Airplanes on the Khodynka field. The largest airplane cemetery. Aircraft storage conditions

Stores a large number of very interesting things on its territory. For example, 5,000 abandoned airplanes, which are parked neatly and in a row between cacti and among the sand.

This place is the largest cemetery in the world. Shall we go for a walk?

Although the planes were abandoned a long time ago and do not fly, they are located on the territory of the American Air Force base called Davis-Monthan, which is located in the Arizona town of Tucson. It is very difficult to get inside - all the planes are surrounded by a fence.

In this place, only military aircraft live out their term and rot. Since the end of the Second World War, decommissioned, but not destroyed, aircraft have been concentrated in this area, in the desert, at an Air Force base. That's why such a large number has accumulated.

The base itself was founded in 1925, and the name of this base is in honor of military pilots who served in the First World War - Oscar Monten and Samuel Davis.

The base was expanded by 1940, while another world war was raging in Europe. In this place they began to train crews intended for bombers. When the war ended, in 1945, the training base was closed, and it was used as a cemetery for combat aircraft that were no longer needed today. The local dry climate and hard soil make it possible to preserve aircraft well over time.

And very soon the training center had to be formed again. The Cold War ensued, and the military had to declare a stable military readiness that lasted for almost forty years.

In this place, combat units for strategic aviation were formed, as well as special groups of technicians ready to put old aircraft into action.

End of the Cold War

In the fifties, two Boeing B-29Superfortress aviation groups were based in this place, and in the sixty-third - LookheedU-2 spy planes. In addition, not far from this area there were 18 missile silos.

When the Cold War was over, stable combat readiness for such a number of aircraft again became unnecessary. The planes rusted and grew old.

Some wanted to repaint it, re-equip it again and use it specifically for the needs of civilian aviation, but something didn’t work out.

With the advent of the Internet, people began to learn about the base beyond the borders of Arizona, as well as America. Besides. Russian aviation enthusiasts were also able to get to the Google images, and they declassified most of the interesting aircraft models that no one had even heard of at one time.

Even though all this huge number aircraft that stand in the desert and create a cemetery cannot be called completely abandoned. The Americans managed to create a good business out of this.

The Davis-Monthan base is home to the 309th DoD Group, which employs approximately 500,000 people to repair aircraft.

Every year approximately 400 new technical units appear at the base. To prevent the cemetery from expanding to fill half the state, approximately the same number of aircraft are sold to friendly but poor states or destroyed.

According to the Strategic Arms Reduction Agreement (START), which was signed between America and Russia, 365 Boeing B-2Stratofortress bombers were destroyed at this location.

All aircraft that arrive for preservation at the Davis-Monthan base are subject to a scrupulous inspection, weapons are dismantled from there, as well as all sensitive equipment, and the fuel systems are drained and pumped with oil.

Sales of aircraft

The entire fleet of equipment is divided into 4 groups: short-term and long-term conservation (combat-capable equipment is acceptable), equipment intended for sale and donor aircraft. Sometimes non-flying military equipment is included in the sales category. For example, last year, combat Hummers, which were not used but had been decommissioned according to their age, were brought to this place.

The management of the base decided to sell them on the Internet, but they bought only a few units - this car is completely unsuitable for civilian life and therefore they die in captivity: the fuel consumption is very high, the interior is uncomfortable, the gearbox is manual.

In addition, this site is today considered a tourist site.

The aircraft cemetery, according to official data, is called the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. Currently, there are more than 40 spacecraft and 4,200 aircraft located here.

For 80% of aircraft, this area is their final resting place, a giant steel graveyard containing more than 350,000 units that could be claimed by the government at any time.

In 2005, Group 309 specialists were able to recycle more than 19,000 parts with a total value of $568 million. The American government provides the opportunity for other countries to buy both spare parts and entire aircraft directly from the aircraft cemetery.

