Pauma Valley detailer makes Air Force One Detailing Team

PAUMA VALLEY – Angel Morales of Eccentric Shine Professional Detailing (North County San Diego/Temecula) was handpicked out of hundreds of detailers nationwide for a coveted position on the elite Air Force One Detailing Team at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Morales was in Seattle July 24-30 working with the team formed by master automotive and aircraft detailer and trainer Renny Doyle of Detailing Success.

Morales became part of a detailing team that serves as caretakers to the first presidential jet known as Air Force One. The detailing squad also cleaned, polished, and applied protective coatings to 16 additional aircraft on display at the museum. The planes worked on included the now retired supersonic Concorde Alpha Golf; a remarkable WWII B-52 Stratofortress Bomber; and the first “Jumbo Jet” Boeing 747 christened in 1969 and whose engine rings hadn't been polished since it came to the museum.

“When I started my detailing business, it was not a career where I expected to be detailing historical, multimillion-dollar museum treasures,” said Morales at the time of his appointment. “I am honored to be joining such an exclusive team of experienced high-end detailers and to have the opportunity to polish such an iconic piece of American aviation history.”

The annual Air Force One Detailing project has become one of the most prestigious detailing projects on record.

“When this project began nearly 15 years ago with a Bush Administration official asking me to save an icon of aviation history that was falling into ruin on the tarmac at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, I had only five detailers who had trained under me and whom I trusted on such a project,” said Doyle. “We were horrified at the condition of the aircraft, which had served as a flying Oval Office for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

"Having been entrusted into the team’s care through 2020, there is no room for mistakes on multimillion-dollar aircraft, and I can only trust the most skilled and talented detailers like Angel to help us keep her maintained," concluded Doyle.

Air Force One

Known as Special Air Missions (SAM) 970, the first Air Force One presidential jet entertained many international VIPs such as Nikita Khrushchev and Henry Kissinger. For more than a decade, it lived on the open tarmac exposed to Seattle’s notorious climate. In spite of the team’s initial success back in 2003, it has taken more than a dozen years to restore it to as close to its natural glory as possible.

In just the last year, the plane has been relocated under a covered hangar in the new open-air Airpark Pavilion, but it is still exposed to Seattle’s dampness. The team has entered into a “preservation” rather than restoration stage with the plane, and it still requires an annual cleaning and polishing – a

responsibility assigned exclusively to Doyle’s Air Force One Detailing Team until 2020.

WWII B-52G Stratofortress

Last year, the team polished the WWII B-29 Superfortress “T-Square” and received commemorative mission patches from a WWII widow whose husband flew the plane. This year, the teamed polished an all-aluminum WWII B-52G Stratofortress, America’s first long-range, swept-wing heavy bomber that began as an intercontinental, high-altitude nuclear bomber. The U.S. Air Force deployed the plane in 1955 and it saw active duty during the Vietnam War as part of operation Bullet Shot/Linebacker. It spent its entire life in-service with Strategic Air Command.

Supersonic Concorde Alpha Golf

The 2014 Team was the first to detail the supersonic Concorde Alpha Golf since its retirement in 2003. Due to its substantial length and the iconic shape of its slender delta wings and fuselage, the 204-foot luxury jetliner has always presented huge challenges for the Team.

Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet”

The team has cleaned the Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet” in the past but this was the first year they polished the engine rings on the 300-ton jet. Standing taller than a 6-story building, the 747 is one of the most recognizable jets in existence and answered one of the first calls for the growing demand for air travel and the need for a large, mainstream passenger jet.