Old Aircraft New Aircraft

Yesterday, since we were in Tucson, was spent looking round the Pima Air and Space Museum which is a mile or so from I-10, adjoining the Davis-Monthan Airforce Base and just 12 miles from where we were staying. Again, like a lot of similar displays in the US, this one seems to be dependent on enthusiastic volunteers - in this case retired flyers - who meet and greet you both as you go into the museum and as you move around it. From the lady and gentleman standing in the shade of a tree next to the car park, through to the driver on a tram tour we took around the outside exhibits, everyone was knowledgeable and helpful - whether you wanted them to be or not. But the most memorable was a volunteer just inside the first hanger who had on a name badge 'Marty Klintman'. "Just call me Marty" who had a strong New York/Brooklyn accent (he was surprised that two 'foreigners' noticed it) and had been a 19 year old flier with the USAAF in 1943/1944 when he was posted to an air base outside London. This 83 year old still had fond memories of the fun he had had in wartime London and when prompted remembered with a very large grin the even better times he had in Paris after the Liberation. We decided not to ask him exactly what he meant by fun but we were sure that a nice boy from Brooklyn could never have had the 'overpaid, over sexed, over here' epithet attached to him.

The museum is a series of display galleries - some hangers and some not - showing part of the history of flight from the 1930s into the 1950s with of course the almost obligatory Wright Flyer replica hanging from a cross beam. A further display of probably 150 to 200 aircraft both, large and small, from the 40s up to the 90s is set out each with its own name plaque and description on the desert outside the hangers. While it was interesting to start with, the sensible in the 100F+ heat tram ride round these exhibits eventually it even glazed us over with 'is there more to life than this' as the admittedly very knowledgeable driver reeled off details of the different Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps designations for different variants of this or that fighter, bomber, electrical intervention, submarine hunter.....etc. parked up against the background of the Catalina Mountains and a cloudless blue sky.
We also decided that while we were in Pima County we would go on the tour of something called the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMRG) which is part of the next door air force base. Because this is an active base we had to show photo ID - in our case passports - before we could book on the tour and this ID was rechecked before our bus left the Pima Air and Space Museum. A 5 minute journey to the gate house then a short ride onto the base gave us a very eery 50 minutes or so experience. Question: you are the US Government and you have spent and are still spending billions upon billions of US tax payer dollars on aircraft . What do you do with those same aircraft when they reach the end of their useful life? Why, you fly them to AMRG of course. Rows and rows of bombers, fighters, interceptors, transport aircraft, helicopters are set out across acres and acres of desert all in differing states of apparent repair or disrepair. So why Davis-Monthan as the site for AMRG? The greatest enemy for aircraft is corrosion. With fairly constant hot or very hot temperatures in Tucson and an average rainfall of on 12 inches a year, deterioration of the aircraft can be kept to a minimum. Also, a couple of inches or so below the dust layer on the desert floor is a hard stable rocklike platform so no need to spend money on tarmac and runways; just fly your aircraft in, park it and leave it. But what happens to the aircraft once they are parked up in the desert? They are recycled for spare parts for future use or for scrap. Two examples: the first, A-10 tank buster and ground attack aircraft. Three rows of this plane on the left side of the bus are in differing stages of disassembly. The aircraft manufacturer has a facility on the base to remove wings from aircraft that have reached their maximum number of flying hours, to refurbish and rejig those same wings and to reuse them on other airframes to make 'new' A-10s. The second, an almost unending expanse of about 400 F-4 Phantoms stretches out on both sides of the road. Five or six 'new' Phantoms arrive each week to go through another recycling process. The aircraft are de-fuelled, washed, protective panels fitted over delicate canopy components to preserve cockpit instruments and for some, they are used as sources of spare parts. The majority though are recycled by a team of British Aerospace employees who upgrade the electronics of each aircraft so that they will be ready for their final purpose. Once a team of test pilots have checked out each aircraft they are flown to the White Sands testing ground in New Mexico to be used as unmanned drones for missile tests. Each aircraft has an expected life of five flights before a missile destroys it and the economics of the system is that it is cheaper to reuse old Phantoms than to produce new drones. It is still a strange experience though to be bussed around the base while Phantoms fly over at moderate speed. Reminiscent of 1973?
At a distance we were shown where the US is literally cutting up its nuclear bomber capability as part of the non-proliferation treaty agreement with the Russian Federation. A huge 5000lb blade is suspended over a bomber, its wings are cut off and its fuselage is cut into three pieces.The pieces are left on the desert floor until either a satellite or physical inspection by Russia confirms that the aircraft has been destroyed.
Another part of the base we were not driven to but which we saw from a distance was a mass of white packing cases disappearing into a desert distance. This is the US store of tools and dies that can be used to make parts for nearly any aircraft that the US military flies. Manufacturers deposit the machines and tools at AMRG for the same reason that aircraft are left there. Constant temperatures and little corrosion coupled with a 'no cost' storage of inventory. If a part that cannot be recycled is needed, yet another facility on the base just goes into the desert, selects the necessary machinery and tools and manufactures the part on site.
The claim from AMRG is that for every tax dollar spent maintaining the site, the US taxpayer gets back 10 dollars in savings on parts and recycled aircraft. Who am I to disagree?