USA - Tucson - Phantom F-4 fighter jets in aircraft graveyard

Short title

Seen from the air at dawn, dozens of F-4 Phantom fighters from the Cold War-era are laid out in grids across the arid desert at Davis-Monthan Air Forbe Base near Tucson Arizona. These retired aircraft whose air frames are too old for flight are being stored then recycled, their aluminium worth more than their sum total at this repository for old military fighter and bomber aircraft. They sit in neat rows in low light, their shadowy wings are blue in colour but their fuselage are stripped of markings, being taped up against the dust. This is a scene of once-great flying machines relegated to sad scrap, long-after the Soviet Union's own demise when western armies fought a war of propaganda.

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Filename: davis_monthan01-15-12-2007 _1.jpg
Copyright: Richard Baker
Image Size: 5120x3389 / 1.7MB; photojournalism transportation transport travel USA United States US dynamic war jet aircraft jet photographer remains industrial economy fate forgotten scale menacing threatening propaganda graphic pattern dust grid landscape paths dawn aerial contest ordnance air war warfare relics Cold War bomber F-4 defense defence military Air Force Base Davis-Monthan dump retired junk scrap yard dead end equipment fuselage air frame parts end of service re-usable recycle scrap aluminium metalic facility Arizona Tucson desert arid worthless old decline end of the line terminated era historic bygone archaeology technology commercial storage lifeless useless redundant ruins boneyard graveyard airline aeronautics aerospace air aircraft aviation flight plane planes Phantom fighters lines rows demise gaps neatness
Contained in galleries: Richard Baker - All pics

Seen from the air at dawn, dozens of F-4 Phantom fighters from the Cold War-era are laid out in grids across the arid desert at Davis-Monthan Air Forbe Base near Tucson Arizona. These retired aircraft whose air frames are too old for flight are being stored then recycled, their aluminium worth more than their sum total at this repository for old military fighter and bomber aircraft. They sit in neat rows in low light, their shadowy wings are blue in colour but their fuselage are stripped of markings, being taped up against the dust. This is a scene of once-great flying machines relegated to sad scrap, long-after the Soviet Union's own demise when western armies fought a war of propaganda.