AMARG - Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ (WEST Side)

Matthew Clements · Post by **Matthew Clements** » 04 Dec 2007, 16:08

Hello Everyone,
I Recently returned from a 2 week trip to the West Coast, Here are a few images taken around DM, the images are of the West side of the Huge Storage Facility, I will post The East side of the Facility and some more Aerial shots later on:

On the last photo, you can see the two 21st SOS MH-53s from Mildenhall 69-5795 & 69-5796 on the Visitors ramp, awaiting Storage.

Hope they have been of Intrest.

Cheers,
Matt

warthog64 · Post by **warthog64** » 04 Dec 2007, 16:36

Saw then also at UKAR,
Brings back memories from my trip in March..
Very nice Matthew!

Thermal · Post by **Thermal** » 04 Dec 2007, 16:51

Nice pics....like the arial shots. Did you make them flying overthere or did you actually make a flight over the facilities?

Keeps hurting seeing those beautiful planes like that.

Realy unbelievable how much hardware the US has stored there.

Hans.Jacobs · Post by **Hans.Jacobs** » 05 Dec 2007, 01:14

kinda like it that they dont scrap them. everyone knows that these planes (99.99% of them) will never fly again. So storing them is fairly useless, if not for nostalgia. Hope they'll be preserved there forever and most of them will find a nice home in a museum somewhere. Some of them were sold in the past to air forces abroad. However, dont think anyone will buy a B-52 or a F-14 squadron... Nice pics!

Erik_7Xi · Post by **Erik_7Xi** » 05 Dec 2007, 01:19

Storing them in a secure and monitored location will cost a lot of money for sure.. but it will also prevent from F-14 parts "disappearing" and making their way to Iran.

Although they manage to keep some of them airworthy, I can imagine that they must be desperate for shipments of real, factory produced Tomcat parts!

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 05 Dec 2007, 13:56

This may be a stupid question, but why do they store these aircraft? I know the F14 is out of service, but there are plenty of aircraft of which I can't think of a reason to store them. Like for instance the 21st SOS MH-53's (one of these particular 2 came to Soesterberg this summer, was my first spotting experience!)

evhest · Post by **evhest** » 05 Dec 2007, 14:22

AMARC is not only about storage. These guys retrieve a lot of spare parts of the stored aircraft and sell them to foreign air forces or other US services.

Al lot of aircraft are in flyable storage, which means they may fly again, but probably never will. Hoever, there are also many planes missing all kind of parts. These will never fly again for sure.

And yes, it is a great place. I scored some 1500 aircraft there in one day, back in october 2000.

ehusmann · Post by **ehusmann** » 05 Dec 2007, 15:17

Hanz wrote:kinda like it that they dont scrap them. everyone knows that these planes (99.99% of them) will never fly again. So storing them is fairly useless, if not for nostalgia. Hope they'll be preserved there forever and most of them will find a nice home in a museum somewhere. Some of them were sold in the past to air forces abroad. However, dont think anyone will buy a B-52 or a F-14 squadron... Nice pics!

Don´t forget it is also meant for returning them to the air in case of a major war. Now that might seem only a very remote possibility (and it probably is), but it is still far cheaper than maintaining a very huge air force, or building the planes when you actually do need them. It is like backing up your pictures. You probably never need it, but still you do it (well, most people anyway).

But for the pictures, always nice to see them. I wasn´t aware so many Herculeses were already stored.

Erwin

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