The Scrapyards

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, is well known as the location of the US military's massive aircraft storage and disposal site. Lesser known, perhaps, are the numerous aircraft salvage companies that became established around the perimeter, whose businesses were founded on the acquisition and disposal of airframes obtained from the military base. The locations in which these companies operated were, nominally, referred to as 'the scrapyards', though in reality they were much more than that. The various companies specialised in repurposing hundreds of former military aircraft, be that restoration back to airworthiness, salvaging for useful spare parts to support similar types still in commercial operation, or smelting the airframe carcasses back into aluminium ingots. In The Scrapyards: Aircraft Salvage Around Davis-Monthan AFB - Volume 1 1980s, author Graham Robson offers a fascinating insight into this lost world of aviation wrecks and relics, illustrated throughout with his own full colour period photographs.