Warbird Information Exchange

When I was a kid my dad would tell me stories that after WWII they just junked a bunch of warbirds into the ground out in the Southwest someplace. Like parts of B-17's, B-29's, P-51's, ect. Anyone ever heard of any of this?

This always interested me and wondered if the stories were true. I have heard talk about it from other people too.

Thanks,
Nate

Your dad was probably talking about Kingman, AZ. After the war, hundreds of planes were sent there to be scrapped. When I lived there back in the mid 90's, the locals told me that they witnessed big holes being dug in the ground and parts of planes and sometimes whole plane were dragged into the holes and covered over. I asked why no one ever dug up the planes and was told that there was too much live ordanance burried out there as well.

So, I called BS on that story lol. But I wouldn't doubt that there are parts burried out there, but definately not whole planes.

Sorry Nathan, It's my job....I think you mean BURIED.

Mudge the pedant

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Land of the free because of the brave

I'd offer that there's still many, many tons of goodies still buried and in the washes outside of the Kingman Municipal Airport (the former Kingman Army Airfield) here in Arizona where a Missouri contractor bought and scrapped some 5,500 airplanes as purchased in a lot sale from the War Assets Administration just after the war, but so much of the tales of buried airplanes have been grossly exaggerated over the years to the point where they're wonderful bar stories but devoid of much in the way of factual information.

The contractor who bought these airplanes (and the large percentage of the ships were bomber aircraft such as the B-17 and B-24, but indeed there were a variety of fighters) was both motivated by a time limit to "remove" the aircraft from the site and a specific clause in the contract with the government that specified that the airplanes were never again to be offered for aviation use (flight purposes) and the overall plan was to render them into salvage. Industry was hungry for raw materials for consumer goods after several years of building nothing but war goods, and the contractor stepped in to fill that need without much - if any - thought or sentimentality for the airplanes.

The contractor went through some basic trials and tribulations to strip the airplanes of bits and pieces and to make an effort to separate different types of scrap materials. Early efforts of selective disassembly were costly in time and effort, and eventually the easiest way to "thin the herd" of 5,000+ airplanes was to break them apart and feed them into a series of portable smelters. Heavier bits like prop blades (high grade aluminum), landing gear, engines and armor plate were removed and loaded in to rail cars for shipment to scrap mills around the country. The rest of the airframes were chopped apart and fed in to the smelters. The end result was large ingots of mixed-grade aluminum, and they, too left Kingman on rail cars.

The smelter process created a large amount of waste - bits of control cable, gears, bomb shackles, engine components, etc. - ended up as the heavy furnace "scum" that had little value as irony scrap. By and large most of this was skimmed from the portable furnaces and dropped on the desert floor around the Kingman airport or hauled away into the many washes and ravines and backfilled and or buried. These areas were repositories as well for scrap armor glass that came from windscreens and turrets. And today there's STILL and area of about a half-acre or so thousands of pieces of B-17 and B-24 fuel cells about a mile away from one of the taxiways that were cut into slabs to remove fuel fittings and caps and just tossed in to the desert. Remember, there was no EPA back in 1946 and no one much cared about what would be considered today a federal crime and an environmental miscarriage!

By the end of 1947 all of the airplanes had been rendered in to scrap, and all that remained of miles and miles of planes parted wingtip to wingtip was scattered debris in the desert.

I've heard for year stories of "buried planes" here at Kingman, and there's certainly some truth to that... but the contractor was far too motivated by the bottom line of scrap yield to let anyone take the time to dig a large hole or two and hide a complete airplane as some have wagged. It's a wonderful story over a cold one or two, but it just never happened like that at KAAF.

But lest anyone think I'm extinguishing the fire the lengends and lore of Kingman and the buried planes, I'd offer that there are still some goodies there for future generations to find. That is, unless the politicians in Mohave County want to eventually develop the entire area around the airfield into houses and business, and I guess that'll come in time.