It should be noted that aircraft are also repaired in this place, and after that the part can be returned to service. That's why every American taxpayer dollar invested in AMARG will return $11 to America's government treasury! According to experts, over the past 25 years, every 5th aircraft located on the territory of this cemetery was returned to service.

This cemetery is not considered to be the owner of these aircraft. All of them, as before, belong to the property of the American army, as well as government agencies. In addition, it is interesting to note that in this cemetery there are both working aircraft and non-working aircraft.

Every plane someday lands and then fails to take off. The age of winged machines is relatively short, and their end is all the sadder: created to fly, they, even dilapidated, yearn for the sky. IT.TUT.BY has selected seven of the most interesting aircraft graveyards.

Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Almost 30 years ago, life left this city. Abandoned houses and empty hospitals indicate that civilization, alas, is not omnipotent. Most of The equipment used to eliminate the disaster itself became a source of radiation and was left here. These helicopters will never fly again, and their remains contain deadly radiation.

Khodynka, Frunze Central Airfield, Moscow.

Built over 100 years ago, this airfield is now abandoned. The last aircraft, the anti-submarine Il-28SD for the Indian Navy, took off from this airfield on July 3, 2003, after which the facility was closed. The remains of the runway were littered with decommissioned planes and helicopters. Initially, it was planned to organize the “Museum of Aviation on Khodynskoye Field,” but something did not work out, and the unguarded exhibition eventually turned into an aircraft cemetery.

California aviation warehouse

Why this particular place? It's simple: dilapidated planes located here are often used as sets for filming various films and TV series. This place has become a cult not only for aviation enthusiasts, who are allowed into the territory for a reasonable fee, but also for film buffs.

Davis-Monthan Air Base, the world's most expensive aircraft graveyard

The world's most expensive aircraft cemetery is located in Arizona, its area reaches 6,500 hectares. There are 40 spacecraft and more than 4,000 military and civilian aircraft deteriorating here. However, not all aircraft are permanently parked here; there are also those who stayed for a while: aviation cemetery It is also used as a free parking lot. According to experts, the total price of all objects located here is about $35 billion. The film "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" was filmed here.

Aircraft Graveyard in the Mojave Desert

One of the largest collections of aircraft scrap metal is located southeast of the intersection of US Highways 14 and 58, in the Mojave Desert region. Most of the planes here are in poor condition: they have no engines, no wings, most just look like piles of twisted metal.

Pinal Airpark Airport, Marana, Arizona, USA

The main reason for the existence of this place is to store abandoned commercial airliners. As they say local residents, if Boeing retired, this is where it would end up. About 840 hectares of area are allocated for parking.

Private collection of Walter Soplat

American Walter Soplata bought about 50 engines and 30 aircraft from World War II during his life. After his death in 2010, his relatives decided to keep the expensive collection a secret so that it would not be looted. About an unusual abandoned aviation museum located in the woods near the town of Newbury, Ohio, it became known relatively recently.

Denis Aldokhin/photo smugmug.com, IT.TUT.BY

The Arizona desert holds a lot of interesting things. For example, five thousand abandoned airplanes parked neatly and in a row among sand and cacti.

This is the world's largest cemetery for old aircraft. Shall we take a walk?

1. Although the planes are abandoned and have not flown for a long time, they are located on the territory of the US Air Force base "Davis-Monthan" in the Arizona city of Tucson. All planes are fenced off and it is almost impossible to get inside.

2. America is not Russia, there are no leaky fences here, but if you try to drive around the perimeter of the territory, there is a chance to find what you are looking for.

3. Only military aircraft rot and live out their lives here. Starting from the Second World War, all decommissioned but not collapsed aircraft were brought here, to the desert, to the Air Force base. So it has accumulated.

4. The base itself was founded in 1925, and received its name in honor of two military pilots of the First World War - Samuel Davis and Oscar Montaigne.

