How Air Force One Works

is the first day in November. Just get any trick or treaders? No? Nothing. I have two sets of steps that lead up to my front door. And apparently kids are fat and lazy these days in diabetic Did they like y'all throw something down here to the street? Now? Now? Um, we we left after a while. We just don't get anybody who comes to our house. Did you get candy? No? Not this year? We well we had before and we just we sat there and ended up eating all of it.

And no one comes to our house either, So that's good at all? Why oh, like our neighbors don't It's sort of like as you come around the bend coming from the other way, from the Decatur side, that's sort of where it ends the trick or treating, Like the bend in the road just it like approaches Memorial Drive and people it just gets scary and there's a bus stop and people turn their lights off. My neighbors are old, they don't get into it. So I think that's just

sort of the Demarcasian Did you guys get candy? No, we never, I mean we never do because so basically it stinks. Man, I'm ready for Like, did you dress up at all well for that stupid show? I did? Oh, yeah, that's right. You dressed up as Paul Stanley in a three piece suit. Yeah. Looking good. I think if you asked me, we should post that picture. Yeah, my post one. Okay, Chuck, Yes, you know Jay Carney is a family friend of my family's.

I did not know that. Well, he's not. I actually got what I'm about to read off of the White House website. Okay. I couldn't mislead you. I started to, and I just stopped. Um, it's so far. It's been a typically busy week for President Barack Obama. Monday, he went to Las Vegas, delivered some remarks, went to l A. Probably pulled a slaughter too, Probably you have to if you go to Vegas, everybody's like get out of here. Um. And then he went to l A, stay in l

A overnight. Right about now he is doing the tonight show with Jay Leno. Should be on tonight, UM. And then he goes to San Francisco, Denver, and then he heads back to um d C Wednesday so that he can meet with the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Petter Neckas. There is a lot of Flyn more Porton than Jay Lenno. Yeah, oh yeah, you're a Cocoa fan, aren't you? Te Coco? Yeah. I mean even if Conan

Membrian didn't exist, I would still think JNS bad. Did you ever see uh night Shift, I think is what it was called about, the late night the first late night work between and UM and they've let him. Yeah, that was good, It was real good. Okay, Well, aside from that part, yes, you're absolutely right. That's a lot of flying and every step of the way. Mr President Barack Obama is going to be a board a luxury decked out seven seven with a tail number of either

twenty eight thousand or twenty nine thousand. You know how I know that because it's written right here in this wonderful article. Yes, this article called how air Force one Works on how stuff works dot com. Uh, if you're not familiar, you know a lot of people think like we just this is our job podcasting. They don't, but they don't put that together with the site. You should visit the site. And we work for a website called

how stuff works dot com. If you don't, now the mystery is solved and air how air Force one works is on fad site and we say that three that said that three hundred and seventy five times, but people still don't get it. It's true, Like what's your email address? So, Chuckers, you want to do some history first? Oh? Why not? You have you? Before you um read this article? Had you heard of Air Force one? I had heard of

air Force Line. I had not heard of the guests where to No, let's let's start it out, because the presidential air travel is fairly new, right. Yeah, Up until World War Two, it wasn't very practical to fly around and one might even say dangerous, and you were cut off because mainly because you were cut off from communications actually telegraph like, no, I want that bill push through exactly.

But in n f DR said, you know what, I want to take my wheelchair up on this bowing three fourteen and uh, I want to take a little trip to Casablanca. And that was the first presidential flight. Yeah, and he he actually took that flight for practical reasons. It was because the Germans. The Germans had the Atlantic completely under lockdown base and want to take a boat

in those days. He was like, no, I'm not going, so I'll just fly and it went smashingly and from that point on everybody said maybe the president should fly. They said, this boating thing snakes, we should fly places. It's much more efficient. Even a flying boat wouldn't do. We just want to flying planes, right. Um, So coming up next, there were I've got six planes before the

new set. That was number one. Number two was a C eight seven, a Liberator Express and it was pretty much a BET twenty four bomber that was you know, tricked out civilian style. There were there was padding on the armrest exactly, and that was called the Guests Where too. Just the worst plane name ever. Yeah, Well it's a pretty like typical forties, like engineer. It's like a Colonel John Paul's staff name the guess where too? It's pretty bad.