The washes and ravines have yielded all kinds of interesting little treasures, from gun turret crank handles (three of which I know are on two B-17s and one B-24 touring the country with different museums and organizations); an access panel from a B-17 that saw combat in the ETO with a 390th BG airplane (it's now in a museum as well); to fuel caps; radio insulators; trailing antenna weights and so on and so forth. No complete airplanes here, but many little treasures from many wonderful birds with a lot of history to them.

Sigh. And I must confess... there's a lot of crap, too. Tons of it. This tome was posted by a complete fool who for the last three decades has gone out to the desert areas around Kingman with empty 5 gallon plastic buckets and now has several hundred pounds of warbird "stuff" that has absolutely NO value whatsover but it looked so interesting when found that I HAD to lug it home. Pity my kids when dad eventually "throws a seven" and they have to lump this junk out of the basement or the hangar and try to make sense of it all...

Great initial post and food for thought. Wish I could tell you bring a shovel to Kingman and start digging to retrieve that complete P-38 or that intact B-24, but your arms would tire before you ever found something that'd make the cover story of "Air Classic" or "FlyPast."

So that was what the hurry was in Hondo to scrap the T-3s'. America is running out of fiberglass, and we have to reclaim the composite off of these planes. Did anyone else here about the planes they buried at night when the inspectors were sleeping. Hondo holds a treasure of these things buried out there. I know its' true, I heard it in a bar in Bandera from a cedar choppers illegitimate uncle.

So that was what the hurry was in Hondo to scrap the T-3s'. America is running out of fiberglass, and we have to reclaim the composite off of these planes. Did anyone else here about the planes they buried at night when the inspectors were sleeping. Hondo holds a treasure of these things buried out there. I know its' true, I heard it in a bar in Bandera from a cedar choppers illegitimate uncle.

So that was what the hurry was in Hondo to scrap the T-3s'. America is running out of fiberglass, and we have to reclaim the composite off of these planes. Did anyone else here about the planes they buried at night when the inspectors were sleeping. Hondo holds a treasure of these things buried out there. I know its' true, I heard it in a bar in Bandera from a cedar choppers illegitimate uncle.

OOPS!

pooner, informative post!! & welcome to the wix!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

When I got married, we went to Vegas for the Honeymoon. We rented a car on that trip so we could see the surrounding area. Hover dam, desert hills, grand canyon, Kingman AZ....opps did I say Kingman???? She let me go to the airport to see where they all sat. I had seen pics in magazines since I was a kid. We went to the museum in town and got to see some pieces that were recovered while the scrapping was being done.


Got to the airport and had seen the old foundations of the buildings. To my suprise, all of the Commuter aircraft that were sitting out there. A few I remember seeing flying into Burlington.

Though I wish I knew that there was still stuff out there to be found, I would have seen if I could have taken a walk around to find something to take home with me!!

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

It's gotta be true then. Everyone knows a cedar chopper never lies!

Pooner,

I found it interesting that when I was the Data Center Network Manager for Mohave County, none of the County officials would even TALK about what be buried around Kingman field.

Welcome aboard Pooner...when you dig up that long lost ball turret ...be sure to give me a call!!!

John

There just might be something out there. Once while driving to a race at Wendover, my friend spotted something in a wash so we stopped to see what it was. Turn out to be some cars buried along the blank of the wash. My friend mentioned that heard about the road crews would use junk cars in the banks. There were several old cars and one '57 Chevy that was in pretty good shape. I was able to take some parts off it but I really couldn't get to the whole car and I didn't have a shovel. The good thing was that they filled the cars with dirt so it didn't crush them. I was going to try and find out if we could pull it but we ran out of time. The following year, I brought a shovel but to my dismay, they re-worked the washes and just took the cars to a crusher.

So you never really know about the stories you hear about.

I went to the airfield in Kingman in Nov. 04. The most exciting things I spotted were the WW2 control tower, a couple of plaques, and a T-28 sitting out on the ramp.

In one of the buildings they had many nice pics on the walls of all the planes lined up after the war.

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