5. The base was expanded by 1940, when another world war was already raging in Europe. At this base they began to train crews for bombers. After the end of the war, in 1945, the training base was closed and it was decided to use the place as a cemetery for now unnecessary combat aircraft. The local dry climate and hard soil provide ideal preservation for aircraft for a long time.

6. But soon the training center had to be formed again. The Cold War began and the military had to declare constant combat readiness, which lasted almost forty years.

7. Combat units of strategic aviation and a special group of technicians settled here, ready to reactivate old aircraft.

8. Since the early fifties, two Boeing B-29 Superfortress air groups were based here, and from the sixty-third - Lookheed U-2 spy planes. Also somewhere in the vicinity there were 18 missile silos located.

9. The Cold War is over and constant combat readiness for so many aircraft has again become unnecessary. The planes were getting old and rusting. they didn't have enough

10. Some of them thought of repainting, refurbishment and use for needs civil aviation, but it didn’t work out that way.

11. When the Internet appeared, the base became widely known outside of Arizona and America. Russian aviation enthusiasts also got to Google's images, declassifying many interesting aircraft models that no one had even heard of before.

12. Although all these thousands and thousands of planes standing in the middle of the desert form a cemetery, they cannot be called completely abandoned. The Americans managed to make a profitable business out of this.

13. The Davis-Monthan base is occupied by the 309th group of the US Department of Defense, which employs approximately five thousand people engaged in aircraft repair.

14. Every year about 400 new units of equipment appear at the base. To prevent the cemetery from expanding into half the state, approximately the same number of aircraft are sold to friendly but poor countries or destroyed.

15. Under the Strategic Arms Reduction Agreement (START), signed between the United States and Russia, 365 Boeing B-2 Stratofortress bombers were destroyed here.

16. Each aircraft entering storage at the Davis-Monthan base undergoes a thorough inspection, weapons and sensitive equipment are removed from it, and the fuel systems are drained and pumped with oil.

17. The entire fleet of equipment can be divided into four groups: long-term and short-term conservation (potentially combat-ready equipment), donor aircraft and equipment for sale. Sometimes the non-flying one ends up in the last category. military equipment. For example, last year we brought here unused, but decommissioned military Hummers due to age.

18. The base management decided to sell them via the Internet, but only a few units were purchased - these cars are not suitable for civilian life and die in captivity: fuel consumption is very high, the interior is uncomfortable, manual transmission. For some reason I remembered with what frenzy my compatriots rush at decommissioned military UAZs and BRDMs. Although it’s not surprising, there are almost no shitholes in America where a more or less decent SUV from a car dealership won’t pass.

19. But America knows how to do business: for every dollar spent on maintaining an airplane cemetery and aircraft repair team, the air base earns 11.

20.

21.

22.

No one planned to create an airplane cemetery almost in the center of Moscow.
The intentions were the best - in 1989 they decided to create Aviation and Space Museum. In 1991, the first aircraft appeared here. But, probably, in the 90s, everyone had no time for museums and the planes were very quickly stolen, dented and covered with ugly graffiti. And what remained turned into “toilets” and shelters.

2. For a very long time, the fate of the aircraft could not be decided since they were in the department of the Ministry of Defense. Even after it became obvious to everyone that no museum would ever appear on Khodynka, it was easier to turn a blind eye to the problem than to find a solution.

3. This weekend I learned from the “museum” security guard that all planes will be removed from Khodynka this month. Fortunately, not to a landfill or scrap metal.

4. The exhibits will be transferred for storage to the private museum of technology of Vadim Zadorozhny. Although it will not be possible to see the restored aircraft any time soon, they say the restoration may take several years.

5. I advise you to use the last opportunity to visit the Khodynskoye field. Makes you think about our Motherland in particular.

6. Looking at what was left of the planes, it was difficult for me to believe that at one time they all arrived at the last parking lot under their own power.

7. Most likely, everything that was of any value had already been stolen, but nevertheless, I saw a couple of young guys with a screwdriver who were trying to open the locked cabins of the planes.

