Williams, Francis W. Papers

Pilot of the Presidential Airplanes, the Sacred Cow and the Independence, 1948-1953

The papers of Francis W. Williams include a trip log, a guest book, matchbooks, playing cards, stationery, newspaper clippings, correspondence, printed materials and photographs primarily relating to Williams’s career as the pilot of the presidential airplane, the Independence.

Size: About 1,200 pages.
Access: Open.
Copyright: Copyright in the unpublished writings of Francis W. Williams in these papers has been donated to the United States. In addition, documents prepared by United States government employees in the course of their official duties are also in the public domain. Copyright interest in documents that do not fall into these two categories is presumed to remain with the creators of the documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Dennis E. Bilger (1990); David Clark, Randy Sowell, Sharie Simon, Janice Davis and Adam Rich (2007).

The papers of Francis W. Williams document his work as the pilot for President Truman and particularly as pilot of the Independence. Colonel Williams, an Air Force officer, was assigned on January 7, 1948 to be the pilot of President Truman's airplane. He flew the Sacred Cow, a modified C-54 transport that had been President Roosevelt's last airplane, until the Independence, a DC-6, was delivered for President Truman's use in May 1948. Colonel Williams remained as the President's pilot for the remainder of Truman's term of office. Altogether, Colonel Williams flew over one hundred missions on behalf of the President. The collection consists of one series, a Subject File, arranged alphabetically by folder title.

The Subject File contains trip logs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, printed materials, memorabilia, and a guest book related to the Independence.

The "Trip Log" materials include information about the flights that Colonel Williams piloted including weather conditions, the number of miles flown, lists of passengers and crew, and the countries visited. The trip log also contains brief narrative accounts of the flights. President Truman was a passenger on about one-fifth of the flights, including the flight to Wake Island in October 1950 to meet with General Douglas MacArthur to discuss the Korean War.

The primary passengers for the remainder of the trips included Cabinet members and other administration officials, members of Congress, members of and delegates to special committees and congresses, foreign heads of state, and members of the President's family. Notable passengers included Dean Acheson, Alben Barkley, Omar Bradley, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Dwight Eisenhower, Indira Gandhi, George Marshall, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margaret Truman, and Bess Truman.

The collection also contains a guest book in which the passengers on the Independence's flights signed their names, a small quantity of correspondence including a few routine social exchanges with President Truman, and a few items of memorabilia from the Independence, including matchbooks, playing cards, score sheets, stationery, and luggage tags. Also included are travel logs from some of President Truman’s trips with handwritten inscriptions by President Truman to Colonel Williams.

Additional items include itineraries of trips aboard the Independence; photographs of the Independence crew, individuals who flew on the airplane and aerial views from the airplane; newspaper clippings related to Williams’s career and President Truman; and books about President Truman.

The luggage tags, matchbooks, playing cards, score sheets, and stationery have been transferred to the museum collection. The photographs have been transferred to the audiovisual collection, and the books have been transferred to the book collection.

Other files and collections at the Truman Library that document the President's trips are the Trip File in the President's Secretary's File, Official File 200, and the Records of the U.S. Secret Service.