VC-137C SAM 26000 - Operational History

Operational History

SAM 26000 entered service in 1962 during the John F. Kennedy administration. It was built at Boeing's Renton, Washington plant at a cost of $8 million. Raymond Loewy, working with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, designed the blue and white color scheme featuring the presidential seal that is still used today. The plane served as the primary means of transportation for three presidents: Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon during his first term. In 1972, during the Nixon administration, the plane was replaced by another 707, SAM 27000, although SAM 26000 was kept as a back-up plane until 1998.

Read more about this topic:  VC-137C SAM 26000

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)