"Air Force One" never ceases to fascinate

"Does it have an escape capsule?"

That's what most people ask first.

Being the author of "Air Force One," a book about presidential airplanes, invites questions. Many of the questions suggest that the reading public is pretty well informed about presidents and their flying machines. Everyday Americans, especially young people, seem to have a strong interest in the "flying White House," its history, and how it's used and how it works today.

That's why it's rewarding to talk about presidential aircraft with local groups in northern Virginia. And, no, there is no PowerPoint and no speaker's fee. My talk about Air Force one the plane, and "Air Force One" the book relies entirely on my good looks and is gratis. You'll read farther down that all proceeds from my books go to charity.

Here are a few basics:

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an aircraft while in office. Harry S. Truman was the first president to sign into law a piece of legislation while aboard an aircraft. Since then, every president has flown more than his predecessor — to the point where, in my opinion, presidents now fly too much in an era when their travel is increasingly costly.

Roosevelt had a C-54 Skymaster, military version of the DC-4 airliner, dubbed the Sacred Cow and equipped with an elevator for the wheelchair-using commander-in-chief. Truman had a C-118 Liftmaster, or DC-6, named Independence. That's the plane on which he signed the 1947 National Security Act.

During 1948, the Air Force refurbished a C-121 Constellation for President Thomas E. Dewey. The polls left little doubt who would be elected that year. The polls were wrong, Truman kept his C-118, and the plane intended for Dewey never carried a chief executive.

"So does it have an escape capsule? You know, life in the movie with Harrison Ford?"

I'm getting there.

Dwight D. Eisenhower went from props to jets and was aboard the first plane to use the radio callsign "Air Force One." The unique callsign is meant to enable air traffic controllers to clear other aircraft out of the way when the president is on the move.

A history of all aircraft types used by presidents won't fit in this space. The current presidential aircraft is a VC-25A, the military version of the Boeing 747-200. Two of them are located at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, along with three smaller C-20C Gulfstream IIIs that are intended for presidential use in a crisis.

In fact, any Air Force plane becomes "Air Force One" once the president is aboard. On a trip to the troubled Balkans in 1999, Bill Clinton took the VC-25A to Germany and then shifted to an ordinary C-17 Globemaster III transport to complete his journey. For that one and only time in its history, that unremarkable C-17 became "Air Force One."

My book is a real, mainstream book from a major publisher, not a self-published work. I'd like to encourage museums and gift shops to carry it. I've structured my life so that every penny of my proceeds from books is donated to charity but I still want the story out there.

"AIR FORCE ONE" is a coffee table, landscape, color-picture book with 400 photos and 100,000 words of text. It was published in 2002 and updated in 2010. The manuscript was reviewed and cleared by the Department of Defense, even though the book contains some sensitive information that hasn't been seen elsewhere. The book is written in plain English for general audiences.

Oh. And the escape capsule wasn't invented for the Harrison Ford movie. It originated in the movie "John Carpenter's Escape from New York" (1980) in which a great actor, Donald Pleasence (1919-1995) portrays an especially unpleasant American president who survives by ejecting in the ball-shaped doohickey while everyone else aboard the plane goes down in flames. In the more recent movie, a much nicer president played by Harrison Ford, takes one look at the capsule — a concept heisted from the earlier film — and shakes his head as if to say, "I'm not using that thing."

Any more questions? Join me for a presentation on Saturday, July 6 at 2:00 p.m. at the Burke Centre Library, 5935 Freds Oak Road, (703) 249-1530. This is a free event focusing on presidential airplanes, suitanle for all ages and open to all. If you can't join me for this presentation about the ever-fascinating "flying White House," find me at robert.f.dorr@cox.net or (703) 264-8950.