Where airplanes fly in, but seldom fly out
Several hundred Phantoms are parked under the desert sun, waiting to be turned into Zombies. Not all will be chosen. Some will have their noses, legs, and other parts chopped off. The Zombies will fly again, but without benefit of a human brain in the cockpit. So maimed, they will be easy target drones for Eagles, Falcons, Hornets, and Tomcats.
This is the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) at Tucson's Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, better known as "the Boneyard." It sits in the shadow of the Santa Catalina Mountains; the 2,600-acre site is home to 5,000 aircraft that were worth more than $27 billion when new. Six hundred happy cannibals work here for the U.S. government, plucking parts off airplanes, breaking their spines with giant guillotines, and shipping the bare carcasses to nearby smelters. For a pilot, this is a surreal, fascinating, and sad place—the aviation equivalent of the "Roach Motel." Airplanes check in, but they don't check out. At least, not most of them.
It began in 1946 when 34,000 American aircraft were on their way home from World War II. The dawn of the jet age meant that 80 percent of the aircraft were coming home to an ignominious end—the smelter. But not so for B–29 bombers and C–47 transports (the military variant of the venerable DC–3). Many of them came to Tucson awaiting a new war in Korea and, for some of the C–47s, new owners. Almost 700 B–29s and 250 C–47s came to the Boneyard after the war. In time they would be joined by almost every make and model of military aircraft and many civilian ones produced after 1946; the bombers of World War II and the Cold War, B–17s, 24s, 25s, 36s, 47s, 52s, and 58s; the Century series of fighters, F–101s, 102s, 104s, 105s, and 106s; the workhorses of Vietnam and Desert Storm, F–4s, 5s, 14s, 15s, 16s, and now 18s; and the ubiquitous cargo haulers, C–119s, 123s, 130s, and 141s. By 1960, some 4,000 airplanes were parked here. That number swelled to more than 6,000 by the early 1970s.
They all came through here. Some remain. About 400 airplanes join the Boneyard every year, and an equivalent number are cannibalized, resold, or reactivated. Faced with a shortage of qualified pilots, the Navy has opted to park some of its F–18s here. The Coast Guard keeps aircraft here. So do various government agencies. Need a part for a UH–1 Huey helicopter? You won't find a better place on Earth. This is "707s-R-Us." The once-proud flagships of the national airlines from Ethiopia to Zaire, all in their original liveries, are parked here awaiting cannibalization, their parts to eventually be recycled in-to the U.S. Air Force's fleet of KC–135 tankers and other Boeing 707-derived special-mission aircraft.
Davis-Monthan is an ideal place to store an airplane on the cheap. The hot desert sun means low humidity, and it bakes the native caliche soil rock-hard. Acres of concrete are not needed.
Once an airplane arrives here it goes through a process not unlike embalming. It is taken to the 180,000-square-foot "reclamation" shelter and washed, drained of fluids, and stripped of valuables. The fuel tanks and system lines are then filled with 10-10 light oil and redrained, leaving a protective coating. Two layers of Spraylat, a plastic coating, are then applied over windows, doors, radomes, and other critical surfaces. The first layer is black. The second is white to repel the heat. The goal is to keep the aircraft's internal temperature below 200 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent damage to electrical lines and the like. Landing gear openings and drains are left unsealed to facilitate ventilation. This also provides the Boneyard's thriving rat population with easy access to a veritable smorgasbord of synthetics and fabrics, and local exterminators with full employment.
Once prepared for storage, the aircraft are parked on the caliche. Some, stripped of engines and innards, are wildly out of center of gravity and sometimes sit with their tail cones touching the ground and their nose gear heaved defiantly into the air. The Spraylat is checked every three months, and every four years the aircraft that are kept in "flyable storage" are fired up. Then the Spraylat is reapplied.
Some airplanes actually leave here intact. A row of Lockheed P–3 Orion sub-hunters is currently awaiting foreign military sales. During the Vietnam War, three dozen C–47s were reclaimed, refitted with high-speed guns and cannons, and sent off to the jungle to fly ground-force suppression missions. Redesignated AC–47s, they more popularly became known as "Puff the Magic Dragons." Similarly, Douglas Skyraiders, Pilatus Porters, and Helio Couriers were snatched from the Boneyard, refitted, and dispatched to fly "black" ops in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.
But these are exceptions to the daily routine of chop and melt. Besides the airframes, visitors to the Boneyard will see pallets of tires, bins of jet engines, and endless rows of tools and jigging.
Tours of the Boneyard are conducted by the nonprofit Arizona Aerospace Foundation, operators of the nearby Pima Air and Space Museum. You get here by first visiting the museum. There you buy a ticket and board a tour bus for the short drive to Davis-Monthan. Because of security concerns, general visitors are not allowed to leisurely roam about the Boneyard. One must stay on the bus, but the tour guides are very friendly and knowledgeable. However, you can get up close and personal with many examples of these airplanes back at Pima, where over the years, AMARC has loaned many aircraft.
With 240 airplanes displayed on 65 acres, Pima is the third largest aircraft collection in the United States, behind only the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. A quick cab ride from Tucson International, Pima is home to several unique and interesting aircraft, including President Kennedy's DC–6 (back in the early 1960s, very few airports could accommodate 707s, and JFK relied on his DC–6 to visit smaller communities), a B–58 Hustler, a rare Twin Navion, and a Boeing YC–14 twinjet STOL airfreighter.
While in some ways sad, a visit to the Boneyard is satisfying in one unusual respect: It is a government facility that actually makes money.
Mark Huber is a contributor to Pilot. For more information, contact the Pima Air and Space Museum at 520/228-3358, or visit the Web site ( http://pimaair.org).
