Airplane Graveyard April 1946

Probably the Kingman storage center. No sound and poor quality but a glimpse of the number of aircraft scrapped after the war

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Aviation
• history
• B-17
• aircraft
• airplanes
• ww2
• army
• air
• corps

[bad74maverick1]

thank god the swoose survived that scrap year. she is sitting in a storage facility in pieces waiting for money to be put back together. she is the only surviving B-17 B in the world!

[Maturin01]

At that time for $3,000.00 you could walk away with an operational and relatively new P-51.

[peyo001]

Because one day they might be needed again.....

So sad to see them all lined up like that :'(

[singningwongho]

if only they had kept a few more around :(

[jdh91741]

@Maturin01 Back then 3000 bucks was a lot of money. You could buy a nice home for that price at that time.

[FiveCentsPlease]

@SoCalDualSport

Much of the WWII stuff was already gone by the late 40s. There are photos of portable smelters at Kingman, quickly turning these aircraft into stacks of aluminum ingots.

[skeilak]

@gcmarcal

I wasn't saying you did, Sir.

I was agreeing with you, but also pointing out that no matter what price you pay to aquire a military aircraft, (or any aircraft, really,) you're still going to need deep pockets to enjoy it.

[gcmarcal]

@skeilak

I never said that is cheap to maintain these birds! ;)

[skeilak]

@gcmarcal

I'm sorry. I somewhat misunderstood your comment, before.

I agree, if more such aircraft survived, their individual value would be less.

Still, nothing is ever cheap with military aircraft.

Go to your local airshow, and ask the guy who owns the B-25 what it cost him to buy, restore, and maintain the ol' girl. Ask him what a tire costs.

Then ask him what he shells out, to fuel her up with over 900 gallons of 100 octane aviation-grade gasoline.

[gcmarcal]

@skeilak

I totally understand you. Go to your local scrapyard and ask which is the most valuable car in there. They will tell you that is the one that were produced in less quantities than the others.

Imagine if they still had 2000 WWII airplanes in fairly good condition. Do you think that they still would be so valuable??

[skeilak]

@gcmarcal

Honestly, I don't understand your comment.

My point was that vast numbers of, by then, obsolete WWII aircraft were scrapped in the immediate post-war period, with little concern for what they might be worth 60 years later.

I illustrated my point with the example of the then 11yo '67 Chevy Camero, sold for $500 in '78, that if you had it now, might be worth well over $20K.