Print

[C.W. Herndon]

If you like old aircraft, check this out on Google map or Google Earth at these coordinates:  32.140115, -110.864777. This is the museum at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, the Bone Yard. All kinds of old aircraft parked outside around the museum.

There are also many 100s of other old aircraft waiting to be cut into scrap parked around the base. A very sad place.

[Alan Harris]

If you like old aircraft, check this out on Google map or Google Earth at these coordinates:  32.140115, -110.864777. This is the museum at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, the Bone Yard. All kinds of old aircraft parked outside around the museum.

There are also many 100s of other old aircraft waiting to be cut into scrap parked around the base. A very sad place.

To be picky (I admit it  ) the Pima museum is not part of Davis-Monthan, it is a private operation and gets no government funds.

The Bone Yard of course is a government installation known as the AMARG (309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group).  To each his own; I find it fantastically interesting and not sad at all.  They are not primarily engaged in cutting up aircraft for scrap metal to be sold at pennies for the pound.  They (1) preserve complete aircraft for possible future re-activation and/or sale and (2) "cannibalize" parts to be used on currently active aircraft in US or foreign inventories.  A company I work for has been involved more than once in retrieving aircraft from AMARG and returning them to fully flyable condition.

Civilians drool over some of the stored aircraft that would be attractive personal transport (not combat a/c, obviously: the smaller utility and training types that have FAA Type Certified equivalents).  But the cost of a complete teardown and verification to Type -- as required to get a current FAA Registration other than Experimental -- is normally significantly higher than the market price of a new or used civilian aircraft with similar capability.

[Monte Chalmers]

As Google Earth goes - not so clear a view.  I've noticed this about GE - The picture I get of my house is a lot better than a lot of other places I "visit". Still the coordinates you gave is interesting.  A Peacemaker! (B36 that was replaced by the B52) - right there in the middle of the lot  - That takes me back aways.  Both of them were in service when I was in the USAF.
So, Alan, what I'm looking at is not the Bone Yard?

[Alan Harris]

So, Alan, what I'm looking at is not the Bone Yard?

I am embarrassed to state that I am not a Google Earth person and so I don't know exactly what you're seeing.  The museum is located right next to Davis-Monthan and they cooperate to the extent that the museum can give tours through the actual AMARG except for a couple restricted areas.  The museum claims to have about 300 a/c of its own.

As far as being "in service" when you were, for the B-52 that is true for about 3 generations of fliers, haha.  The stored B-58's are also cool, the entire airplane is stainless steel and so they look pristine, as if they haven't degraded at all.  There was talk of activating some of them during the Viet Nam conflict, but nobody wanted to deal with the vacuum-tube electronics.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

I am embarrassed to state that I am not a Google Earth person and so I don't know exactly what you're seeing.

This is a Google map of the coordinates given above.

To see the airplanes, click on the "Satellite" icon in the upper-right corner of the map.

Airplane Graveyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

[Bruce Thomas]

To see the airplanes, click on the "Satellite" icon in the upper-right corner of the map.

Very interesting!  The closeup picture of the airplanes does not match what you start with.  For instance, starting at 32° 8.320'N 110° 52.114'W places you off the nose of a Lockheed Constellation. 

But zooming in to "see the airplanes" suddenly a Lockheed 10A Electra appears, along with a smaller red two-engine plane with Canadian registration!  And the L10A is N14260, C/N 1011 (once designated as a UC-36A when it saw service during WWII, here it bears a Northwest Airlines symbol on the starboard side).

[Monte Chalmers]

Airplane Graveyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

When I went to your link,  somehow my Google Earth took over - so that I had the original coordinate and those of your link combined.  And no, what I was looking at is not the same location.  All this area combined is HUGE.  I read somewhere once that this area is perfect for open-air storage because the humidity is near zero.  I have been to lots of places in the world - but never this place.  It strikes me looking at this brown  image that it must be difficult to grow anything.  My sister who once moved here because of her husband's ATC work,  said that rain frequently evaperates before it hits the ground!

