In fact that solitary integer is misleading: here is the first of the myth’s little fibs. The numeral in the plane’s call sign is exclusive, monopolistic, not the inception of a series it brags of being one of a kind, rather than a first among equals. Like the country whose head of state it carries, Air Force One is exceptional – and exceptions are always made for it by air-traffic controllers, who suspend other operations to give it instant clearance. For extra effect, Lyndon Johnson installed a hydraulic “king chair” on board his Air Force One, which enabled him to hover in midair as he harangued the congressmen he invited into his cabin. Air Force One is a triumphal chariot, a steroid-boosted equivalent to the golden coaches and slow-motion Bentleys in which the Queen sedately trundles along. A Freudian slip, surely – republics should be unmajestic and the USA was meant to be the paradise of the common man – but not inaccurate. The first President Bush, who took delivery of the current double-decker Air Force One to replace the humbler 707 he inherited from Ronald Reagan, remarked that it embodies America’s “majesty”. Soaring aloft, he exchanges a beast for a bird: Air Force One is America with wings, a mechanised version of the beaked, pinioned eagle – a predator that clutches in its claws twin bundles of peacemaking olive branches and spiky, militarised arrows – that appears on the country’s Great Seal.īarack Obama speaks after touching down in Tel Aviv – his first visit to Israel, 20 March 2013. On the ground, the president travels in a black Cadillac nicknamed “the Beast”, ready to repel assailants with rocket-propelled grenades, pump-action shotguns and tear-gas cannon. Even if we don’t accept American superiority, we bow down before American immensity: the customised 747 currently in use is as tall as a six-storey building and as long as a football field. Equipped with surveillance systems that eavesdrop on the lowly world it overflies, allegedly able to fire missiles and to withstand a nuclear blast, Air Force One is evidence of dominance. But when the US acquired global power after 1945, the president took to the air, travelling in a plane that has come to represent the ubiquity and intimidating might of this ultimate empire. So long as the doctrine of American isolation prevailed, the presidency was a desk job, tethered to Washington DC. More than a means of transport, Air Force One is a propaganda tool, and its effectiveness depends on the implied presence of a deity. Or could the plane be mimicking the athletic mystique of the shoe? On its white, shiny fuselage, the proud slogan UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is underlined by a blue stripe, a counterpart to the Nike flash, which pays streamlined homage to the Greek goddess of victory. Take the case of Air Force One, the American presidential plane – not to be confused with Air Force 1, which is a Nike trainer, mock-heroically named to ally it with the vertical lift of a jet during takeoff.
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