The third plane, well, another C eight seven crashed and they said, you know what, this might not be the best plane because we don't know exactly why it crashed. We don't want to put the president in there. So then they configure to see fifty four Skymaster for that same president because he was president for like sixty years. And Um it had sleeping quarters, a radio, telephone, retractable elevator for his wheelchair, and it was named the Sacred Cow.

Better name, better than the guests where too? It's up there? Okay, I mean it's okay. It definitely reminds me of our grarian past. Yeah, all right, am I covering history here? You got the Truman Show. Next, Um took over the Sacred Cow, replaced it the d C six called the Independence. Now, he was from Missouri, so that makes sense that he would call it the Independence Independence Missouri and its United States. But I also got the impression that he um basically

it was a Garish plane. They had like an eagle on the front, all sorts of patriotic decorations and nothing else that had had been decorated up to that point. It's like the statue of Liberty threw up on this plane. I haven't seen a picture of it, actually, no, but I could see Truman being like real enthusiastically. Yeah, that there and that there, you know, go shoot a commy over there. How about Betty Boop up front? So our boys, no, no, something.

Eisenhower introduced to propeller planes, upgraded the equipment, including for the first time, air to ground telephone and air to ground teletype, which is the first computer. That's not true, No, Teletype was like facts. It was like the bouncing ball. Yeah, yeah, I think so. That was the fourth and fifth sets of planes. Right, well, hold on, so so far a couple of landmarks have happened, right. Um, they decked it out for Roosevelt. It wasn't just a civilian craft any longer.

There was like some fly stuff going on. Truman added a couple of other backup planes that were twin planes. Yeah, which is big. Okay. And then now now we're we on too. Now we're undo Kennedy who in nineteen they finally got with the plan and they got seven oh seven Boeing seven oh seven jumbo jets, and they officially called them Air Force one with their radio called designation. Right,

that was Eisenhower. That was Eisenhower. Yeah. During Eisenhower's administration, the Air Force adopted the seven seven and started calling him Air Force one. And then when Kennedy took over and everybody was crazy for all things presidential, Air Force one caught on. It's for the public because he probably went on and said air Force one at some point. But he also redecorated it tastefully in the same way

that it's decorated today, which is nice. Yeah, it's I mean, it's timeless because you don't look at it and be like, yeah, it's not it's not the vessel sink of airplanes. Home wonders know what I'm talking about. Um. So Kennedy uh added a more advanced seven oh seven that could fly a little longer, but it was still a seven h seven, like you said, redesigned it to his probably Jackie's taste.

Let's get real, and um added a twin plane to that fleet in ninety two, and that was a very famous plane because that flew him to Dallas and then flew his body back from Dallas. I know, the way that it's put in this article is so grim but just dead on. It says that it on November nine, It flew him to Dallas and then brought his body

back later that day, which is crazy. You know, you think about him on that flight on the way out there, and then exactly and then on the way back, UM John's and was sworn in very famously aboard air air Force one. That photos very famous. And then the twin seven oh seven flew Nixon to uh, I guess your Belinda, California the day he resigned. Well, that's where his library is. I believe it's your Belinda. Um, but Chuck, something else kind of big happened. That leads us to a very

important fact about Air Force one. Midflight, the the flight crew got word that Ford had been sworn in as president, and they changed the call sign for the flight from Air Force one to um SMS a Special Air Mission SAM. And the reason they did that is because the only only the plane that the President of the United States is currently aboard can be called air Force one's. Nixon was no longer president, so it was no longer air