8.

9.

10. MiG-21. I don’t know the rest of the models, if anyone knows, please sign up.

11.

12.

13. Su-15? Among the exhibits is a Su-15, which in 1983 shot down a South Korean Boeing along with its passengers.

14.

15. The IL-14 burned down in 2009 due to a homeless person who unsuccessfully lit a fire in it.

16.

17. I asked the guys what they were filming. They said that it was a photo session for some magazine and that they didn’t know what would happen yet, but definitely something awesome.

18. "MAX"

19. Planes are rotting behind a sagging fence. on the wings, a photographer is photographing guys in high heels, and nearby someone is giving a test drive of his brand new Porsche 911. Khodynskoe field is a kind of illustration of our country.

Illustration copyright USAF

Where do decommissioned planes go? The correspondent talks about the huge “cemeteries” in the desert in the southwestern United States, where thousands of aircraft found their final refuge.

Driving along South Kolb Road through Tucson, Arizona, you see an unusual landscape: a row of houses gives way to rows of American military aircraft, silently stretched out under the scorching desert sun. There is everything here: from giant cargo planes to clumsy bombers, military transport “Hercules” and jet fighter-interceptors F-14 “Tomcat”, known to viewers from the Hollywood action movie “Top Gun”.

This is the US Air Force Base Davis-Monthan, where the 309th Aerospace Repair and Maintenance Group is stationed. Here, on an area of ​​10.5 square kilometers, about 4,400 aircraft live out their lives. Some of them look as if they just returned from a flight just hours ago, some are covered with covers to protect them from sand and dust, and some are dismantled for parts that are waiting in hangars to be sent to other air bases in the United States or abroad and help existing aircraft take to the skies again. Airbase employees jokingly call it a “dump of bones” - quite in the spirit of the folklore traditions of the Wild West that developed in the early days of Arizona.

Davis-Monthan is not the only one, but undoubtedly the largest aircraft graveyard in the world. Climatic conditions in Arizona, dry heat, low humidity and little precipitation help keep airplanes from rusting and breaking down longer.

In addition, under the soil at a depth of 15 centimeters there is a layer of clay nitrate. As the 309th Maintenance and Maintenance Group explains, thanks to this extremely hard “substrate,” aircraft can be parked right in the desert without having to build special, expensive platforms for them.

Illustration copyright USAF Image caption Decommissioned aircraft as a warehouse for spare parts...

Aircraft are very expensive to produce and operate, but they can provide benefits even after their flying career ends. However, storing departed vehicles in dry and warm hangars requires a lot of space and money. It's much cheaper to keep them in conditions like Tucson. That's why many of the largest junkyards for decommissioned aircraft are located in the deserts of the southwestern United States.

It would seem that it couldn’t be easier - to land the plane at Davis-Montana, park it next to the others and give someone the keys. But this is not enough. Many aircraft, although decommissioned, will have to be returned to service if necessary, so maintaining them requires a lot of effort.

Crashed bombers

The bone dump staff operates according to a clear procedure. All aircraft in service on aircraft carriers are thoroughly cleaned to prevent sea salt from causing corrosion. All fuel tanks and fuel lines are completely emptied and washed with a light, viscous oil, like that used in sewing machines, to ensure that all moving parts are well lubricated.

Illustration copyright USAF Image caption Top view of partially disassembled B-52 bombers

Then from airplanes in compliance necessary measures As a precaution, all explosive devices are removed - for example, charges that activate the ejection mechanism. After this, all inlet holes and channels are sealed with aluminum tape, and the plane is covered with a special, easy-to-remove paint - two layers of black, and white on top to reflect the burning rays of the sun and prevent the plane from overheating.

