The most important jet you can't see

SAM 26000

It may be the most historic plane in the world: Special Air Mission 26000, SAM for short. Not familiar? Maybe you know its nickname. Back in its heyday the sleek, blue and white airliner was called Air Force One.

This ain't just ANY Air Force One. SAM 26000 saw more historic events than any other -- ranging from the tragic to the hilarious. A national treasure, the airliner now sits in the Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio.

But you can't see it. It's off limits to visitors. For many history buffs and aviation geeks, that's a cryin' shame.

                                

On arrival in Dallas

JFK arriving Washington

If things were different, visitors could walk down the same cabin aisles where Jacqueline Kennedy mournfully sat beside her husband's casket en route from Dallas to Washington. You could stand in the exact spot where the only woman to preside over a presidential oath swore in Lyndon Johnson as commander-in-chief. Examine with your own eyes the on-board suites that carried President Richard Nixon to Beijing, where he cracked open U.S. relations with China.
                             

SAM 26000 arriving Beijing.               

For more than 30 years, the 100-ton plane transported some of the most powerful figures on the planet -- and once it even carried a history-making ex-White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Yep, SAM 26000 has seen a few eyebrow-raising situations over the years.

Many associate the jet with JFK, but the plane was tied just as closely to his two successors, LBJ and Nixon.

In 1972, SAM 26000 touched down in the world's most populous nation, as Nixon forged the first U.S. ties with the People's Republic of China. Aboard the plane, a "burly" Nixon aide "blocked the aisle" to keep staffers from following the president down the stairway to the tarmac, national security adviser Henry Kissinger recalled. Nixon didn't want anyone getting in the way of his historic photo op with China's premier.

                                                 

Johnson aboard SAM 26000

Nine years later, imagine Nixon sitting with ex-presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the "relatively cramped tail section" of SAM 26000, as TIME magazine described it. They felt "somewhat ill at ease," as they flew to the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, wrote Carter years later. And they certainly had their reasons -- especially Carter and Ford. Just five years earlier Carter, a Democrat, had delivered a stinging election defeat to the GOP's Ford.

                                                 

Arriving Egypt for Sadat's Burial

Tension also ran high among staffers aboard the flight. They endured long waits to use the lavatories and got upset about who received bigger cuts of steak at dinner, according to author Ronald Kessler.

Then Nixon "surprisingly eased the tension" with "courtesy, eloquence and charm," Carter revealed in a memoir. Aboard SAM 26000, the two former enemies developed a camaraderie and then a friendship, wrote historian Douglas Brinkley.

Source: CNN