Force one. So technically the big plane that we all think of as air Force one isn't even air Force one unless the president is riding in it. But we're going to call an air Force one because that's what people do. Yeah, we're not jerks, you know, but it's it's the call sign for a plane, not specifically a plan that was depressing. I wonder if they announced it to Nixon, like and by the way, uh, this is no longer air Force one, this is sam and twenty

seven thousand and Nixon just put his head in his hands. Yeah, that was it. I could see that. At least I didn't just crash it. They just jump out there like a long sucker. Good luck. Um. So those are the seven h sevens. They they kept flying all through Reagan, Yeah, first half of the Bush Seniors term, and then they were replaced by seven seven that are around today. That's right. And the article says that could replace him as earlyist

two thousand ten, which is the twenty year mark. Not so is when they're looking to replace these now, it's like a delta flight or something. Yeah, so it's either gonna to be another seven four seven eight or a seven eight seven Dreamliner. Dude, that is any plane. I checked it out. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, those are nice. They have a really big bar in it. Yeah. I think that's no, it's the air bus that that Emirates fly.

The airbus. Well, there's different configurations, but if you click Dreamliner Bowing seven eight seven Dreamliner interior and look at the Google images, it's, uh, it's pretty mixing. And that's just the standard one. I mean, planes typically are outfitted and appointed very nicely. Well, and let's we're there, so let's go. It is appointed nicely well. Yeah. Tom Harris, who wrote this article, compares it generally to like a really nice hotel, very nice office building. Yeah, but it's

a plane instead. Yeah. And there's also Marine one. We don't want to short change the helicopter cousin of Air Force one, which is a Chinook, which is my favorite helicopter, and it's pretty sweet too on the inside. I mean it's like a a smaller nice apartment pretty much. And that is obviously the you know, that's the helicopter that it's the same designation when the when the presidents on army plane, that's Army one. The Marines fly the helicopter,

so it's a Marine one. And um, the right now we've got those identical bowing seven if you want to get specific, Um, they have a lot Like we said, they're they're they're decked out differently. We'll get to that in a second, but just being seven forty sevens they have some specs. They are pretty impressive. Well, they're big. They're three stories like all seven forty sevens. Uh. They are as tall as a six story building and as long as a city block guests. Depends on what city

you're in, I think it does. You're on, Yeah, exactly in the village. Are you uptown? Um? They each have four general electric jet engines. Uh. Do you want to read the jet engine number? Doesn't even out there? Know this? They are ge uh engines CF six DASH eight zero C two B one jet engines, which are money engines. Each one produces fifty six thousand, seven hundred pounds of thrust, which, as we know from the Anti Matter spacecraft episode, produces

five million gs, which a human can sustain indefinitely. Yeah, we should point that out real quick. In in show correction, gees measure acceleration, so in theory, you would speed up really fast and then level out, so you wouldn't be experiencing geese the whole time, like we thought, Yeah, erroneously, and thank you physics people for correcting us. UM. The seven sevens fly up to seven hundred miles per hour. They go as high as forty five FET that's the

ceiling maximum. What happens after that they just break apart, disintegrate. I don't think they disintegrate. I just think that's how high they can fly safely. May do something to your body, I don't know. UM. And then they hold fifty three thousand, six hundred and eleven gallons of fuel and a fully loaded UM, fully fueled seven forty seven at least the Air Force one seven forty seven's UM can fly halfway around the world before refueling. We should go ahead and

let the cat out of the bag. Then Air Force one, however, can fly forever. Yeah, because you can refuel in flight, just like the big bomber planes. And they thought that would be a pretty swell idea in case the S was hitting the fan on the ground, which it did on September eleven two, one just keep them up there. Yeah, there wasn't that one. The one of the planes United ninety three that went down in Pennsylvania. Wasn't that destined for the White House? I think so? And it was

pretty hairy even if it wasn't. They had no idea who was doing water when it was gonna get hit, So they said, just keep bushing the air, and they did, and they could have for a very long time, not

