More Boneyard, because who can get enough of the place?

Looking around the Boneyard, you might feel like you're in a trendy store in a shopping mall...Old Navy, for example.

They got A-6 Intruders there.

And A-7s. Lots of A-7s.

Here's an old E-2 Hawkeye early warning bird. You have to wonder how much time this bird spent aloft, keeping an eye out for it's carrier and her battle group.

Here's another, this one looking ready to be unwrapped and redeployed.

They got rows of these.

An old Douglas A3 Skywarrior caught my eye off in the distance. Designed by the legendary Ed Heinemann, this was the largest nuclear bomber ever to fly off of a carrier, but by the time she was deployed, the Navy had re-purposed it to be a tanker and a reconnaissance aircraft.

See how it's tail folds down for carrier storage? These large aircraft served the US carrier fleet from the mid-1950s until 1991, making them one of the longest-serving carrier aircraft in fleet history.

Here's an S-2 Tracker that looks like it'd clean up well.

And this looks like a C-2 Cod variant--Carrier On-board Delivery, for the non-Navy folks reading this.

And they've even got some Marine Corps Harrier jets here.

Oh-and since we're talking about things that fly unnaturally, did I mention that they have heckiflopters here?

The rotors get removed and stored separately for space reasons and due to high winds that come through here at times.

They still supposedly have a bunch of C-141 Starlifters here, but as they're all being chopped up, we didn't get to go over there. Same for the B-52s. We saw the occasional B-52 aside from the one on display on "celebrity row", a sort of petting zoo where they keep one of each type that that have in storage, but most are kept off in their own area where we didn't get to go. Even bribes offered to the bus driver didn't get it done.

There were a few, though.

And they've got Northrop T-38 trainers here, too.

Then there were the curiosities--the "one-off" special planes or the old ones that make you wonder just what else you're not seeing.

Here's a YC-14, Boeing's attempt to make a jet-powered STOL aircraft comparabe in size and performance to the C-130.

Only two were ever built before the idea was scrapped. This one is now here, and the other is across the street at the Pima Air and Space Museum.

Here's a Fairchild T-46, a trainer that was intended to replace the again T-37.

Only three were built before the Air Force canceled the project. This one is here, and the other two are at Wright Patterson and the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards AFB.

There's this old Martin Canberra bomber back in storage, still here after all these years.

And does anyone want to take a guess as to what this airframe behind the T-38 is?

I saw at least one QF-106 back behind the rows too, but I couldn't get a decent shot of it. And this beautiful F-105G apparently just came out of spraylat for some reason.

I'm thinking that Ed, were he still here, would approve.

They also have two different F-4 Phantoms painted up as Vietnam Ace Steve Ritchie's plane. What's up with that?

The Boneyard tour was a fantastic experience all by itself, but they could make it a lot cooler by just giving us all ATVs and some bottled water and turning us loose to explore.

Think about it, Air Force...I'll even promise in writing not to steal an airplane...O-2As and T-34s excepted, of course.

Boneyard tour, Pt. 2--now with more spraylat!

AMARG's got it all, from the big to the small! Look, they got C-5 Galaxys just like the ones that fly out of my home field. In fact, this is where that squadron gets many of it's repair parts.

They got B-1 Bombers, too. Quite a few. And for some reason, every one of them is missing it's nose.

They have F-18s in storage, too, mostly older F-18A models since those have been replaced by the later F-18E and F-18F Super Hornets.

But you know who still flies A models? The Blue Angels. And this is where they get their replacement planes, and where their planes are returned to when they put too much time on them.

Look--lawn darts! Oh, wait--those are General Dynamic F-16s.

And there's even a 747 with something on it's nose.

Hey--they even have a two-seater!

Yep--that's the YAL-1, the Boeing 747 modified to carry and fire an airborne laser system capable of intercepting missiles in flight.

It actually worked, but it's range was too short to be of much actual use. Stil, the technology continues to develop now that YAL-1 has proven that it can be done.

And what's that I see behind the YAL-1? O-2As!!!

Sorry for the crummy long-distance shots. The bus driver would not go back there even when I begged, and for some reason, they won't let us off the bus. It's like they're afraid that we're going to steal a plane or something.

Of course if I was going to steal a plane from here, it'd probably be an O-2. Not that I would or anything...just saying.

Supposedly there are contractors who can and will come into this yard and bid on certain aircraft like this that the Air Force no longer needs. I must find one. An O-2 fresh out of the boneyard would be just too cool.

These days, much talk is heard in Washington DC about a need for airborne tankers. I have to point out that there are quite a few KC-135 tankers in here.

As my dad used to say: "You don't need new toys. You've got plenty of perfectly good ones already."

Of course if Putin doesn't mind himself, we might want to pull old 63-052 out of mothballs.

The tour guide forgot to mention this gem, but I recognized it off in the distance as an EC-135 early-warning aircraft, code-name: "Looking Glass". These served as emergency airborne command-and-control centers capable of controlling our nuclear forces during wartime and during the Cold War, one was in the air constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just in case the White House got knocked out by a surprise attack. They don't fly around the clock any more, but apparently there's still a few of them in our nation's hall closet.

Gotta run out for a bit now but check back later--still more preserved goodness to come!