Warbird Information Exchange

1. How complete are the aircraft in the adjacent "mothball facility." If they aren't all together, are the parts to make them complete(or flyably complete if not militarily complete) also stored on site?

2. What aircraft in the museum could be made flyable using WWII era technology, and what are at least complete enough to be used as research tools.

3. How expansive is their library? If I were a WWII era turbine engineer, could their library aid me in making a more modern Jet engine right off the bat?(IE, do they have specs and schematics enough to do this?)

4. How many people are employed on site between the two facilities, and is the town in the radius which encompasses the museum and the mothball facility?

I am writing an alternate history in case you couldn't tell about PIMA and the storage facility being transported back in time to October, 1941. It started off as a thought experiment, but then I realized how much information I lacked.

Anything else you guys want to contribute would be extremely helpful as well! Thanks in advance!

Been watching "The Final Countdown" have you? I've always liked that movie.

1. Depends, some are in "flyable storage." That means that with a minimum of work they could be made to fly in short order. That includes just off the top of my head; at least 3 dozen C-130s, a dozen or so B-52s, a half dozen B-1s, probably 40 or so F-16s not to mention the 355th Fighter Wing with 3 operational squadrons of A-10s and a couple of hundred more for spares in AMARG. Then there is a squadron of ELINT C-130s and a HH-60 unit and then the normal "Snowbird" visitors usually flying F-16s but also sometimes Tornados and Eurofighters. Also there would certainly be enough parts on site to repair a significant number of other types. There are something like 3000 airframes in AMARG. I'd bet you cold get 700 or 800 operational aircraft out of it with the right motivation. How long they would be operational is another question. The materials science that goes into fabricating modern aircraft would be a seriously limiting factor.

2. We have just over 280 aircraft in the collection. Anything with recip engines could be made flyable with World War II knowledge and tools given enough time. Probably some of the first generation jets could be done as well. But see answer 1 for why it might not be worth the trouble, at least at first.

3. We have a good, but not complete collection of the tech manuals for a lot of the aircraft in the museum collection. Some much better than others. We have a good selection of basic manuals and reference books. Certainly enough to let qualified engineers get a handle on the basics. How fast they could make use of much of it is another issue. I'd think several years at least. AMARG, of course, would be expected to have the complete tech manuals for anything they are expected to keep or make operational.

4. Pima employs 50 people. There are probably a couple of thousand at AMARG not counting the military personnell on the rest of Davis-Monthan. You could easily snatch DM and Pima without getting the rest of Tucson. Check out Google Earth to see how things are arranged. Pima is South of DM and most of Tucson is to the North. Just let me know when you are going to do it so i can stay home from work that day.

The real issue you would have is not hardware or maintenance info, it is people, especially pilots and the computer techs needed to make most of the really sexy stuff go. Also ordinance, fuel etc, etc. Randy might be able to tell how long a USAF squadron is expected to be able to support itself without any external support, but I'd bet it isn't very long.

Interesting idea and not the wierdest story I've seen about AMARC and Pima. A number of years ago somebody published a seriously bad murder mystery / conspiracy novel about the museum. Reading it is a riot, but not on purpose.

James

EDIT: Found the link to the book. http://www.thetucsonphantom.com/Publica ... elease.htm
I really understated just how bad this thing is.

Actually I have been reading the Futureweapons series, but that is another matter entirely(despite all the inaccuracies in the operations the "future crews" took part in it was still an excellent read)

Let me just expand on my questions based on what I am still not clear on above.

You said that AMARG would have complete tech manuals for anything they have mothballed, and PIMA has tech manuals(though not complete) for much of their collection. While this may not put WWII people in F-22s by 1943, could it put them in an F-86 or a simplified F-4 or something by 1944? Instead of having P-51s over Berlin would the information these facilities contain catapult the industry very far into the future, or if so would it be 10 years? 15? Could Zemke be in an F-100(or even a Mig-21 or -17) rather than a P-47 by the end of the war?

Is making Jet A-1 fuel or JP-8 something that could not be done in the 40s using 40s technology?

Also, you said that a large number could be made flyable that were in storage. Now, re-equipping the whole USAAF is obviously not feasible, but is using some of those aircraft as "parts planes" while others operate not feasible, just to give an edge while the remainder of the industry tooled up to make slightly older type planes in far greater numbers?

If you are only talking about advancing the state of the art by four or five years than the stuff here would be just what you need. Don't forget the F-86 was in production by 1948 and the prototype was ordered in 1944. The only thing you would really be introducing early would be swept wings and even that concept wasn't new. I'd say you could do anything that doesn't have complex electronic systems as the manufacturing capability for wouldn't exist yet.

Making jet fuel is well within the capabilities of 1940s technology. The Germans and the British had been doing it for some time by 1941.

Using the planes in AMARG for parts is why the government keeps them instead of just scrapping them in the first place. My estimate of how many could be made flyable was based on using large numbers of them for parts to get a significantly smaller number operational. You could probably keep a couple of squadrons of F-16s going indefinately with the stuff stored at AMARG. No matter what I doubt that the war would be any shorter, unless you intend to introduce nukes in 1943 as well.

James