker than my two companions.
There were four major Presidential planes on display – JFK’s SAM-26000 Air Force One, Ike’s ‘Columbine III‘, Truman’s ‘ The Independence‘, and FDR’s ‘Sacred Cow‘. Visitors were allowed to walk through each of those large Presidential planes, but Plexiglass walls lined both sides of the main aisle from floor to ceiling. The extremely narrow passageways made it difficult for larger people, like my photographer, to get from the entrance of each plane to the exit. And for those folks who suffered from claustrophobia, they would’ve been advised to stay out of the planes altogether. Besides those four large Presidential aircraft, there were four smaller planes used in the past by the Chief Executives as well. Due to their smaller size, the public were prohibited from walking onboard those airplanes.
SAM – 26000 AIR FORCE ONE
Used by John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton
COLUMBINE III
Used by Dwight D. Eisenhower
THEINDEPENDENCE
Used by Harry S Truman
SACRED COW
Used by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman
LOCKHEED JETSTAR
Used by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan
GULFSTREAM III
Used by Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton
T-39 SABRELINER
Used by Lyndon B. Johnson
AERO COMMANDER U-4B
Used by Dwight D. Eisenhower
We spent roughly two hours in the building where the Presidential planes were on display. I laughed to myself each time my photographer tried to squeeze his fat frame through the narrow passageways of the first three planes, but I got worried during our tour of the fourth one – the Sacred Cow. Somewhere in the center of the aircraft, the narrow walkway made a 90-degree left turn followed by an immediate 90-degree right turn. I became claustrophobic in the dark and narrow confines, and I could tell Tom wasn’t feeling well either. One thought did pop into my head, however. How in the heck-fire did Franklin Roosevelt navigate that turn in his wheelchair? Well, it turned out FDR only flew once in that plane, and he likely didn’t venture much past the State Room at the rear of the aircraft.
By 11 o’clock, our freedom inside the museum was in jeopardy as hundreds of visitors had poured into the place like ants at a picnic. Luckily, we had finished the Presidential airplane section first and Tom had only two historic vehicles left to see – the Apollo 15 Command Module and Bockscar, the bomber that flew over Nagasaki, Japan to drop the second atomic bomb.
We didn’t have far to go to see Endeavour, the Command Module for Apollo 15, as it was in the same building as the Presidential planes. Although there were numerous space-related items on display to see in the Space Gallery, it was the small capsule that was the sole focus for my photographer. When I posed as close as I could to Endeavour, it was hard to believe how small it looked. After all, the interior of the capsule was roughly the size of a minivan where three adult men made their home-away-from-home during their 12-day mission that began at launch on July 26, 1971 and ended on August 7th with splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. I wanted Tom to set me on one of Endeavour’s windows, the same windows Command Module pilot Al Worden looked out of when his colleagues David Scott and James Irwin headed for the lunar surface aboard the Lunar Module Falcon. Unfortunately, a Plexiglass fortress, built around the capsule, prevented my photographer from reaching the historic space craft.
APOLLO 15 COMMAND MODULE
During our time alongside the Apollo 15 Command Module, I thought about the three astronauts who flew inside Endeavour. Moonwalkers Scott and Irwin were the first to drive on the lunar surface as they covered over 17 miles in their rover. Those two also found and collected the legendary Genesis Rock, which was thought to be part of the Moon’s early crust; and Scott validated Galileo’s theory by dropping a falcon feather and hammer to prove they would hit the ground at the same time due to lack of air resistance on the Moon. But their flight wasn’t void of controversy, however, as Scott and Irwin carried unauthorized postal covers to the lunar surface. Some of those covers ended up in the hands of a West German stamp dealer, who in turn sold them for righteous bucks. Reprimanded for their poor judgement, the all-Air Force crew members of Apollo 15 never flew for NASA again.
