Unlike his predecessor in the White House, President Harry Truman enjoyed air travel. Barely three weeks after taking office, Truman made the first domestic president flight when he flew to Kansas City, near his home in Independence, Missouri. In July, he made his first trip abroad to meet at Potsdam for his first meeting with Churchill and Stalin, but at the behest of his advisors, he instead sailed to Belgium and then flew aboard the Sacred Cow to the meeting in war-torn Germany. Though he wanted desperately to fly back to Washington with Myers and the crew, again his advisors--and a timely phone call from his wife Bess--persuaded him that sailing was the safer way to travel.
Truman, like Roosevelt, made the "Flying White House" available to other government officials and dignitaries. General George Marshall and Secretary of State James Byrnes made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris since Lindbergh's solo flight in 1927 when they embarked on their inspection trip of post-war Europe. Under Truman's orders, the Sacred Cow transported such notables as Churchill, Mme. Chiang Kia-shek, Polish leader General Sikorski, and former President Herbert Hoover to their various destinations, and brought General Dwight D. Eisenhower home from the war in June 1945.
The new president enjoyed practical jokes, and Myers enjoyed helping him carry them out whenever he could while piloting Truman about the country. Truman had standing orders with Myers that he was to be informed anytime they passed over the state of Ohio, home to Truman's political nemesis Republican Senator Robert Taft. Notified that they were over Ohio, Truman would then walk aft to the lavatory. After returning to his seat, Truman would then order Myers over the intercom to activate the waste disposal system. Doing so was a fairly common procedure aboard many aircraft built during the war, and was one retained by the Sacred Cow. The discharged liquids would quickly evaporate in the cold, dry air outside, but it was Truman's way of having a laugh at Taft's expense.
On one occasion, Truman again showed his penchant for practical jokes when he ordered Myers to "dive-bomb" the White House. Flying out to visit his elderly mother in Independence on the spur of the moment, Truman gave the press and most of his Secret Service the slip, boarded the plane and took off from National Airport. Knowing that his wife and daughter were on the roof of the White House at that time watching an airshow of new jet fighters above Washington, Truman inquired of Myers, "Could we dive on them? . . . like a jet fighter? I've always wanted to try something like that."
"Well, there's no harm in it," came Myers' response. "But somebody's sure gonna catch hell for it and I'm gonna blame you."
"I've got broad shoulders," retorted Truman. "How about it?"
Myers turned back towards Washington, leveled off at 3,000 feet, and passed over the Washington Monument--a violation of air security regulations. "They can ground you for flying over it; they can take away your license; for all I know, they can send you to the electric chair for it," Myers thought. "But so what? Even the President has to live a little."
Throttling up to full power, Myers set the plane on a dive run straight for the White House, the engines screaming like buzzsaws.
"We shot past 2,000 feet and I could see the handful of people on the Truman's roof watching us stiffly," Myers later recalled. "Down at 1.500 feet our angle was still steep and our noise was deafening. Past 1,000 feet--the flat, white target looked big, filling our whole world. At 500 feet, I had the Cow leveled and we roared over the White House roof wide open. I caught a split-second glimpse. Everyone there was frozen with fear and wonder. No one, least of all the Truman ladies, saw the President. But his face was pressed against the window; he was waving and laughing. They must have recognized the plane, though. . .We climbed up to 3,000 feet again, swooped, circled, and fell into another dive. Everybody was watching us. But this time, Margaret and her mother were jumping and waving. We shot past them at a little below 500 feet and roared back upstairs once more. Then we went on, as fast as we could, toward Missouri. We buzzed the White House." Myers was never officially reprimanded for the stunt.
The war's conclusion ended the need for camouflaging the plane in olive drab. After some discussion of how to redecorate the outside, and even considering a design by Walt Disney himself, Myers suggested simply painting the flags of the nations where the aircraft had traveled. Forty-four flags soon adorned the fuselage on the nose of the plane shortly after the war ended. By the time the plane was retired from presidential flight and assigned to the VIP transport fleet in July 1947, seven more were added. On December 4, 1961, the plane was decommissioned and placed in the custody of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
When the Sacred Cow was retired from active service, it did so after having flown 1,500,000 miles, and logging 12,135 hours and 25 minutes of flight time. Of that, only 43,000 miles were with Presidents Roosevelt or Truman aboard, or less than 3 percent of its total. Time and technological advances led to the search for a new presidential aircraft, one that reflected his stature as the leader of the free world. The Sacred Cow was not unreliable or unsafe; it just did not provide the right image.
In the late 1940s, the Douglas DC-6 was the latest and newest long-range airliner in commercial service. Truman's staff and Air Force officials alike agreed that it was more than suitable for their boss' needs. Wanting one right away, they appealed to American Airlines, who had a large order of them placed with Douglas Aircraft at that time. They immediately agreed, and Fuselage No. 29 was pulled from the line for modification. Once again, E. Gilbert Mason, the Douglas designer of the Sacred Cow's interior, was tapped to create the interior of the new plane.
While Mason struggled with the design, Air Force officials wrestled with the name. They had long been resentful of the name the press corps had given the previous plane. The officials deemed it rather undignified for the President to arrive at a foreign capital in a plane bearing the name Sacred Cow. So many "church people," commented the presidential press secretary, had written to register disgruntlement with the name that the White House had to deny having anything to do with its creation. Once word got out that an aviation magazine was already referring to the new plane as Sacred Cow II while it was still in production, officials moved quickly on the matter. Senior Air Force officials favored "Flying White House," the name originally intended for the first presidential plane, but others argued that since it did not take the first time, it most likely would not this time. Again, Hank Myers came to the rescue. He suggested naming it the Independence. It not only was the name of Truman's hometown, but it captured the historic spirit of the country itself, he argued. Besides, Truman liked the name. The Independence it was.
