In 1979,
when we were at school, the film ‘Ninaithale Inikkum’ directed by K
Balachandar, starring Kamal Rajni, Jayapradha opened with rave reviews. The story moves to Singapore and my friends
remarked that aeroplane taking off is being shown and great one at that. Those were the days, when most had never seen
a plane closer.
Davis–Monthan Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located
within the city limits of downtown Tucson, Arizona. It was established in 1925
as Davis-Monthan Landing Field. The base has been named in honour of World War
I pilots Lieutenants Samuel H. Davis and Oscar Monthan (1885–1924), both Tucson
natives. Davis, who attended the University of Arizona prior to enlisting in
the Army in 1917, died in a Florida aircraft accident in 1921. Monthan enlisted
in the Army as a private in 1917, later became a pilot; he was killed in the crash
of a Martin bomber in Hawaii in 1924.
Away from
air, looking at the sea, the sight
of a very large vessel floating on water, carrying goods from one place to
another offers imagination beyond dreams. Man has conquered the ocean sailing
across with the aid of ships and boats which developed alongside mankind.
Vessels have borne the key in history’s greatest explorations. The cargo - from
slaves to modern day containers, dry and wet, live, frozen and refrigerated,
big machineries, bulk cargo, liquid cargo – the variety is endless. But just as most things have a shelf life,
ships also have a limited span of life. These vessels who have outlived its
existence are sold and dismantled to recover the valuable steel – that is all
about ‘ship breaking’ at yards where the majestic creature gets reduced to a
skeleton and eventually wiped out of existence.
It is
written that down South Kolb Road in the Arizona city of Tucson, just like one sees concrete structures on any
modern city, one would find rows of military aircraft, still and silent, spread
out under the baking desert sun. On and on, everything from enormous cargo
lifters to lumbering bombers, Hercules freighters and the F-14 Tomcat fighters
made famous in Top Gun ~ and that is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, run by the
309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG). It’s home to
some 4,400 aircraft, arranged over nearly 2,600 acres (10.5 sq km). Some look
like they were parked only a few hours ago, others are swathed in protective
coverings to keep out the sand and dust.
….. and the
reason for they being there inside the facilities' hangars – stand reduced to
crates of spare parts waiting to be sent
out to other bases in the US or across the world to help other aircraft take to
the air again. ….. they call it ‘boneyard’. Davis-Monthan is not the only aircraft
boneyard in the world; it is by far the biggest. The climatic conditions in
Arizona – dry heat, low humidity, little rain – mean aircraft take a lot longer
to rust and degrade.
A BBC report puts it that another post-Soviet boneyard
is in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – the area evacuated after the 1986 nuclear
disaster in Ukraine. The vehicles used to help clean up the disaster area were
contaminated with radiation. A line of giant Soviet helicopters has been left
to rust in the fields. BBC News pictures editor Phil Coomes visited the site in
2006, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster. “After the nuclear accident at
Chernobyl, many of the contaminated vehicles used in the clean-up operation
were placed in graveyards in the vast exclusion zone around the reactor. Though they remain at the largest graveyard, souvenir
hunters would be wise to keep away as there could be still contamination from
radiation. Despite the danger of
radiation poisoning, many of the helicopters have been stripped of useful
parts; their skeletal remains dwindle with every passing year. In eastern California, Mojave Airport carries
out a similar role for civilian aircraft that have reached the end of their
operational lives. Airliners have been flown here for decades, and stored in
the dry desert heat until broken up for scrap.
Aircraft
boneyard (Aircraft graveyard) is a term for a storage area for aircraft that
are retired from service. Most aircraft at boneyards are either kept for
storage or turned into scrap metal. Deserts, such as those in the Southwestern
United States, are good locations for boneyards since the dry conditions reduce
corrosion. It could be surrealistic view
to see so many aircrafts lined up in one place, factual is that those aircrafts
constructed spending thousands of dollars are idling with no productive
use.
As it turns out, the airline industry goes in cycles.
The boneyards first filled up after WWII when the military downsized and
converted to jet aircraft. The next wave
of idle planes happened during the oil crisis in 1974. With the travel shock of the 1991 Gulf War, thousands
of airliners were sent to the desert. The
9/11 attack and continued terrorist
threats, high cost of fuel, and passenger concern, the boneyards continued to
fill up. Ironically, some aircraft that
were on order as of 9/11 were rolled off of the assembly line, and flown
directly to storage in Mojave without carrying a single paying passenger.
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
25th Sept. 2014
Many thanks to BBC from which
most of boneyard report is reproduced.
No comments:
Post a Comment