The Castle Air Museum in Atwater, Calif., east of San Jose, welcomed its newest addition, a retired Air Force One airplane that once flew Presidents Reagan and Clinton and other dignitaries over its decades of service. The Douglas VC-9 touched down on Oct. 16 in Atwater to a waiting crowd of nearly 300 people, reported the Merced Sun-Star. “This is a great day, not only for the air museum but also for Merced, Atwater, Merced County, and the state of California,” said Joe Pruzzo, the museum’s chief executive officer. With the airplane in hand, the museum now hopes to raise $10 million for construction of the Presidential Pavilion, a 100,000-square-foot building to house 24 of the museum’s vintage military aircraft, according to the newspaper.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…