The Bone Yard

was surfing tonight and came across these videos.
thought Zaphod, and a couple of others would like it.

known more by it's nick name the Bone Yard the official designation is the 309th Aerospace Maintenance Group @ Davis Monthan AFB AZ also known as AMARC

my understanding is that they have aircraft there from WWII to today, and from all branches.

so here ya go,





these next two are kinda long.


this one is a USAF documentary

The bus tour is pretty cool. You don't get to see all of the yard, but you get to see some pretty cool things.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i'd sure would like to go and see it. gonna put or on the bucket list.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Celebrity row is pretty cool. I got to see a few planes I knew, and one that I was never so happy to see sitting and rotting.

a reply to: Zaphod58

and one that I was never so happy to see sitting and rotting.

...........and that was?

a reply to: DAVID64

It was an LC-130. It got stuck down in Antarctica for something like 15 years before they were able to get it out. They were taking it back to rebuild, and between the aircraft and crew, it took four or five tries to finally get them out and on their way.

Enjoyed this post.

Thanks

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Really cool stuff s&f

These kinds of places always give me this "post apocalyptic" vibe, I can just imagine them sitting there deteriorating over 100s of years.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

When you get to the Pima museum, where you get the tickets, the EC-135 in the yard, 8057 was one of ours. It was our problem child. Then on Celebrity Row, you'll see C-135 1518. It was converted from an EC-135, that didn't have a boom, into a C-135. We had that one too for a little while after we lost our two C-135s to corrosion.

I was stationed at DM for the last 8 years of my career...

I was a START Treaty Escort Official, so I had AMARC on my Restricted Area Badge... it saved me 30 minutes of commute time.

It was sweet...

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: hounddoghowlie

When you get to the Pima museum, where you get the tickets, the EC-135 in the yard, 8057 was one of ours. It was our problem child. Then on Celebrity Row, you'll see C-135 1518. It was converted from an EC-135, that didn't have a boom, into a C-135. We had that one too for a little while after we lost our two C-135s to corrosion.

My Siberian Husky took a giant crap right in front of the Pima Air and Space Museum back in 06....

That was well appreciated "Rush" , a finale theme , before I hit the bed..

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776

it kind of makes me sad. like when i see a old muscle car sitting and rusting away.

it reminds me of when i was a kid, and my dad would take us boys to the junk yards looking for parts for his hot rods or his dragsters. looking all those fine cars sitting and going to waste. just wanted to take them and fix em all up and put them back on the road,i get the same way when i see these.

i live in the panhandle of Florida, and here we have two places that if you ever get the chance to visit you should. i haven't been to either one in years, but i still remember the... i guess the best word i'm looking for is wonder, i sure like these kind of places.




this is from our local PBS station



ETA: i live about a mile from the first outer ranges of Eglin, i always hear the the AC-130's firing their guns at night, and sometimes see the aircraft flying.
back when i was a very young teenager, i use to hang out with some older ones this was back in the early 70's . back then you could go hunting on Eglin and we also used to go swimming in the summertime in the creeks on the base. security back then wasn't like it is today and and we would often ride around in the closed areas.
one day we came around a curve in the road and as we did we saw a jet rise above the trees and sit and hover, we told people about it and they all said we were nuts. later when i was in the Corps, when i saw my first up close Harrier, i realized that was what we saw.
i tried to find out if they tested them here back then, like they test all aircraft for all branches here, but have not had any luck in this.

Not that I have the money nor am I in the same country so transportation would be a pig, but could I (if I had the funds) buy an aircraft from the Bone Yard. For say example a gate guardian to my luxury mansion (if I had one)

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

The bone yard is actually a very sad place from some perspective's though from other's it is a fitting end for machines of war, I find it sad.

The whole purpose was to put decommissioned air craft (often with plenty of life still in them and many of these air craft had hardly flown but were scrapped to meat control agreement quotas with the former soviet union who must of had there own bone yard's I would guess) and to lay them out in neat row's so that the Soviet's satellite's could see them and they could be counted.

Similar yard's existed and I believe still do for naval ship's from similar arms limitation treaties.

Actually a shame though, I remember someone telling me of a guy who bought an old jet fighter engine from the bone yard and strapped it to a normal car, it was probably a fake story but according to that tale the idiot then fired the jet engine while he was moving down an empty road and he had so vastly miscalculated that the car literally took off like a rocket and smashed into some terrain leaving little other than his teeth to identify him (but like I say probably a tall tale but then again?).

Still there is something sad about seeing so many machines whose real purpose was to keep the peace and not to wage war except as a last resort and which in time of war would have been the only shield of the free world just left to rot in a manner that feel's almost like betrayal.

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

If you have a museum or military base. They send them to museums all the time free of charge. The receiving museum has to arrange and pay for shopping, that's all.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Hehe theres add/production company in Los Angeles. Done a lot of stiff you folks have probably seen. Mostly commercials.

As a play on their name they once went out to a boneyard in the local desert and bought the shell of a old bomb / cruise missile thing. Painted it nifty colors , threw the company logo on it and mounted it above their entrance. I thought that was cool.

I took the tour back around 1980, was only 16 at the time. Didn't do the bus, just a walk around at the museum. They have updated alot over the last 37 years. There used to be this little twin rotor, looked like a baby CH46, two seats, twin rotor, and I guess the rest was fuel and motor. It was not very big, like a VW bus with blades, that one aways comes to mind when I hear about this place. And then leaving the museum and driving and looking at all the miles of moth balled ones. Thanks for posting, Well enjoyed.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

I grew up about 2 miles from where these "parking lots" are during the "60-70s
My older brother said that one day(50's) him and my other brother rode around looking at the planes.
A worker came out of a plane and said it was the plane that dropped one of the Nukes on Japan.