It has been some time since our last status update on former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Lockheed VC-121 Constellation, Columbine II. The ex-US Air Force executive transport has been undergoing restoration at Dynamic Aviation following its arrival at the company’s headquarters in Bridgewater, Virginia on March 23rd, 2016. After the sad and untimely loss of the company’s founder, Karl Stoltzfus, in late November, 2020, the project underwent a period of reassessment, but we are happy to report that work has since resumed and that a lot of progress has occurred in the interim. The following edited report comes from Dynamic Aviation’s restoration team…

The ‘First Air Force One’ is in the process of having all four of its original R-3350 engines overhauled and updated. As part of a reliability and safety package, plans include having a fifth example on hand as a spare. Anyone operating R-3350s in the present day must use 100 octane avgas, which allows the engines to produce around 2,500 horsepower each. Of course, these engines were once capable of producing significantly more power with the higher octane fuel produced in the era of their manufacture, but such mixtures have not been available for decades due to their exceedingly high toxicity. Even so, the combined effort of the four engines on First Air Force One will generate nearly 10,000 horsepower, which is more than adequate to propel her anywhere in the country in service of our nation.

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