How The World's Largest Airplane Boneyard Stores 3,100 Aircraft | Big Business

the 309 a mark

stores

the

largest

collection of military

aircraft

in the

world

here in the arizona desert i like to call this the ugliest plane here the yc-14 was a plane that never went into production 800 mechanics work non-stop recovering parts critical and regenerate

aircraft

so they can be returned to service. I can't just stop a plane like you can with a car and we have to make sure these planes are safe to fly. Our goal is not to be like a cemetery for the plane that is a colonel. Barnard has served 25 years as a US Air Force aircraft maintenance officer.

As a commander here I am in charge of the entire operation the assets stored here are worth between 34 and 35 billion dollars if you tried to replace them all it is a large number she took us inside this huge facility to see how these military planes get a second chance at life loving it started in 1946 after

world

war ii the army needed a place to store old planes they chose the air force base davis-monthan here in Tucson, with almost 2,000 football fields of open desert, there was plenty of space. We are known throughout the world as the cemetery.

Our boys are proud to be in charge of the cemetery. Arizona has the perfect climate to store these assets. It's hot. Little rain. There is no humidity. soil that is as hard as concrete so planes don't sink dryness and lack of acidity in the soil prevent corrosion in assets planes come here from the department of defense military other government agencies and foreign allies we have about 3,100 aircraft The aircraft are mostly military, coming from the air force, navy, army and marines. We have more than 80 different types of aircraft here. The planes and helicopters arrive and they are lined up in sections so we are driving down the display row here or the celebrity row as some people call it we have a sense of humor here that is our stealth plane which is actually just the jet from wonder woman the lc130 have skis along with their landing gear so they can land in antarctica and support the national science foundation throughout that continent We are arriving on a NASA plane, it is affectionately called the vomit comet.

Some planes will be here for weeks before being called back into service. Other aircraft may be here for 50 years. Similar to this Skyhawk A4. Each plane goes through a preservation process beforehand. It is placed in the desert, the ones that can fly again are re-preserved every four years, the fuel is removed and then oil is pumped through the engine to preserve it. The black material we have here is the base layer that seals the plane. and then as you can see the rest of the planes around here, the layers on top are white and those white layers will reflect heat to better preserve all the assets inside the plane, like the interior of the galaxy c5a inside The C5 is the

largest

cargo aircraft in the Air Force inventory that I have deployed on these, one of six deployments Colonel Barnard had to Afghanistan, New Zealand and Antarctica, and we can also fit three HH-60 helicopters and much of the equipment we need.

Like all of our maintainers, we have just over 60 here and each of them needs 72 berths. Planes are designed to fly and when it's a little breezy here we want to make sure they stay parked, but not all planes just sit still. around collecting dust, US military units around the world can request specific parts of these aircraft. An

airplane

has so many thousands of parts as a warehouse that holds things in case you need them and then we release what comes out of the warehouse as needed on some of the parts that the military can only find here at amar we are guaranteed that There is a part available when the main sources in the supply system do not obtain it, we ship between four thousand and seven thousand parts each year to the tune of a few million dollars. every week in spares, scott and james are here removing the engines from the back of this t-38 as a recovery effort because they have been asked to return to service, so once the crews recover the parts in the desert and bring them to the end of this building, they wash them, they get a non-destructive inspection and we will pack them up and send them out the door as fast as we can, but sometimes instead of using them for parts, they will regenerate an entire plane, which which means that We will take Him out of the wilderness and wash Him.

We have to remove all the coatings that are used to preserve the plane in the desert. After receiving a good shower, it is fixed. What our team is working on here is the C-130. which has been regenerated for foreign military sales in this hangar the current project we are working on is the F-16 and the post block repair is a package of structural improvements to the aircraft to extend their useful life to fly the unit also handles aircraft modifications these aircraft come from US units that are active right now and then they have some work done on them and they go back to that same unit we can upgrade and modify them to keep them up to date with current standards in the active fleet complicated individual the parts are sent to separate workshops for repair and overhaul here in the wing shop we have all the core parts of the A-10 wings rebuilt here and the outer part rebuilt there there are actually hundreds of parts inside of an

airplane

wing the complexity and level of structure is really eye-opening for many people.

Each set of wings can require up to 20,000 man-hours to overhaul once the parts are repaired. They go through a thorough inspection. We're here in the non-destructive inspection area. Pete's Working with a penetrating fluorescent dye, it's basically a liquid that absorbs into the cracks and we can put a black light on it and you can see there's a crack right here showing up. This crack here in this part of the landing gear could cause a catastrophic failure. On landing, not a single crack in an entire plane can pass through this equipment. We have to make sure these planes are safe to fly to protect that asset and protect the crew that's inside that asset, so the stakes are high.

Once fixed, the planes undergo a rigorous final flight test. Pilot Scott Thompson is testing these regenerated F-16s. I'll take you to the airspace just south of here, close enough that if I have a problem, I can go back underground. We immediately and practically put them through their paces, test the flight controls and handling and damaged performance and all the aircraft systems quite exhaustively at all altitudes, they become large scale aerial targets, which is a happy ending. for a downed plane. from the desert here in amarg, but for other planes this is the end of the line, planes marked with a big d go through pre-demilitarization and then are destroyed by a third-party contractor, so these are guys working the mill and they prepare. planes for disposal and I will move the lever out of the way.

I'm also pretty good at destruction, but you guys are being very careful about it. Planes are demolished for good reason to make sure everything is accounted for and materials and technology don't fall into the wrong hands, although some Americans may not have heard of bitter. It actually saves taxpayers a lot of money. The assets stored here are worth between 34 and 35 billion dollars, so create a new one. It may not be possible, instead of rejuvenating an old one, it could be the best case scenario, but for the workers it is not only about saving the military some money, but also about giving another life to these planes.

Many of these planes have not flown in a long time. I once flew many of them operationally in the past, it's great to get back on them and bring them back to life. These planes have many stories to tell and it is wonderful to spend time with them and think that there are very few of them. For us military members who are lucky enough to be assigned here, it is a pleasure to be able to work with these people every day and be around these planes.