LUXURY PLANE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 152, 29 June 1945, Page 9

LUXURY PLANE

CARRIED ROOSEVELT

HAND-WORKED DRAPERIES

O.C.- SAN FRANCISCO, June 15. The Douglas Aircraft Corporation of Southern California has disclosed the hitherto secret design of the plane that carried the late President Roosevelt to Yalta. The "Presidential plane" took Mrs. Martha Truman, aged 92, from Kansas City, Missouri, to Washington to spend Mother's Day with her son in the White House and carried President Truman to the San Francisco Conference. Last September it took Madame Chiang Kai-shek from Rio de Janeiro to New York.

The special C 54 Skymaster was built last year for the Army Air Forces Transport Command" from drawings by E. Gilbert Mason, chief interiors-design engineer for Douglas Aircraft. Some of its features, he says, give a hint of luxuries that will make post-war passenger planes "more comfortable than any means of transportation the world has known."

In the Presidential plane a batteryoperated elevator just aft of the main passenger loading door hoists the plane's collapsible chromium steel wheel-chair from a ground ramp to a corridor in the passenger section. Mr. Roosevelt, a plant spokesman said, often preferred to sit in the wheel-chair, between pilot and copilot, while travelling. The plane carries 15 persons and sleeps six. Its private stateroom measures 7ft 6in by 12ft and has seating room, with its sofa and two folding chairs, for seven persons. Within reach of the President's swivel chair are a magazine rack, oxygen mask, read ing lights and telephone connecting with the pilot's compartment and three other sleeping sections. A lavatory adjoins, a short distance across the carpeted floor. The conference table has the Great Seal of the United States inlaid on its wooden top, and countersunk ash trays at the four corners.

Insignia Embroidered On the tan gabardine and leather walls are four maps on rollers, a picture of an old-time sailing ship and four instruments—air speed, altimeter, compass and clock. Upholstery is of all-wool blue worsted and draperies of blue gabardine. The latter were embroidered with the insignia of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps by Mason's pretty blonde wife.

The plane occupies a special hangar at the Washington, D.C., airport. All very luxurious, you agree, but will the ordinary plane passenger of to-morrow enjoy such swank? Not at first, at any rate, but Mason predicted: "Seats" will be padded with glass wool and rubber that follow the contours of the body. The long arm rests will have buttons to press —to tilt the backs to a 41-degree angle. There will be tables between the chairs. Seats will make into berths in two minutes by pressing a few gadgets. Upper berth passengers will be able to sit up full height Upper berths, like the lowers, wili have luggage racks, windows, reading lights, mirrors, thermos bottles make-up kits, clothes hangers and wall pockets for packages and shoes."