General Douglas MacArthur’s Personal Airplane Flies Again

When president Harry S. Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, then commander of the United Nations Command forces fighting during the Korean War, on April 11, 1951, for “failing to respect the authority of the President” the famed Army leader flew home from Japan aboard his personal airplane, a Lockheed Constellation he dubbed “Bataan”.

Bataan flew again last week, the first time the aircraft has taken to the air since an extensive restoration of it began in 2016. Well known aircraft collector Rod Lewis purchased the historic Constellation in 2015 from the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California with the intention of restoring the “Connie” to the configuration it had between September 1950 and April 1951 as the VIP aircraft the U.S. Air Force assigned to transport Gen. MacArthur.

Lewis, the CEO/founder of San Antonio, Texas-based Lewis Energy Group, a natural gas and oil drilling firm with a market capitalization of approximately $2.2 billion, also operates Lewis Air Legends and the Air Legends Foundation, a collection of 26 airworthy historic aircraft, many of which he flies himself.

Steve Hinton, president of Planes of Fame Air Museum and owner of Fighter Rebuilders in Chino, California, has led the nearly eight-year renewal of Bataan, an airplane he describes as a “huge Lockheed jigsaw puzzle.”

It’s the forty-third aircraft that Fighter Rebuilders (launched in 1980) has restored. But the task of refurbishing the big four-engine transport and making it flyable again has been like restoring “10 or 15 Mustangs,” Hinton says.

“There aren’t very many parts laying around and there’s not a lot of people that know very much about Connies,” he notes, adding that the Constellation came from an era of propeller driven airliners and cargo aircraft that largely faded when jets began to replace them in the late 1950s.

Named by MacArthur for the peninsula from which he escaped after Japanese troops invaded the Philippines in 1942, Bataan (aircraft 48-0613) began life as one of 10 Constellations delivered to the newly created (1947) U.S. Air Force in late 1948 and early 1949. Designated a C-121A by the service, it joined the Air Force’s Military Air Transport Service at Westover AFB near Springfield, Massachusetts and was quickly pressed into action in support of the Berlin Airlift, flying supplies to Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany.

The following year 48-0613 and the other C-121As were withdrawn from service to undergo conversion by Lockheed into high-speed VIP transports for the Air Force. Their cargo interiors were removed, extra windows were added and weather radar – a first for the USAF – was fitted to the Constellations’ noses.

Aircraft 613 became MacArthur’s ride with the new designation VC-121A in the late summer of 1950. It’s worth noting that one of the other Constellations from the original batch (serial number 48-0610) was converted into a VC-121A as well, becoming the first airplane to use the “Air Force One” call sign when president-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower used the aircraft to travel to South Korea in November 1952. Eisenhower used “Columbine II” – named for the official state flower of Colorado – until November of 1954. The only presidential aircraft ever sold to a private owner, Columbine II is also undergoing restoration currently.

MacArthur used Bataan extensively, making 17 trips over Korean battlefields in the airplane and taking it to a famous meeting with president Truman on Wake Island in October 1950. After MacArthur was relieved of command, generals Matthew Ridgway, Mark Clark, Maxwell Taylor, Lyman Lemitzer, Isaac White and James Collins traveled the world in Bataan. The aircraft served until 1966 when the USAF retired its C-121A fleet.

Many C-121s were sent to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona for storage but 613 took on a new role with NASA in April, 1966 as part of the Apollo space program along with two other Constellations testing and calibrating ground tracking stations systems that were used to remain in constant contact with spacecraft in orbit. MacArthur’s Connie flew with NASA until June 1969 but became a museum display in 1972 when it was released to the U.S. Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

It remained on display in the open until May 1993 when Planes of Fame acquired it. Hinton says he was skeptical about taking possession of the huge, costly Connie but museum founder and aircraft preservation visionary Edward Maloney told Hinton, “We gotta get it.”

“I said, ‘Ed, where are we going to put it?’ Hinton recalls. “He said, ‘No that’s a historic airplane. That used to be General MacArthur’s airplane. We’ve got to find a way to do it.’”

Planes of Fame traded a helicopter for Bataan and with help from Lockheed got the airplane airworthy again, had it painted in the scheme it wore when MacArthur used it and replicated its VIP interior. The aircraft was flown for a little over a year to airshows on the west coast from Chino but then grounded once more due to the high cost of operating it.

“After about a year we decided we could either keep that flying or fly everything else in the collection,” Hinton says.

On display at Planes of Fame’s Valle, Arizona branch location, Bataan didn’t fly again until January 2016 when museum staff made it flyable once more, taking it back to Chino for the most extensive restoration the aircraft has ever received.

It took flight again on June 20. As you can see in this video of its first post-restoration flight, Bataan is gorgeous. Fast for its era, Hinton says the airplane is still impressively quick, smooth and quiet.

“It flies great,” he enthuses. “It’s smooth like a jet. At 30 inches of manifold pressure (well below full power) and cruising it’s smooth as glass and indicates about 210 knots (242 mph/389 kph). It doesn’t vibrate at all and it’s not very loud inside.”

Hinton, widely renowned as the most experienced warbird pilot on the planet, was copilot for the first flight with pilot in command Stewart Dawson and flight engineer Jeff Whitesell. The crew is continuing to conduct test flights “working seven days a week” according to Hinton in preparation for what’s sure to be an acclaimed debut for Bataan at AirVenture 2023, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s mammoth annual airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (July 24-July 30).

“That’s the plan,” Hinton affirms, adding that the crew should have 10 to 12 flight hours on the airplane by the time it makes it way to Wisconsin. Able to carry as much as 17 hours worth of fuel, Bataan could easily fly from California to Wisconsin in one leg. But with the decision not to restore the aircraft’s expensively complex, pressurized cabin for the time being, the Connie will likely make a stop or two on its way to Oshkosh, flying between 10,000 and 12,000 feet.

Notable in the video is the absence of the plush VIP interior that would have been present when MacArthur flew aboard Bataan. Hinton explains that after AirVenture the airplane will be flown to Aerometal International, LLC in Aurora, Oregon for fitment of a new interior that will surpass the quality of its previous cabin considerably. Aerometal specializes in aircraft restoration including interiors and has completed a number of beautiful interiors for historic DC-3/C-47 transport aircraft.

“We’re here with the airplane because Rod had the vision to renew it and Ed Maloney had the vision to save the airplane originally,” Hinton concludes. He says Rod Lewis has plans to display the aircraft widely once it’s complete, perhaps including trips to Europe and beyond. On a flight this week, Hinton says he had a “gee whiz moment.”

“We took the airplane and flew a heading for about 45 minutes out toward Santa Barbara then turned around and came back. I’m flying along and I was looking around and I was thinking of Ed [Maloney]. I’m flying this airplane thinking this is so cool! Another home run from Ed and now Rod.”