just with fuel but with food as well. Yeah, they have the ability to feed one hundred people, and I think they have freezers down below that holds as as much as two thousand meals, So they could have stayed up here for quite a long time two thousand meals, especially if they started throwing reporters out the out of the you know door first ago. That's that's a bunch of meals right there. That's true. Um so, chuck uh. The does not have an escape pod though, well, we

don't know that it does or not. The awesome movie Airforce One with Harry Ford, Uh, I have not seen it as it good? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, do you want to see your president kicking terrorists but with his hands? Yeah, like he he fights. Of course, he's like a former like Army ranger or something in the movie. We never get presents like that anymore. You know. Uh, so, yeah, it was. I enjoyed it. Um. So, yeah, apparently an escape pod factors in. Yeah, we don't know if there's

one on Air Force one, but there could be. They're supposedly not, but if they're not, gonna tell you that. So I heard that Tom Clancy received a visit from I don't know who it was, maybe the n s A, the c I A, somebody, maybe the FBI came to his house and uh interviewed him because he had hit the nail on the head so closely when he described some classified nuclear sub in the Hunt for Red October.

They wanted to know how he knew that, what the interior was like interesting, So it makes you wonder, you know what he came up with for Air Force one. Well, and that's one of the points of Air Force one is there's a lot of classified stuff. So while we know a lot of the parts, um, no one really knows the exact layout in configuration and then people know, but there's sworn to secrecy or have signed on to secrecy exactly. But so let's talk about what we do know.

There's four thousand square feet of interior space. That's substantial. That's twice the side in my house. Um, and uh, there's three levels, just like on any but the top level is for communications generally, the mid level is like the living quarters, and most of the bottom level is cargo space and apparently freezers for food. Yeah, although I did see that the president's living quarters, bedroom, bathroom, workout room in office. I heard they were under the cockpit,

so maybe the cockpits. I think the cockpits on the third that makes sense. Um, and conference room. The conference room is I mean, they don't have unlimited space, so the conference room is also the president's dining room. And depending on the time of day, you know, some people may be in there, other people might not be there. Maybe a meal, there may be some pretzels on the table, it depends. That's right, up to seventy passengers and twenty

six crew in total. Comfortably. I'm sure they could pack more people in there, which means they have four leftover meals at every meal. Yeah, you're right, Well does that add up? Yeah they do. I'm saying you throw a porter out bam, that's three meals a day. Well what if he's reported that eats heavy, Well, yeah, what if

he's eating those other four meals. You know, Hunter Thompson flew on Air Force one the next seven or seven yea for Fear and Loathing on a campaign trails because he was a legit journalist, so he was well for Rolling Stone. Yeah, but he got to interview Nixon one on one, but they told him all he could ask him about his football. Did he ask him about football? I'm sure he's probably that's fine with me. Rum diaries out. Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm gonna

go see it. I've heard it's an enjoyable mess, but so is Hunter Thompson. Yeah. Um, getting back to Air Force one, the decks you can access up and down with these retractable stairs, and the impression I got is that they're retractable, probably so they can seal off the levels, right. I mean they don't say that in the article, but wouldn't that be the reason out. I don't know why he didn't just come out and say it, but it's

their interior stairs. So yeah, if the president needed to just go hang out in the cockpit and get away from terrorists, he was losing the fist fight. I'm sure he could press a button in the stairs just go up and you're stuck on the second level. And there are three exterior entrances as well, but the one we usually see is the photo op obviously when they wheel out the the rolling staircase to the tarmac and uh, I think that's the front of the plane, the front,

middle in the middle, you know. Obama apparently like in San Francisco. Uh, there's a child crying on the tarmac and he went right over to it and grabbed it and like calmed it down. I think that was today, and the mother like came up and starts slapping it's my child. I'm a tea party here. Uh. There's a staff area, Josh. There were two galleys, which in this case are like seriously fully functioning kitchens, not the coffee pot and the little rolling thing of frozen meals. Uh,

