It was 1953 and U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower sat at a big mahogany desk working on a plan to end the Korean War. A small team of elite Washington staffers lounged nearby on mid-century leather sofas or in custom bucket chairs, smoking over hand-carved wood tables. Eisenhower and his team weren’t at the White House, though, or even in D.C.: At that exact moment, they were soaring high over the Pacific Ocean in an overhauled 1948 Lockheed C-121 Constellation aircraft, the first-ever Air Force One. The 100-foot-long and 132-foot-wide,…
