A Quest to Save Lost First Air Force One

A highly customized,mirror-polished 1948 Lockheed C-121 Constellation with hand-painted lettering and art, four propellers, and a tapered fuselage shaped like a bottlenose dolphin secretly touched down in Seoul in November 1952 carrying U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former Allied Supreme Commander was there to fulfill a now-famous campaign promise: to visit the front and find a way to end the Korean War. 

The shocking move was made possible by Ike’s new presidential plane, Columbine II, and invoked a new era of Oval Office diplomacy. 

“For one, presidents didn’t—and don’t—tour front-lines to personally assess war efforts,” says military historian Nicholas A. Veronico, author of Air Force One: The Aircraft of the Modern U.S. Presidency (Creative Pub Intl, 2005). Second, “Eisenhower’s predecessors were averse to air transport and avoided it whenever possible.” 

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first POTUS to fly on a designated presidential plane but used it just three times. Harry S. Truman flew more during his tenure, but not by much. Eisenhower, though, was a veteran pilot and relied on air travel to lead the Allies in World War II. 

“He wielded the presidential plane as an unprecedented tool for international relations,” says Veronico. Ike logged 63,000 air miles during his first two years in office alone and used Columbine II—the first to be referred to as Air Force One—to “rewrite the book on how presidents conduct foreign diplomacy.” 

Yet, 60 years later, the historic aircraft sat dilapidated and mired in mud at a rural Arizona airport. Then, Bridgewater-based aeronautical entrepreneur Karl Stoltzfus got wind of its plight, discovered its past, and launched an epic quest to restore Columbine II to glory.

Columbine II, the first airplane to be christened Air Force One, on display at Dynamic Aviation in Bridgewater. Photos by Adam Ewing

Lost in Time

How did Eisenhower’s plane end up abandoned in the desert? “The short answer is, it got lost,” says Veronico. 

Columbine II became a VIP transport for former Vice President Richard Nixon and visiting dignitaries like Queen Elizabeth before it was replaced by a bigger, more luxurious Lockheed Super Constellation in late 1954. Eisenhower’s last flight on Columbine II was in 1959, and the plane was retired to an Arizona Air Force base 10 years later. By then, its presidential paint job and accessories like leather mid-century sofas, marble floors, hand-carved wooden swivel chairs, and a mahogany stateroom desk had long vanished.

“People weren’t thinking about preserving historic aircraft back then,” says Veronico. While nonprofits or museums rescued subsequent presidential planes fairly soon after retirement, “Columbine II slipped through the cracks.”

Crop duster Mel Christler unknowingly bought the plane in a package of five decommissioned C-121s at a 1970 surplus auction. He used it for parts to service the others, which were converted to spray planes. 

Christler was about to scrap them all when a Smithsonian curator phoned in the late ’80s with news of Columbine II’s presidential past. The truth weighed heavily on Christler, a former WWII pilot. He spent a decade restoring the plane to flying condition in hopes a nonprofit would assume the project. When none materialized, Christler parked it in the Marana Regional Airport boneyard about 15 miles outside of Tucson. He passed away two years later in 2005.  

Karl Stoltzfus, late CEO of Dynamic Aviation, purchased Columbine II in 2015. After his passing in 2020, his son Michael took over as CEO, and the plane’s restoration continues under the lead of mechanic Bill Borchers. Courtesy of Dynamic Aviation

A New Lease on Life

Karl Stoltzfus, then CEO of special-mission aviation contractor Dynamic Aviation, discovered Columbine II’s fate in a news story he read on a 2013 layover at Tucson International Airport. Christler’s son worried he’d have to scrap the plane to pay back storage fees.

“I was astounded,” Stoltzfus told me in 2018. “It seemed obscene to even think of turning such a priceless piece of American history into soda cans.”

He and lead mechanic Brian Miklos flew out to assess the plane in 2014 and were dismayed by what they saw. “It was in really bad shape,” says Miklos. “The scope of repairs was insane.”

