FreightWaves Classics: President Eisenhower takes a helicopter hop

Almost all of us have seen television images of a President of the United States board Air Force One or Marine One at some point in time.

Air Force One

What many may not know is that “Air Force One” is the official air traffic control call sign of any U.S. Air Force (USAF) aircraft that has the President of the United States on-board. The presidential air fleet now includes multiple aircraft, so the call sign is moved from airplane to airplane as necessary.

The “Air Force One” call sign came about after a 1953 incident involving President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A USAF aircraft he was flying on entered the same airspace as a commercial airline flight; both were using the same call sign at that time. That was the last time that happened…

Marine One

Similar to Air Force One, the official air traffic control call sign of any United States Marine Corps (USMC) aircraft when the President is on-board is “Marine One.” These aircraft are typically helicopters operated by the Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1) “Nighthawks” squadron. More than 800 marines supervise the operation of the Marine One fleet.

The Nighthawks squadron currently operates a fleet of large “White Top” VH-3D “Sea King” helicopters. In addition, the squadron includes newer and smaller VH-60N “White Hawk” helicopters, as well as the “Green Top” CH-46E “Sea Knight.”

Marine One is used most often instead of a presidential motorcade, which can be expensive, potentially more dangerous and logistically more difficult. 

Joint Base Andrews

While USMC Marine One helicopters are often photographed or shown on television on the South Lawn of the White House, they are also often at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Maryland. Joint Base Andrews is the home of the Air Force fleet that is used by the president, vice president, cabinet members, ranking military officers and other guests. 

July 12, 1957

On this date 65 years ago, President Eisenhower made transportation history when he became the first U.S. president to fly in a helicopter. The aviation “first” occurred as he flew in a Bell H-13J helicopter from the South Lawn of the White House. The president’s destination was the Maryland-based presidential retreat at Camp David, which is about 62 miles north of Washington, D.C.

That particular helicopter had been purchased by the U.S. Air Force, and it was piloted by Air Force Major Joseph E. Barrett. 

While the trip on July 12, 1957 was the first of its kind trip, President Eisenhower began to use the helicopter almost weekly to fly either to Camp David or to his farm, which was located just north of there in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

Since President Eisenhower’s pioneering flight, the use of helicopters has become a very familiar and frequently deployed method of short-range travel for each of his successors. 

Use of helicopters by the United States

The American military put helicopters into operational use in 1944. However, concerns about  their safety led the Secret Service to ban their use for the president except in case of emergency. By 1956, however, the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability reached the point at which any evacuation of the president by road could not be guaranteed. That caused Air Force Col. William Draper, the head of President Eisenhower’s flight section, to begin shopping for helicopters.

Bell H-13J

The Secret Service’s primary concern was (and is) the president’s safety. Therefore, during the selection process the deciding factor of the choice of helicopter came down to safety. More capable models were not selected; a Bell Ranger (with the military designation H-13J) was chosen; it held only two passengers with “any degree of comfort, had an effective range of a mere 150 miles and was somewhat slow, with a top speed of around 100 miles per hour.” Interestingly (from a safety perspective) it was a single pilot aircraft (unlike larger military models). The Ranger was basically an off-the-shelf model that was a later version of Bell’s bubble-topped Model 47s that were used during the Korean War.

However, the Ranger did have some advantages. Its $40,000 base purchase price and low operating costs meant it was one of the most economical helicopters in its class. More importantly, though, the Ranger had an excellent safety record; it was the most reliable design available. The Model 47 series (the first civil-certificated helicopter in the world) had a decade of operational use. The Secret Service had the standard transparent bubble replaced by a dark blue-tinted Plexiglas bubble. Other improvements over the standard model were the addition of military radios and a rotor-brake to reduce the shutdown time. This allowed the president a more rapid exit (a helicopter rotor is most dangerous to pedestrians as it slows).

Historic landings at the White House

On May 31, 1957 Maj. Barrett (who was the most accomplished helicopter pilot in the Air Force) landed a helicopter for the first time on the South Lawn of the White House. However, this was not the first time a rotary wing aircraft had landed there. In 1931, James Ray touched down on the grounds in a Pitcairn-Cierva PCA-2 autogiro to take part in an award ceremony. And 20 years before that landing, Harry Atwood had landed on the South Lawn in a Wright Model B airplane as part of a similar event in 1911. 

The first presidential flight

Maj. Barrett lifted off with President Eisenhower in the right rear seat, accompanied by James Rowley, chief of the White House Secret Service detail, sitting on the president’s left, at 2:08 p.m. on July 12. A second H-13J trailed President Eisenhower’s helicopter. It carried Maj. Gen. Howard Snyder, President Eisenhower’s personal physician and a second Secret Service agent. Barrett then proceeded to Camp David at an altitude of 500 to 700 feet above the terrain. 

In addition to the two H-13Js, six larger helicopters landed on the Ellipse to carry 20 key staffers and pool reporters. The helicopters used tandem-rotor Vertol H-21s of the Air Force and Army, as well as a Marine Corps HUS-1 and an obsolete Air Force H-19. 

Naval personnel were forced to create an ad hoc air traffic control center on the South Lawn to marshal the arriving fleet. Virgil Olson, who later became the first official USMC presidential helicopter pilot, recalled that the other larger and faster helicopters supporting the operation,  which departed after the H-13Js, “arrived several minutes before the small [and slower] Bells. When the president arrived, he was sweating from an uncomfortable ride and annoyed to find us on the ground, with the engines of our helicopter already off and cooled down.” 

After spending the night at Camp David, Eisenhower and members of his family drove to Gettysburg, but flew back to the White House in the H-13J on Monday morning with another stopover at the Camp David “command post.”

The next flight

Almost two months later, President Eisenhower’s next helicopter flight took place on September 6, 1957. He flew aboard a Marine HUS-1, which he thought was a major improvement over the H-13J. The president was annoyed by “the lackluster performance of the diminutive Ranger relative to the larger military transport helicopter and getting baked under the Bell’s bubble.” 

Eisenhower ordered a switch to the HUS-1, which was not operated by the Air Force (previously the sole branch of the armed services to fly a president). Not wanting to show preference for either the USMC or the Army, President Eisenhower alternated his helicopter flights between the two services’ special flight detachments. That tradition was continued until the administration of President Gerald Ford. At that time, the Army’s Executive Flight Detachment was shut down in a cost-cutting move. 

Regardless of the military branch conducting the flight, President Eisenhower’s embrace of air transport – including helicopters – changed forever “how America’s chief executive conducts the nation’s business.”

FreightWaves Classics thanks the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum for information and photographs that were essential to this article, as well as airplanes-online.com, which has a wealth of photos of presidential aircraft.

Source: freightwaves - FreightWaves Classics: President Eisenhower takes a helicopter hop
Editor: Scott Mall