
Why Retired Aircraft are Stored in the Desert - patrickk
http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/2010/05/bone-yard.html
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asymptotic
I'm surprised noone's pointed out the obvious - the US have obligations under
stategic nuclear arms reduction treaties such as START I that compel the US to
chop up B-52s, put the parts in the desert, and leave them there long enough
to allow the Russians time to use satellite imagery to confirm they've been
chopped up.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/START_I>

"365 B-52Gs were flown to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The bombers were stripped of all
usable parts, then chopped into five pieces by a 13,000-pound steel blade
dropped from a crane. The guillotine sliced four times on each plane, severing
the wings and leaving the fuselage in three pieces. The ruined B-52s remained
in place for three months so that Russian satellites could confirm that the
bombers had been destroyed, after which they were sold for scrap."

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mrshoe
For the same reason, if you're in the market for a used car you should check
your nearest desert-area craigslist (e.g.
<http://palmsprings.craigslist.org/>). I learned this valuable tip from a
college roommate who grew up restoring old cars in Indio, CA.

~~~
davidw
And stay the hell away from cars from anywhere near the coast. I got my first
used car from a lady who had kept it on the Oregon coast, and the thing was
_consumed_ by rust. Got me to bike races though, and considering the price, it
worked well for the time I had it.

~~~
reneherse
Cars from areas with cold climate where roads are salted for ice and snow fare
worse too. The extra corrosion that develops on fasteners generally increases
the cost of repairs, and makes working on an older car a pain in the ass.

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davidw
Because dry, warm climates preserve many things well, including airplanes,
evidently. Next...

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sliverstorm
Many things - that are not made of water. The reason it preserves these planes
is a dearth of water; the desert sucks the water out of everything, which
prevents rust and kills most kinds of life.

I'm curious about the rubber though- my experience has taught me that sunlight
breaks down rubber. It doesn't fail, but it does begin to get hard and crack.

~~~
mpk
I'm not a chemist, but from what I recall natural rubber is subject to
(relatively) rapid corrosion by ozone and synthetic rubbers don't have this
problem. The rubber used for tires on planes and cars is synthetic.

I don't feel like doing the research right now but obviously 'rubber' is an
umbrella term if natural and synthetic rubbers have different properties.

~~~
sliverstorm
I believe that with synthetic rubbers, it is _less_ of a problem. This was
exactly where I got my experience with; old car and motorcycle tires,
particularly tires that had been left out in a baking junkyard for a few
years.

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ck2
_on April 4, 1943, the Lady Be Good and 24 other airplanes took off from
Soluch Airstrip in Libya to bomb the port at Naples, Italy_

Hmm. Well history didn't just repeat itself, it reversed itself this year eh?

~~~
Toucan
History does indeed repeat itself. Look up 1986's Operation El Dorado Canyon
(US bombing of Libya as part of the Cold War).

~~~
technotony
That's partly why the rebels have been somewhat resistant to accepting US
help...

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ajays
How difficult is it to visit some of these? I'd love to just walk around near
these planes and see (and photograph) them from up close.

~~~
jws
Apparently the Pima Air and Space Museum has tours. You have to stay on the
bus while among the planes, no wandering around among the multimillion dollar
war machines.

~~~
jrockway
Unless you're the mythbusters, in which case you get to take your saw to them,
shoot guns at them, and even blow them up.

A DC9 with no avionics or engines probably isn't worth many millions of
dollars.

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keiferski
Reminds me of a section in Richard Branson's book _Losing my Virginity._ He
had just started Virgin Atlantic and was essentially the target of a smear
campaign by British Airways. The future of Virgin was up in the air, more or
less.

During all of this, BBC (or some other station) did a short documentary on the
situation. They interviewed him at an airfield for retired planes, somewhere
in the Southwest US. Quite the ominous setting.

(Can't find the exact quote anywhere, sorry)

~~~
reneherse
There's a boneyard right outside the airport where Scaled Composites is
located. Scaled is the company that invented and produces the tech of Virgin
Galactic.

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khandelwal
A great photo set of the bone yard:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/sets/32971/>

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Todd
Coincidentally, I had the chance to visit the bone yard at Victorville
recently while doing a photo shoot for a software project (I'll post a link in
a month or two, once it becomes public--it's very cool). We had the chance to
photograph these planes up close but were forbidden from sharing the photos,
unfortunately. It is quite an eerie place, especially at dusk, which is when
we were there.

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joshwa
Fantastic photos from Victorville:

[http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=vcv...](http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=vcv&sort_order=views)

and Davis-Monthan:

[http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=KDM...](http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?placesearch=KDMA&sort_order=views)

~~~
larrywright
I remember driving past Davis-Monthan the first time I went to Tucson on
business. Amazing.

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SRSimko
Makes me sad to see this, I've probably flown some of those in the pic.

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totalforge
You can take a bus tour of military boneyard in arizona from the Pima Air
Museum close by. The whole northeast section of the property is the tooling
and jigs for the B-2, if making more ever gets funded.

Sadly, the F-4 Phantom population there continues to dwindle as they are
refitted to be unmanned missile test targets, which tends to blow them up.

~~~
razzmataz
There used to be a fair number of F-101s and F-102s, which were eventually
refitted and had the letter Q prepended to their designations.

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dhughes
It's amazing that all of that could be destroyed by a little mercury which
corrodes aluminum, it's fascinating.

I've often wondered why cold war spies didn't use mercury more often (there
was one incident?) or at all to sabotage entire squadrons of aircraft. Now
with composite materials it's not a problem.

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kongqiu
If you're in Tucson, the Pima Air and Space Museum next to the Boneyard is
worth a visit.

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alabut
There's a Flash slideshow about the boneyard that was pretty popular when it
first came out a decade ago, back when I was a wee web designer fresh out of
college:

<http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/sleepingGiants/>

It holds up really well, especially the audio interviews with the mechanics
and ground crew about their feelings about these "sleeping giants".

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juiceandjuice
My uncle has worked at the boneyard on and off for a long time. He mostly
decommissioned radar systems out of B-52s and other things. The B-52s are
really the prize there, as Uncle Sam plans on using them til 2040(!)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Futu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Future_of_the_B-52)

~~~
runjake
It's been a while, but I believe nearly all the boneyard B-52s are G models
(or older). I'm not sure if any H models have made it, yet. H models are
slated for operational use until 2040 at least. Pretty remarkable for
airframes manufactured in 60-61. (Of course, the avionics, nav, radios, ecms,
etc have been gone through several iterations since then). Anyone know if
they're still using STRAT radar systems?

G models are (were) generally used for experimental purposes.

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KevBurnsJr
Satellite photos of Tucson boneyard <http://bit.ly/airplane-boneyard>

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jplevine
Satellite images: <http://goo.gl/YydfK>

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mapster
Boneyard Hackfest 2012. See you there!

