The first presidential plane to be designated Air Force One was saved from the boneyard and is airworthy again, reported Warbirds News. Dynamic Aviation bought former President Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential aircraft, the Lockheed VC-121A Constellation Columbine II, and spent a year rehabbing the historic prop-liner in Marana, Ariz., before ferrying it to the company’s headquarters in Bridgewater, Va., on March 23. The cross-country trip ended with a four-hour flight from Mount Pleasant, Texas. Dynamic Aviation founder Karl Stoltzfus expects the aircraft will need three more years of extensive interior and exterior restoration before returning to the air show circuit. (See video of the landing in Bridgewater here.)
Thomas C. Reed, who served as the 11th Secretary of the Air Force and a national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan, died Feb. 11 at age 89.