Columbine II was 100 feet long, had a 132-foot wingspan, and weighed about 50 tons. Windows were broken and mice had damaged the electrical wiring. Owls, spiders, and scorpions nested in the fuselage. The cabin was filled with rotting wood. Four 12-cylinder engines that held 50 gallons of oil each needed rebuilding. Rubber hoses and gaskets were disintegrating. And that was just from a glance. 

Miklos nearly choked when Stoltzfus confided a plan to fix the plane onsite and fly it cross-country to Bridgewater. “I honestly thought he’d lost his mind,” says Miklos.  

Stoltzfus bought Columbine II for about $1.5 million in 2015 and convinced Miklos to lead a repair team. It made what the latter calls “a miraculous journey” to Shenandoah Regional Airport one year and 8,000 work-hours later. 

“Looking back, it definitely wasn’t the most practical route to take,” said Stoltzfus. “But it seemed important to treat this aircraft with dignity: I didn’t want to carry her home on a stretcher, I wanted her to walk there on her own two feet.”

Tedious & Complicated Work 

Columbine II now belongs to Dynamic’s sister nonprofit, First Air Force One (FAFO), and sits in a dedicated hangar with other historic aircraft. The company has donated $500,000 a year and more than 15,000 man-hours to the restoration since 2016. 

“It’s tedious and complicated work,” says Phil Douglas, an aerospace engineer who stepped in as FAFO director after Stoltzfus’s unexpected death in 2020. “It requires tremendous expertise, ingenuity, and wherewithal to pull it off.”

Stoltzfus worked with historians to compile rare schematic drawings, reference photographs, even blueprints with info about original colors and materials. But Columbine II is 76 years old and Lockheed built just 332 C-121s. Parts catalogs don’t exist and salvaged planes are beyond rare. 

“So we have to either build our own parts or modify new or salvaged components to look like originals,” says Douglas. “And that requires a ton of custom fabrication.” 

First came basic safety upgrades. The crew dismantled Columbine II’s interior to replace rotten wood paneling and framing with safer, lighter aluminum. They rebuilt windows; replaced four-plus miles of electrical wire; and installed sensors in engines, landing gear, and wings. The cockpit got a hidden flight panel with new gauges and an air data computer. The list goes on. 

Aesthetics also posed hurdles. An artist used new old-stock paint to recreate hand-painted exterior lettering and art. Oxidized aluminum panels along the fuselage were hand-polished with chemical solutions to revive their mirror sheen. Carpenters reconstructed the state room, sleeping quarters, kitchen, and staff areas. Master woodworkers are in the process of reshaping and upholstering wood-backed swivel chairs sourced from an old Dassault Falcon jet. They’re also building replicas of wainscotting, sofas, side tables, Ike’s mahogany desk, and more. 

Michael Stoltzfus, CEO of Dynamic Aviation and son of Karl Stoltzfus. The elder Stoltzfus spearheaded Columbine II‘s restoration until his death in 2020.

A Generation-Spanning Symbol

Douglas expects the project will cost another $12 million and, if funding can be promptly secured, take about three years to complete. At that point, Columbine II will look just as it did during Eisenhower’s presidency. It will fly in historic air shows, and the Bridgewater hangar will offer public tours.

“It was Karl’s dream to bring this amazing plane back to life, and we’re committed to that mission,” says Douglas. “He saw Columbine II as a powerful, generation-spanning symbol that can remind Americans of our core values, and what we’re capable of when we stand united.” 

Columbine II illuminated for the holiday season. Dynamic Aviation plans to restore the plane to flying condition in the coming years, in hopes of touring the country to display the plane in educational settings.

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue.

Eric J. Wallace
Eric J. Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has contributed to WIRED, Outside, Backpacker, Atlas Obscura, Modern Farmer, All About Beer, and more.
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