If you want to see some more, rent the film Baraka. There is a series of shots there. I think the shots may have been reused in the Beastie Boys video for "Somethings Got to Give."

I think a new print of Baraka is making the rounds of art house theaters. It will be at Cinema 21 in Portland OR sometime in January. Well worth seeing on the big screen.

The boneyard is also in the genre film "World Gone Wild" from the late '80s. Here is the comment I posted at MeFi in this same thread:

"I've mentioned this in another thread, but I was an extra in an '80s Road Warrior style rip-off with Adam Ant and Bruce Dern called World Gone Wild, which was filmed mostly in the AMARC. I haven't watched it in years, but there are some pretty cool shots of a bunch of post-apocalyptic ruffians running around with choir boy outfits riding dirt-bikes, chanting to Adam Ant as their leader in the midst of the hulking wreckage of these military aircraft. Possibly worth a look if you want to see this stuff in a cinematic (I use the term loosely) setting."

More colour pictures of the boneyard at the official web page:

http://www.dm.af.mil/AMARC/aerial_gallery.html

PURGATORY: Thousands of decommissioned aircraft sit in an Arizona dessert awaiting their fate.

Dali would've loved that image. A giant strawberry shortcake, maybe?

Edited by author 01-06-2003 11:45 PM
I lived in Tucson for almost 10 years during the 80's and on two occasions had a chance to tour the place. The nice thing about these tours is you have an almost complete reign of the place. I took the oppurtunity to crawl into old U2's, B-52, and Koren War fighters.

The stangest part of my experience was watching all of these british "geeks" spend the entire time doing nothing else but tabulating all of the planes into their tape recorders.

The second time I went I wandered the entire place listening to the old industrial band Throbbing Gristle on my headset while stoned. It proved to me the most "industrial" thing I could do at the time. Very strange, but lots and lots of fun.

Planet P: http://planetp.cc/

Edited by author 01-07-2003 02:51 AM
I've heard that the aircraft were purposely placed in plain view for Soviet spy satellites, whether as a show of force or as a show of that force having been mothballed. Of course, economically speaking, you can't house them all in hangars, and it's cheap insurance not to destroy them for scrap: there's reason enough for the way they're arranged without considering Soviet viewability.

Still, I've never been able to get over the similarity between that idea and the Union and Confederate troops being able to see each other's campfires the night before a battle. "Sleep well, we'll kill each other in the morning."

(later) Oh, hey, Foo, dig the notice in red at the bottom of the page at http://www.dm.af.mil/AMARC/info_guides.html.

Edited by author 01-07-2003 07:23 AM
Well I guess I'm johnny on the spot as I live in Tucson :-)

There are SEVERAL, not one, bone yards at Davis-Monthan AF base here, the one's they DON'T let you wander through freely on tours have aircraft that are still mostly functional, like rows of A-10's with meticulous dust-tight shrouds covering all of the engine and other intakes, so they can be put back into service quickly if need be...cheaper to semi-mothball excess older planes than keep them in continuous repair...mostly a staffing cost issue I hear. (My fiancee was an AF brat, her dad was an accountant at DM back in the day when she lived on base).

I heard that last time they dusted off any was Gulf War I, which is how the locals knew that Iraq was in the shit for real, and haven't heard if they've brought any back into service yet during the current buildup...during the Clinton era you could tell we were serious about silliness in the Balkans when the A-10's flying over town had been re-painted to more marine-like color schemes from their default dark green a few weeks before stuff hit the news that we'd "finally decided" to start attacks.

I'll have to ask some of the AF geeks at the local espresso bar near my place if they're doing that, although with the advent of JDAM's I'm not too sure they'll need to.....