like we said, conference and dining room. And the crew can actually ride and sleep there as well. Yeah, and it's you know, most of the general space for like the reporters and staff. It's like a really really like the nicest first class plane you've ever been on, I know. And that's just where they keep the reporters exactly. So I mean you imagine that the President's sweet is pretty nice. You've been on Elvis's at Graceland, Yeah, that's pretty sweet. You may set off the alarm. She sat down on

the bed. Oh really yeah, interesting, the alarms just went. She like rolling around like, oh, this is so lovely. You know, she was pretending like she's gonna sit down and then past like her her center balance and went oh god, and like actually sat down on the bed. That puts her in rare company. Yeah, and which she got kicked off, and they came and she was already standing up by the time they came where like, we don't know what happened. They started going off by itself.

That's pretty funny. What else, Josh Extensive Electronics, Big Time eighty five telephones, on board two way radio's facts computer WiFi nineteen TVs phone system is just like secure as it is in the White House apparently, which you know it has to be um I like the medical facility, which is scary, creepy, weird, you know, let's hear it.

So there's an onboard medical facility and has a fold down operating table in case of emergency, has um e er equipment fully stocked pharmacy for you know long flights and Um, there's a staff doctor that travels everywhere logically with the president. I imagine he's a surgeon. Like he's probably or she is probably well versed in all fields. When you think, like I would want a field medic, a field surgeon plane, I'm sure it's not just like you know, a good time doctor or anything like that.

I'm sure he's like probably has all sorts of like rulish training, like you can pull a bullet out of your chest right or do open heart surgery on the fly if he needs to. Or if the baby you pick up and trying to calm has some sort of poison TOCs and on its skin, exactly knows how to treat that that was an anthrax baby. Uh. Some pretty cool things as far as defense goes, although we don't know much about it because it's not you know, it's

classified stuff. We've reached the point where Tom Harris just started making stuff up. He did, Uh it is a defense Uh. It is a military aircraft and is capable to withstand an attack. That's what they tell you. They won't tell you how, No, but it has a thick shielding. I wonder if it's lead but they have has shielding to protect the wiring inside and the communications equipment from an electromagnetic pulse that a nuclear bomb gives off. Alright,

UM can send out flares which are pretty cool. Well, that throws off the heat seeking missile exactly. It sounds silly until you start thinking about the heat seeker coming at you. Uh. And it has definitely has an electronic countermeasure which will jam the radar. My feeling is is that this bad boy has a fifty cow and some rockets that can pop out of different places. I'm just guessing. I have no idea with anyone from Homeland Securities listening.

If I was a president, I would want some some munitions aboard, and I bet there are, but that's just a guess. And it can it can squirt like an oil slick after it so that any planes on its spin out. Uh. It is a military operation. Every time this thing goes up in the air, UM by classification, they send out a crew at Andrews in Maryland. They check out the runway like every inch of that thing.

Before every flight. They send out a plane ahead of time that carries all the cargo, plane that carries all the the motorcade cars SUVs. Um, it's pretty cool. And if you are a sane junkie, that is a C one one Starlifter cargo plane that carries the motorcade. I bet it carries a lot of cars. And if you are trying to fly into Andrews Air Force Base at the time when they're starting to prepare for Air Force one to take off or for Marine one to even

show up, they're gonna shoot you down. They're authorized to shoot on site. That's right, and they're not gonna mess around with that. Uh what else, josh, Oh, the football is always on board. That is the briefcase that famously holds the UH nuclear codes and um air an Air Force officer guards this football during the flight to the president.

You know, he can eat without it being handcuffed to his to his arm, and then passes it onto an army officer once they reach the ground, passes off the football. That's right. And then lastly that crew. So first of all, the crew on board has two cruis as the flight crew and the steward crew. And um, they quite an honor. Well yeah, they also um screen these people. It's not just like you've been really good. So here's your assignment.

Like they also have to go through your background and your family's background, Like you undergo some pretty serious background checks because you're on board this flight with the president and he's pretty vulnerable, including by not just antrax baby, but poison food attack. And where do they get this food?

