Nerdy Tuesday 3rd March: The Boneyard

There is another aircraft enthusiast’s trip not to be missed. It’s a bus tour of the part of the Davis-Monthan US Airforce base where surplus military aircraft for the whole of the USA are stored.  Over 4,000 planes: it is nicknamed the “Boneyard”. The bus tour is organised from the Pima Museum that we visited a few days ago.

There are two main reasons for locating the Boneyard in Tucson. Firstly, the dry desert climate causes the least deterioration and, secondly, the ground is rock-hard, being baked clay covered by a deep layer of gravel, so no artificial surface is needed to take the weight of any aircraft.

The Boneyard lies within the Davis-Monthan base perimeter, and its runways are used to ferry planes in and out, but the Boneyard itself is controlled centrally from Washington DC. It has two purposes: to store US military planes for rapid restoration to operational condition, and to provide a spare parts service to any friendly country in the world.

So what happens? Say a front-line fighter is being superseded by a new generation machine. The old one is still pretty good and would be extremely useful in a sudden crisis, so it needs keeping in readiness. A good example here is the F4 Phantom. So they fly the Phantoms in to Davis-Monthan, wash them if necessary in a kind of large car wash (they invariably do this with navy planes to get rid of all the salt) and then spray the vulnerable surfaces like the cockpit glass with layers of latex. Here’s a Phantom that’s been given the treatment.

Interestingly, this plane was flown by the only US “ace” flier in the Vietnam War, Capt Steve Ritchie. “Ace” means he shot down 5 enemy aircraft, as signified by the 5 stars on the engine intake. It looks like it’s masked up for a respray, but that’s the latex. Helicopters look even odder because they remove the rotor blades for storage elsewhere. 

Engines may also be stored separately in these steel cylinders. Somehow you expect a more high-tech solution than this line of lookalike Long John Silver’s treasure chests.

Rockets too form part of the air menagerie. I think these are Thor rockets (not entirely sure), early generation missiles designed to deliver a nuclear strike. They could probably sell the empty tube on the left in the photo to a dog agility group.

Aircraft magazine pictures always show the Boneyard as long lines of identical aircraft tailing off into infinity. It’s quite difficult to take these sort of shots from a moving bus through glass, but here’s a few just for the record.

You’ll note the Boneyard looks a lot greener than the stark, bare desert of the magazine photos. That’s because it’s wintertime and, with a little rain, grass and other scrub plants green up. In a couple of months it’ll be back to its normal uniform gritty sand colour.

The rows being cannibalised for spare parts are obvious; several of these below have missing tails but there’ll be many other items removed not apparent from this distance. 

The technicians working on the aircraft need weather protection, not so much from the very occasional rain or cold, but from the fierce heat. These mobile hangars provide that protection and can be quickly positioned over any aircraft as required. Great also for weekend raves.

Our guide pointed out some spares ready for dispatch. These looked like complete aircraft bodies minus the wings and tails, but the guide said anything not designated as military reserve is in principle for sale. 

This was a fascinating insight into an unknown aspect of military organisation i.e. what do they do with their old planes. To quote the guide again, he said the Boneyard was a highly profitable enterprise where receipts from parts and aircraft sales are ten times greater than the cost of running it.