The Boneyard is another name for AMARG’s (the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group) facility beside Davis Monthan Airforce Base, acres and acres of planes and helicopters in short term and long term storage, where many of them come to die. They are cannibalized for parts (why is that all of the terminology serves to make them seem human?), and there are rows of motors and wings and engines separated from the hulking metal bodies that yielded them. I don’t know that pictures can give any sense of the scale, but here are a few:
It is run by the Department of Defense, which made it impossible to walk around, you have to board a bus showing picture ID, and only gaze longingly at the close up shots and perspectives that might have been possible as you drive slowly by. Why do I love the twisted ruins of metal so much? There are lines of helicopters stretching into the distance, they remove the rotors for storage
Of the planes stored here, 60% are capable of being brought back into shape for flying within weeks, 35% shall almost certainly fly again, the rest look forward to a slow protracted death or a sale to one of our allies…the Australians for instance, are still enamoured of certain fighter jets that the Americans have left for younger, newer models. The guide was an old Vietnam Vet, he pointed out the bombers that the Iranians still have…all grounded for lack of parts but will we be sharing ours? Never, and one of the passengers in the back gave a good American yeah at that. We saw the models of helicopter our guide had piloted back in Nam, the kind of plane that McCain was shot down in over the jungle (oohhs for that), the kind of plan that transferred him away from captivity. We saw the bombers built to carry 18 cruise missiles at once, there are wheels on the ends of the wings to keep them from dragging along the ground during takeoff because of the weight. We saw sub-sonic and super-sonic jets, jets with nuclear capabilities…most of them were on the right side of the bus and I was…on the left. There were great gaps however, of planes called up I imagine, and in service to do what they were built to do half a world away. And the stealth bomber was also missing.
Acres of brilliantly fascinating metal, feats of engineering, and death. They were all built to strafe the enemy, drop bombs, blow up submarines, kill. They are protected from the blistering heat of the Arizona sun with layers of latex regularly removed and replaced; they are serviced by a small army of workers. And there is a strange sort of beauty to them
I suppose it comes partly from the beauty of their surroundings on fields of gold and brown with the mountains rising up blue behind them and a vast sky overhead, they are so far removed from their consequences and their meaning. Even bombs can somehow seem innocuous and…interesting. Amazing that such a small casing of metal can hold such a wealth of pain and loss inside of them. And they are are there at the entrance to the Pima Air Museum so you can walk around them, touch them, admire them.
And part of me can understand the enthusiasm of the other passengers, I am on the same bus, marvelling at what human kind has accomplished. It is our purpose that I find devastating.
In the parking lot we saw a javelina, a lone one, seperated from it’s pack
It didn’t hurry away, it didn’t even bother to notice us. I have seen many in the wild, one particularly close when it charged after my dog and straight at me, I have never known them comfortable at all in the presence of people. It was rather bewildering, and I wonder how this one arrived here in the middle of army service personnel, electrified fences, acres of metal…