Why Thousands of Aircraft are Abandoned in the Arizona Desert

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It is without a doubt that the United States of America, in this current day and age, has the largest, most advanced and most powerful military on the planet. But given that the US is constantly developing new aircraft to full specific roles, making older aircraft obsolete, what happens to these old planes? Once a particular type of plane is no longer needed as a newer and more advanced model has come to take its place, where do the old ones go? Across the country, there are locations known as airplane graveyards where these aircraft go to be either scrapped, sold, maintained or just kept dormant. However, the most famous and the largest of these complexes is the Airplane Graveyard at the Davis-Monthan Base in Tucson, Arizona, which is commonly known as the Boneyard. At this location, there are thousands of planes stationed here, with many of them at their final resting place. The Tucson Boneyard is also a massive tourist attraction and even a pop culture icon, featuring in several popular movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Can't Buy Me Love, both of which were filmed on location. But how did the Tucson Boneyard become so crucial to American aircraft disposal and what types of planes have been stored here in the past or there currently?

Video
0:00 Where Do Old Airplanes Go to die?
1:34 How the Tucson Graveyard Grew to the Size it is Today
7:29 What Happens to Planes When They Arrive at the Tucson Boneyard?
10:41 The B-29 Superfortress – The Bomber that Ended WWII
12:53 The B-36 Peacemaker – The First Bomber of the Nuclear Age
14:02 B-52 – The Most Iconic Bomber in American Military History
14:58 F-4 Phantom – One of the Longest Serving Fighter Planes
16:41 The F-14 Tomcat – Top Gun’s Most Famous Fighter Plane
19:03 The Tucson Boneyard, a Marvel of Aviation History

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Scriptwriter - Brandon Evans,
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» SOURCES
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Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content. Events of factual error / mispronounced word/spelling mistakes - retractions will be published in this section.

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