The U.S. military has long been expert at disposing of used and obsolete
aircraft. Between January 1940 and August 1945, for example, American companies
built nearly 300,000 aircraft, most of them for military use. Roughly half
of those outlasted World War II and became surplus, far more than the military
deemed necessary to defend the nation. The government needed to get rid of
these "white elephants with wings," as one propaganda pamphlet put it—and it
did, in several ways.
Some planes overseas that were thought not worth the effort or expense to bring
home were bulldozed, buried, or sunk. Thousands of aircraft in this country
were offered up for sale. Most were trainers and cargo planes, but tactical
aircraft were also available. Prices ranged from $450 for a BT-13 combat
trainer to $32,500 for a B-32 bomber. Others were sold cheaply or given away
for experimental, educational, or memorial purposes. Still others were stored
for possible reuse, particularly C-47 transport and combat aircraft and B-29
Superfortresses, the bomber used to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
It became known as the “boneyard,” the place where old fighters and
bombers went to die.
Even after exhausting all these avenues, however, a huge surplus remained. In
many cases, the planes' components were hardly worth salvaging. But their
aluminum ran to the hundreds of millions of pounds, and could be melted down
into ingots and reused. So the government set up a gigantic scrapping
operation. To forestall any confusion among the American people, who might
wonder why the military was melting down perfectly good airplanes, government
spin doctors distributed reassuring literature. One pamphlet of December 1945
stated:
With the end of the war, there will soon be war-weary and obsolete aircraft
stacked wing to wing on many airfields. Some of them will glisten when the sun
shines on them, and it will be hard to believe that they cannot be used. But
they will have been condemned only after every practical use has been studied.
They will be awaiting the day when manpower is available to take them apart and
put their metal back into use....
The boneyard
Initially the government had several full-scale storage-and-scrapping
facilities around the country. But in 1965 it settled on just one of those,
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside Tucson, Arizona. Davis-Monthan was
considered ideal for aircraft storage. It was far from the snowbelt, whose
weather conditions could be troublesome, and from coasts, whose salty air
quickly corroded and rusted aircraft parts. It had low rainfall and humidity,
and its soil was baked so hard by the sun that aircraft could park on it as if
on concrete. By 1959, after almost 15 years of scrapping unneeded planes,
Davis-Monthan had roughly 4,000 aircraft in storage. It became known as the
"boneyard," the place where old fighters and bombers went to die.
But those who ran the facility found that perception not only derogatory but
inaccurate. Davis-Monthan had a large scrapping operation, it is true, but it
also preserved thousands of planes in case they were needed—and many were.
In the first year of the Korean War, for example, Davis-Monthan polished up and
dispatched to Korea more than 80 C-47s left over from World War II.
Affectionately known as "Gooney Birds," these old C-47s even played a role in
Vietnam. Outfitted with 7.62-millimeter guns in their port windows and cargo
doors, these then 20-year-old aircraft helped Air Commando squadrons protect
Special Forces camps and remote outposts in Southeast Asia during the 1960s.
A change in image
In 1985, partly in hopes of countering the boneyard image, the Davis-Monthan
operation gave itself a new name: the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration
Center (AMARC). But the work remains the same.
Processing newly arrived aircraft for maintenance and potential regeneration
involves many steps. First workers remove armaments, seat and canopy ejection
charges, and any valuable or classified components. They wash the fuselage to
remove industrial or marine residues, and inspect it for any corrosion. Navy
aircraft that have been exposed to salt air receive a corrosion-inhibitor
shower. Other workers drain the engines, tanks, and fuel lines and pump in a
lightweight oil; they then drain this to leave a protective coating within
hydraulic lines and fuel tanks.
One employee tells of how he was once sucked into one of the engine
intakes of an idling F4.
The final step is the sealing process. Crews start by taping all openings on
the upper side of the aircraft, and covering all engine inlets and exhausts.
They then spray on two coats of Spraylat, a weatherproof latex material,
leaving the bottom of the aircraft exposed to allow for air circulation. The
second coat is white. This is to reflect away as much of the desert sun as
possible, so temperatures inside the plane don't rise so high as to cause
internal damage.
Hazardous duty
The work is routine but can be hazardous. On a Kodak-sponsored Web site about
AMARC, one employee tells of how, while doing similar work elsewhere before
coming to AMARC, he was sucked into one of the engine intakes of an idling F-4.
He was able to brace himself against the sides of the intake. But knowing it
was only a matter of time before his strength gave out and the engine's
powerful suction pulled him into the fan blades, he began tossing everything he
had on him into the whirling fan in hopes of seizing up the engine. Pens,
pencils, headset, jacket, even the buttons off his shirt went in. He screamed
for help, even though he knew the engine's roar would drown out his cries.
Fortunately, the engine finally quit and he was able to escape, with only minor
injuries.
Even those planes destined for the scrap yard must be handled delicately. In the
1950s, hundreds of B-29s were sold for scrap, but only after workers removed
all valuable spare parts, including engines, propellers, fuel and oil tanks,
bombsights, and instruments. Detaching these objects caused the B-29's center
of gravity to change radically. To ensure the plane didn't tip back onto its
tail when it was towed away for removal of its tail section, workers had to
attach thick 15-foot timbers to the nose wheel wells, and as many as 25
personnel had to climb into the nose section to weigh it down.
Methods used to disassemble planes could be crude but effective. To meet U.S.
obligations under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which
called in part for the destruction of hundreds of heavy bombers, AMARC
eliminated 314 B-52 aircraft. After removing parts for reuse in operational
B-52H bombers, AMARC teams turned for most of these eliminations to a makeshift
guillotine: a crane that dropped a 13,000-pound blade of steel from a height of
80 feet onto the aircraft. First the wings were sliced off, then the fuselage
was cut into five pieces. The dismembered carcass was left where it lay for 90
days to enable the Commonwealth of Independent States—the other signatories
of START—to verify the disassemblies by satellite.
AMARC today
The recycling of flyable aircraft is the facility's first priority. (AMARC's
symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes.) In fiscal year 2002, for instance,
the organization regenerated 18 F-16A Fighting Falcons for return to active
service. Many aircraft stored at Davis-Monthan today are given entirely new,
non-military assignments, such as dropping water on forest fires in the
American West, aiding drug interdiction in South America, or hunting big-game
poachers in Africa.
AMARC's return on investment is impressive. In FY02, the facility gave 99
aircraft valued at $520 million a new life, and it reclaimed $732.5 million worth
of spare parts and placed them back into the active inventory. Thus, on an annual
budget of $47 million, AMARC returned a total of $1.25 billion worth of
equipment to the Department of Defense.
All told, AMARC today hosts over 4,300 aircraft. Roughly a quarter of them are
in flyable storage, meaning they could be readied for takeoff in short order.
Current residents include several top-of-the-line models. Some, such as F-4E
Phantom fighters, the most abundant aircraft in the inventory at nearly 700
airframes, will serve as remotely piloted drones that fighter pilots will shoot
out of the sky with air-to-air missiles during training exercises. Others,
including F-14 and F-15 fighters and KC-135 Stratotanker refuelers, could see
action again—just as their predecessors, the C-47 "Gooney Birds," did half a
century ago in Korea.
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Looking only slightly less menacing with their
protective plastic coatings, a line of F-16As at AMARC await their next
assignment.
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As far as the eye can see: Fighters in storage
at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
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The white Spraylat covering ensures that
temperatures inside the aircraft rise no more than 15° above ambient
temperatures.
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A pilot delivers his F-16 to AMARC. Though it can be a
melancholy moment for the pilot, premier aircraft such as this one often take
to the skies again.
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