The Boneyard: World's 'biggest' plane cemetery up close
Spread across the huge 2,600 acre site, equivalent in size to 1,430 football pitches, is a collection of over 4,000 retired aircraft including nearly every plane the US armed forces have flown since World War II.
Among the aircraft are B-52 Cold War-era bombers that were retired in the 1990s. Also, on show are dozens of F-14 fighter planes which were retired from the US Navy in 2006 and featured in the Hollywood movie, Top Gun.
The Boneyard has also featured in a series of films, the most recent being Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Location - In Tucson, Arizona, on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, the facility was first set up shortly after World War II.
Climate - It was chosen for its high altitude and arid conditions, that mean the aircraft can be left outdoors without deteriorating too quickly.
A major industrial centre, AMARG manages an inventory of more than 4,200 aircraft and 40 aerospace vehicles.
In addition to being a massive plane park, AMARG also refurbishes aircraft, returning them to flying status or preparing them to be transported overland.
The Mojave Airport Boneyard
Driving across California’s high desert, the airliner boneyard at Mojave airport is visible from miles away. The long rows of faded tails seem to stretch to the horizon. Many of the planes are parked in long-term storage, reminders of economic downturns and now defunct airlines, but many more of the worn out, partially cannibalized and obsolete planes will never fly again. Over the past 30 years, Mojave Airport has become the final resting place for over a thousand of the world’s aircraft.
When airliners reach the end of their operational lifetimes (usually about 20 to 25 years) they make their last flight to places like Mojave (or Kingman, Tucson and Marana, Arizona) to be stored and stripped of their parts, keeping more recently manufactured versions of that plane flying. As entire series of planes are retired, these storage facilities become junkyards. Scrap companies buy the superseded old airframes and drag them to a remote corner of the airport to chop them up, and melt them down.
