Pima Air & Space Museum is about 8 miles SE of Tuscon (in Pima county). It has at least 300 aircraft on an 80 acre site. About 60% are outside and the remaining ones are displayed in 6 hangers. Most of the aircraft were built between the mid thirties and the late seventies. It was hard to get many planes in one photo, so I just included some of the more interesting ones on the post.
A part of the museum tour was a bus tour of a 'boneyard' at Davis-Monthan AFB, which is just across the street from the Pima Air & Space Museum. It is a graveyard of aircraft that are obsolete, used for spare parts or stored until needed. This one is the largest of it's kind in the world: it has about 4,200 aircraft on 2600 acres. As with the museum, it was hard to get a 'overall' photo to give you an idea of what's out there, so I found a couple of photos on the internet and included them.
F-15 Eagle and F-14 Tomcat (F-14 - the one made famous by the movie 'Top Gun').
C-124 Globemaster We decided it should have been named after a cartoon character, because that's what the nosemakes it looks like !
B-36 Peacemaker The first bomber made to carry nuclear weapons internally.
B-377 Super Guppy This was designed to carry wide loads (imagine that). NASA still uses one to transport rocket parts.
B-52 Stratofortress This jet bomber was built starting in 1955 and was used a lot during Vietnam. The plan is to use it until 2050, which would make it close to a hundred year old aircraft when it is retired (I wonder if it could be enrolled in AARP ?).
B-58 HustlerThe first supersonic jet bomber. When I was growing up, I liked to put plastic model planes together. This was my favorite.
The museum had 7 Russian MIG fighters. I could only get 5 of them in this photo.
The 'boneyard' As mentioned above, I cheated and took this photo (and the next photo) off the internet.
B-52's If you will notice, many of them have been cut up. It is due to an agreement we have with Russia to downsize our nuclear bomber fleet. They even come to the boneyard periodically to make sure that's exactly what we do. We go to Russia for the same reason.
Not sure what these are. Sorry for the reflection. For security reasons, we could not get off the bus to take pictures.
F-4 Phantoms Over 5,000 were made starting in 1958. It was used extensively in Vietnam.
CH-46 Sea Knight This is used by the Marines as a transport. It started service in the early 60's and is still in use (though none have been built since 2004). I guess the Marines like it so much they say 'never trust a helicopter under 30.'
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