Aircraft are stored in various stages of assembly - some are maintained in as close to working condition as possible if they are expected to fly again, and some are subject to partial dismantling. Among the Davis-Montana aircraft there are also retired American B-52 bombers, which can be equipped with nuclear weapons. Under the Strategic Arms Reduction and Limitation Treaties between the USSR and the United States, the wings of B-52 bombers were to be removed and stored next to the aircraft so that Soviet satellites would record their decommissioning.

Some vehicles are used for spare parts, and excess aircraft are crushed and completely processed in a smelter located on the base.

In total, Davis-Montana has about 400,000 pieces of equipment and machinery for the production of various aircraft parts, including long-mothballed assembly lines from which most of the aircraft decommissioned here once came off. Airplanes containing spare parts from the colossal reserves of this air base serve not only in the United States, but throughout the world.

“As long as airplanes exist, cemeteries will be needed for the military and civil air fleet so that other aircraft continue to fly,” says American Nick Veronico, author of several books on aviation, who has visited both Davis-Montana and the Mojave Desert in the south. -western USA, and in other aircraft graveyards in the American deserts.

“I flew on airplanes that ended up in storage and became a source of spare parts for the air fleet,” says Veronico. “I got to watch usable parts being removed from an airplane, and then fly on an airplane that had those parts installed on it.” the same ones that were taken out, stored and installed in front of me.”

Image caption Soviet MI-6 helicopter that visited Chernobyl

There are equipment cemeteries in Russia where some old Soviet military aircraft are stored that are no longer destined to fly. The former Vozdvizhenka air base, about 100 kilometers north of Vladivostok, used to house Soviet supersonic bombers. After the end of the Cold War, the planes were unclaimed and simply remained where they were. Once secret base Now abandoned, the ghostly squadron attracts only photographers who climb over rusty fences in search of spectacular shots.

Another landfill left over from Soviet times is located in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, from where all residents were evacuated after the accident. The equipment used to clean up the disaster was contaminated with radiation, and several large Soviet helicopters were left to rust in the field.

In 2006, on the 20th anniversary of the nuclear power plant accident, BBC News photo editor Phil Coomes visited the site of the disaster. “After the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a lot of contaminated equipment that was used to clean up the consequences was placed in burial grounds scattered throughout the huge exclusion zone around the reactor,” he says. - Some cars are there to this day. In the largest burial ground on the site of the village of Rassokha, the remains of helicopters, fire engines, military and civilian equipment are rusting. The landfill occupies a huge space, but over the years some cars have been used for spare parts, although the level of radiation here is different everywhere, and souvenir hunters should still stay away.”

Despite the risk of radiation damage, usable parts are removed from many helicopters - the skeletal remains are decreasing in size every year.

Illustration copyright Getty Image caption Decommissioned airliners at an airport in the Mojave Desert

In the United States, the final refuge for commercial aircraft whose service life has come to an end is Mojave Airport, located in the deserted eastern part of the US state of California. For several decades now, airliners have been brought here and kept in the hot desert until they are processed for scrap.

“When driving through the California desert, the Mojave airplane junkyard is visible from afar,” writes photographer Troy Paiva, who often photographed airplanes here in the 1990s and 2000s, until the area was closed due to safety concerns. “It seems as if long rows of faded tails stretch to the very horizon.”

Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society Keith Maynard assures that the aircraft is much easier to disassemble than other heavy transport equipment. “I can’t tell you how labor-intensive the process is, but everything that is connected can be separated; in addition, airplanes contain much less heavy and hazardous materials than ships.” However, since the construction of modern aircraft uses fewer and fewer metals that need to be recycled, it may be possible to reduce the scale of landfills in deserts.

“The use of composite materials in the future may make final disposal more difficult, but specific industry protocols exist to address this issue. However, warehouses can still be useful as places to park aircraft during periods of fluctuations in demand. In fact, the number of aircraft put into storage can sometimes be used to judge the state of the economy, which is why analysts track this indicator.”

And at Davis-Montana, long rows of planes continue to sunbathe in the Arizona sun. For most, the desert has become a kind of retirement home. And some may one day take to the skies again.