They get it from a local market that's picked at random, that has no idea that these people are are coming or who they are, because they just wear like dockers and maybe like a member's only jacket, right, that's what they wear to go shopping for the food. And they mix it up, like you said, so they never know where the food is coming from. And uh, you know, like I said, it's an honor, it's a rare privilege.

And that I love how it in the article it says every president since Truman has formed close relationships and connections with the flight crew. I wonder before that where they just ignored, Hey, but apparently Harry Truman ushered in uh chumming up with these people because because he's from Missoura. He's from Missouri. And when you get the president on board Air Force one, that is when you're gonna find a more relaxed, more human president, especially if you have

a good flight doctor. That's right, the end, the end, you anymore, that's air Force one. Remember we work for a website called how stuff Works dot com, and every single article, with the exception of what maybe one or two, every single episode that we record has been based on an article on the site. And if you want to read more about air Force one, especially if you like your how stuff works articles to be filled with conjecture,

you're gonna love this one. Just type in air Force one in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com and that's gonna bring up the article and it's aid handy and search bar, which means it's going to be a particularly good listener. Now that's right, Josh, this is gonna be I'm gonna call this bear nice follow up. We did um are now annual reading. You gotta do it twice for it to be annual. Yeah, at first it's just an augural. People say first annual though, this kid,

it's just not right. So are now second annual Halloween reading where we read royalty free works of literature that are creepy and people like this one. Yeah, I think so, I thought weld some like well, I didn't like that one. Not one person has said it, not so far at least. So this year we read Baronice by Edgar Allan Poe, and we had a couple of follow ups. Um, you remember at the end we sort of tried to figure

out what happened. Yeah, Sean writes in I'm sure you've gotten a few of these as I read the story. Baronice had a kind of epilepsy that left her comatose and in a death like state. From this quote, trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution makes sense. Of course, when you're reading this sometimes it escapes you because you're trying to read it well. So everyone did think she was dead, and she was buried. He didn't hallucinate anything in his mania.

He dug her up, ripped out her teeth, and then that act woke her from her trance. Hence the screaming that wounded but alive Berenice and the blood all over our narrator. Pro she didn't wake up buried alive to die a slow, suffocating death. Cohn definitely no more Steak Dinners in her future. That's from Sean. And then the second one, I have to say, the protagonists loved her enough as a friend he would have cut her steak and or chewed it up and spit it in her mouth.

This is from Julie and Julie Remember, I didn't have the French translation, and we we had quite a few people send it in, but hers was the best version I thought. Just finished listening to Berenice. Um, thanks for keeping up the creepy short story tradition. I have to admit I was more than a little excited to hear that you didn't know the meaning of the French phrases, because I can finally use my random French degree. Ah,

here's the translation of Mademoiselle Saul. It had been well said that all her steps were feelings, and of Berenice, I'm more seriously believe that all her teeth were ideas the ideas. So here's what Julie thinks it means. Mademoiselle Saul was a famous French ballet dancer in the seventeen thirties. Someone, perhaps her great admirer Voltaire you've heard him, probably described

her graceful ballet as creating feelings with every step. Ah. I Gaius was so overwhelmed with all the imaginative thoughts, that's the protagonist, which were provoked by her teeth, that he felt like each tooth was a source of a new idea. I think she's right on the money personally. I think all Eddie was showing off and probably pretty tripped out, but that's part of his charm, and that is from Julie. That's nice. Those are too like top nozze seller fan mails. They weren't even fan mails. That's

a listener mails. That's right. Yeah, they're no fans. No, they're just smart. Um. If you're a smart person who wants to tell us something you think we'd like to know. We like to know just about anything, so that's cool. Send it in any thought you have any ramblings although we did get one recently. Did you notice it? I can't remember what it was about, but it was a rambling, was it? Yeah? I don't remember what it was, but it was probably from a smart person because it was

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