The three of us had a long walk to get from the Presidential and Space Galleries of Building 4 to the World War II Gallery, which was located near the front of the museum. But at some point during the hike, my companions decided they needed to land some grub onto the runway of their stomachs. Tom and Vic found the Valkyrie Cafe on the second level of Building 1 and their goal was to devour a hot pretzel and Diet Coke before we made our way to Bockscar. I heard my photographer say he didn’t want to eat a lot because he had scheduled a late lunch at a Triple D joint near Cincinnati, but Tom knew he had to have something to keep his stomach from making a scene in public. When we arrived at the cafe, however, there were no pretzels and no Diet Coke. Tom and his wife had to settle for ham and cheese sandwiches and Gatorade, which was not exactly the cuisine they had hoped for.
Once their sandwiches were choked down, my companions and I took the elevator back downstairs where we searched for the final aircraft on our visit – the historic and controversial Boeing B-29 Superfortress known as Bockscar. As I posed for the first of a handful of photos near the giant silver bird, I couldn’t help but think of the role Bockscar played in ending World War II. Following in the footsteps, or contrails, of the Enola Gay (which had dropped a uranium-based atomic bomb on Hiroshima three days earlier), Bockscar pilot Major Charles Sweeney navigated that same B-29 roughly 29,000 feet over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. At precisely 10:58am local time, bombardier Captain Kermit K. Beahan opened the plane’s doors and dropped the plutonium-based Fat Man atomic bomb, which detonated 43 seconds later at an altitude of 1,600 feet above the city’s industrial valley. Six days after the second atomic bomb detonation on his country, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito surrendered to the Allied Forces. On September 2, 1945, surrender papers were officially signed onboard the USS Missouri – thus putting an end to World War II.
BOEING B-29 SUPERFORTRESS
As the three of us finished our time near Bockscar, I nearly laughed out loud when I heard Vicki nonchalantly say to my photographer: “When you kept saying we were going to see Bockscar, I thought you meant a railroad boxcar, not a huge airplane. I kept wondering to myself why a train car would be on display at an Air Force museum.”
My time near that B-29 bomber gave me a huge dose of reality – a wake-up call, so to speak, about the evils of war. In my resin mind, over 99 percent of the human population on this planet are good people who just want to live life and take care of their families the best way possible. In some nations, however, it’s the folks in a leadership role who have made the world an unstable environment in which to co-exist. Those leaders do their best to squash the freedom of their own citizens and then they threaten war against others who try to help those citizens live free. And since that summer day in 1945, when the Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki and the mushroom cloud billowed skyward, our world has been changed forever.
At a dinner party for some friends in the late 1940s, Albert Einstein was asked what weapons he thought would be used in World War III. After a moment of reflection and deep thought, he said he wasn’t sure what weapons would be used in that war. Einstein continued, however, by saying there was no doubt which weapons would be used in World War IV. “Stone spears.”
When the three of us were back in the Jeep and headed south towards North Bend, Ohio, a final thought popped into my head that was fueled by my visit alongside Bockscar. It was something I heard while my photographer watched the movie ‘Iron Man’ on television in the recent past. In one scene, Tony Stark was asked about world peace. Stark said to the reporter: “My old man had a philosophy – peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.”
For the sake of our planet and everyone on it, let’s hope Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un have “sticks” the size of their….well, let’s just think of a word that rhymes with ‘sticks’.
My name is Thomas Watson and I've been a U.S. history fanatic since I was 9 years old. In 2013, I decided to take my passion to the next level when I purchased a Thomas Jefferson bobble head with the sole intention of photographing that bobble head at Presidential sites. From that first day on July 10, 2013 at Spiegel Grove in Fremont, Ohio, this journey has taken on a life of its own. Now, nearly 40,000 miles later, I thought it was time to share the experiences, stories, and photos of Jefferson's travels. Keep in mind, this entire venture has been done with the deepest respect for the men who held the office as our President; no matter what their political affiliations, personal ambitions, or public scandals may have been. This blog is intended to be a true tribute to the Presidents of the United States and this story will be told Through the Eyes of Jefferson. I hope you enjoy the ride!