309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group

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View over various parked aircraft in the AMARC
Scrapping of B-52 bombers at AMARC
Retired F-84 Thunderjet in June 1980 at AMARC

The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) is the central warehouse for decommissioned aircraft for the US armed forces and some federal agencies. It is adjacent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson , Arizona and is subordinate to the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) of the US Air Force . The official name was until April 2007 Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC).

The AMARC covers an area of ​​10.52 km² and at the end of 2015 housed around 4,000 aircraft and 40 other missiles, such as titanium missiles . Around 670 people are employed there.

The AMARC successively slaughters aircraft that have become superfluous, stores and recycles the spare parts obtained and sells the remaining scrap to nearby dealers (use as an aircraft graveyard ). Other aircraft are conserved in order to make them fit for air again if necessary.

AMARC is one of the world's largest aircraft graveyards .

At the end of the 1990s, the AMARC carried out the controlled destruction of over 350 strategic B-52 bombers , the number of which had to be reduced due to the START agreement. The bombers, dismantled into large individual parts, were stored in the open air for at least 90 days until Russian reconnaissance satellites captured them and their destruction was confirmed.

In the nearby privately run Pima Air & Space Museum , some aircraft taken over from the AMARC are on display.

history

After the Second World War, the Air Force looked for a place to park its obsolete aircraft, mainly B-29 bombers and C-47 transport aircraft . She chose the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona because the dry, warm climate and the naturally hard soil offered good conditions. The material ages slowly under these conditions and the aircraft can be moved without having to artificially pave large areas.

In 1964, the facility became the only depot for aircraft to be stored by the US armed forces and was named the Military Aircraft Storage and Disposition Center (MASDC) . When missiles were also included in the warehouse and the reprocessing of mothballed aircraft played an increasing role, the Air Force changed the name to Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) in 1985 . As a result of an organizational reorganization, the facility was renamed the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) on May 2, 2007 and is now part of the 309th Maintenance Wing of the AFMC at Hill Air Force Base , Utah .

Media use

The area has already served as a backdrop for films and music videos several times. The films Can't Buy Me Love , Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man and Transformers - Die Rache , for example, contain scenes that were shot on location. The aircraft graveyard can also be seen briefly in the documentary Baraka . AMARG was also the backdrop for the filming of the Falco album Junge Roemer for the ORF series Heroes of Today and for the music video for the song Learning to Fly by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the TNT series The Great Escape .

See also

Web links

Commons : Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 32 ° 9 ′ 0 ″  N , 110 ° 50 ′ 0 ″  W.