Aircraft Cemetery is the place where airplanes are stored and preserved to put them back into service if ever necessary.
Summary
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- 1 in the United States
- 1 Arizona
- 2California
- 3El Pina Air & Space Museum
- 4 Tucson
- 5 The largest cemetery
- 2 Conservation tasks
- 3 Storage
- 4 Soviet post cemeteries
- 1 Vladivostok
- 2 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
- 3 Vozdvizhenka
- 5 Sources
In United States
Arizona
The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), often called The Boneyard (El Cementerio) is located near Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona . The number of aircraft stored there and the accuracy of how they are parked is impressive. Another important fact is that all of them are capable of putting them back into service if ever necessary.
AMARG is a restricted access site, the only access allowed to unauthorized persons is via a bus tour run by the Pima Air & Space Museum. Bus tours of both the museum and the cemetery are very popular attractions in the Arizona desert .
California
In California , Mojave Airport provides similar service for commercial aircraft that have reached the end of their active life. Aircraft have been brought here for decades and stored in the desert until they are scrapped. It is easier to dismantle airplanes than other heavy transports. As the amount of recyclable metals used to build aircraft decreases, the size of graveyards may shrink.
El Pina Air & Space Museum
It’s about a mile from the base. It has a very extensive selection of American and foreign military aircraft, mainly from the USAF in various states of restoration.
Most of the planes in the desert graveyard are from the Vietnam era or later. It is divided into four categories, depending on its possible future use:
- Cat 1000: aircraft preserved with a view to flying again, if international political conditions require it.
- Cat 2000: those that are kept for spare parts, since some parts for old airplanes are not found elsewhere.
- Cat 3000: aircraft that are kept in a ready-to-flight condition, awaiting a possible need.
- Cat 4000: those intended for static displays in museums, as gate guardiansor in squares. The most notable aircraft in the 4000 category are the B-52s , icons of the Cold War. But the vast majority will be sold as scrap material.
Tucson
In the desert Southwest of the United States, huge “graveyards” are home to thousands of disused ships. On the outskirts of the city of Tucson , in the United States , military planes standing still under the hot desert sun are common. That is the signal that one has arrived at the Davis-Monthan air base, which houses some 4,400 aircraft in a space of about 10.5 square kilometers.
In addition to those that can be seen with the naked eye, inside the hangars other planes have been transformed into pieces, waiting to be sent somewhere in the world to form part of another plane .
the largest cemetery
Davis-Monthan is not the only aircraft graveyard in the world, but it is the largest. Arizona’s climatic conditions — dry heat, low humidity, little rain — mean appliances take much longer to rust here than elsewhere.
Airplanes are expensive to build and maintain. Storing them in the kind of hangars needed to keep them warm and dry is expensive: it’s much easier to park them in the Arizona desert. Although planes are idle, some may be required to be airborne again.
conservation tasks
The workers of these cemeteries have an exhaustive list of tasks to complete:
- The aircraft have to be properly washed, so that there are no traces of salt that can contribute to oxidation.
- The fuel tanks must be emptied and bathed with a kind of lubricatingoil .
- Explosive devices, like charges that activate projectable seats, have to be removed.
- Cover any type of pipe or valvewith aluminum tape.
- Paint the planes with an easy-to-remove paint and a coating that helps keep the aircraft from overheating in the sun.
Storage
Devices are stored in different ways:
- Kept almost active in case you have to use them again.
- Partially dismantled.
- As a source of spare parts, and holding your components until they are needed elsewhere
post soviet cemeteries
Vladivostok
In Russia, there are aircraft graveyards containing some of the old Soviet Army aircraft, although here the aircraft are not in working order again. The former Vozdvizhenka base, nearly 100 kilometers north of the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok , used to house supersonic Soviet bombers.
After the end of the Cold War , airplanes were not needed at all. The former secret base now sits abandoned, its rusty planes posing for photographers who arrive on the scene.
Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Another post-Soviet graveyard is the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – the area evacuated after the 1986 nuclear disaster in this region of Ukraine , giant Soviet helicopters are left to the mercy of the elements. BBC photo editor Phil Coomes visited the site in 2006 , on the anniversary of the disaster. Many of the contaminated vehicles used in the cleanup operations were left in huge junkyards in the exclusion zones surrounding the reactor.
Vozdvizhenka
With at least 18 old Tupolev Tu- 22Ms, from the 444th Heavy Bomber Regiment, Vozdvizhenka Air Base resembles a post-apocalyptic landscape. It is this arid place, situated near Ussuriysk in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia’s Far East , 60 miles (95 km) north of Vladivostok and 40 miles (65 km) from the Chinese border , is like giving A step back in time.
The 444th regiment was disbanded in 2009, with a few aircraft moved to the Belaya base, and others decommissioned (engines removed, and with holes in the fuselage).