[Alan Harris]

All this area combined is HUGE.  I read somewhere once that this area is perfect for open-air storage because the humidity is near zero.  I have been to lots of places in the world - but never this place.  It strikes me looking at this brown  image that it must be difficult to grow anything.  My sister who once moved here because of her husband's ATC work,  said that rain frequently evaperates before it hits the ground!

Everything you say there is exactly right, including the reason the area was selected, and the rain sometimes not making it to the ground.  On the other hand, when they do have the (very infrequent) heavy rain, you don't want to be caught in any low spots without a flotation device.  And more generally, you don't want to tour it at any time during the summer unless (a) you've had desert survival training or (b) you are a scorpion or a lizard.   

[Alan Harris]

Davis-Monthan and the AMARG (although the name was different then) have another distinction from the Cold War era, which I am not sure they were pleased about.  Some of the disarmament treaties required the US to physically dismantle and destroy certain nuclear weapons, such as ICBMs and the Army version of the Ground Launched Cruise Missile, and our boys in Tucson got that assignment.  Not a pleasant task, the "destroy" was taken seriously and involved torches, saws, crushers, etc.  Of course satisfying, even laudable, if it made the world safer; but still a twinge as all that tax money and engineering effort went down the crapper.

[C.W. Herndon]

  The stored B-58's are also cool, the entire airplane is stainless steel and so they look pristine, as if they haven't degraded at all.

Do you have anything to back up this statement?

[Alan Harris]

Do you have anything to back up this statement?

Is it controversial?  I worked in the plant that built them (Convair in Ft. Worth, TX).  Admittedly after they were out of production, but I have stood inside the giant autoclave that was used to braze the SS honeycomb to the SS skin.  And I heard countless B-58 (and B-36) stories from the older employees, you may not want to get me started, haha.

A design parameter for the Hustler, which can be viewed as essentially a 4-engine fighter plane, lol, was sustained supersonic flight on the deck = zero feet ASL.  What you get from that is extreme skin heating and big-time vibration.  Aluminum was a non-optimum choice due to low melting point and high probability of fatigue.  At that point in technology, without so many exotic alloy choices and particularly without titanium being readily available, the practical though costly solution was stainless steel.  Don't ask me what alloy because I don't remember.  This must have produced the exact opposite of a stealthy radar signature, but nobody was worrying about that at that time and for that mission.

At the time, if you wanted to set world speed records, the choice was easy: if you're going low, hop in a B-58.  If you prefer the high altitudes, call up the friendly neighborhood SR-71.   

This construction was not unique in the industry, the Soviets arrived at the same conclusion and one of the super-fast Cold War MIGs, I think the Foxbat but not sure, is also a steel airplane.

I have not attempted to search the web for B-58 info, but I assume standard sources like Janes or contemporary issues of "Aviation Week and Space Technology" would confirm what I am saying if you feel the need.

[C.W. Herndon]

Since you seem to think that the B-58 was solid stainless steel, you might want to read this article from Aviation History.com. And this one from air cronicles. As well as this one from Wikipedia.

I could go on but I won't.

[Alan Harris]

I could go on but I won't.

I completely agree "entire" was an exaggeration for casual discussion, mea culpa.  However, it is my understanding that the then-unusual bonding procedures described for the curved sandwich panels, especially with the fiberglass honeycomb, proved somewhat unreliable in practice and additional brazed stainless honeycomb panels beyond those described were incorporated late in development.

(Not that it matters, but the design sections of the article at your second link were clearly copied from the first linked piece, and add no value.)

[C.W. Herndon]

Incidentally, an autoclave is nothing but a specialized oven. They were used to cure the resins used to bond the layers of the "sandwich panels" together. The same procedure is still used to bond the aluminum skin/aluminum honeycomb together in helicopter rotor blades. No brazing is done in an autoclave.

[Alan Harris]

I could go on but I won't.