Escape from The Boneyard

[dhazelgrove]

9205092051
9205292053

Up, up and away.....
Still one of my favourites.

Dave

[TARPSBird]

Nice paint job! In real life there are still enough F-4's at Davis-Monthan to maintain at least one flying example for each branch of service that flew them for the next couple centuries. :icon_lol: Other types, no such luck. Very few stored F-14's (most have been scrapped) and only four F-8 Crusaders (all photo birds) out of that vast armada of USN/USMC gunfighters from the Vietnam era. It's both interesting and depressing to browse around the AMARG boneyard on Google Earth.

[Motormouse]

Nice paint job! In real life there are still enough F-4's at Davis-Monthan to maintain at least one flying example for each branch of service that flew them for the next couple centuries. :icon_lol: Other types, no such luck. Very few stored F-14's (most have been scrapped) and only four F-8 Crusaders (all photo birds) out of that vast armada of USN/USMC gunfighters from the Vietnam era. It's both interesting and depressing to browse around the AMARG boneyard on Google Earth.

The blame for what was scrapped, and what not, lies largely with the SALT treaties of
Ronnie Reagan. Over here for example we had to scrap all our F4's, only a lucky few have escaped so far,
and those that are gate guards or similar are still destined for scrap if no longer wanted as gate guards by their units.

Ttfn

Pete

[dhazelgrove]

When the UK bought a squadron's-worth of the venerable F-4J, only a few of them came from The Boneyard.
One that was acquired was the famous VX-4 "Black Bunny".

There's only one left of those. That one is currently in the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, painted as a VF-74 bird.
All the rest were either scrapped or ended their days as range targets.

There's no justice.

Dave

[stansdds]

In 2007 the F-14's were ordered to be completely destroyed in order to prevent any parts from making their way to Iran. Between reverse engineering and adapting Russian equipment to their F-14's, Iran has at least 24 still in service.