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While on Vietnam War active duty at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson I bought my first home ever on E. Irvington Rd. facing the miles long north fence of MASDC [now 309th AMARG].
Guests would ask “how can you stand looking through your picture window out at an aircraft junkyard?” and I would bemusedly correct them.
I would have paid extra if necessary for that front row seat on the world’s largest movable feast outdoor airplane museum. The first couple years there, I watched early models of the B-52 slowly shrink and sink into the caliche. Their majestic wings would sag lower and lower as everything from massive vertical stabilizers to little Marman clamps [designed and manufactured by Zeppo Marx] plus pylons and landing gear were cannibalized to keep the H models flying [saving millions vs new replacements if even available from Boeing] until the remaining skeletal scraps were hauled off to the perimeter smelters as they had been since just after World War II.
Instantly, new rows of transports and tankers would appear…sometimes fighters.
Many of our retiring 431XXX TSgts and up were immediately hired just “up the street” [I-10] in Marana by Evergreen as they transitioned from running a secret CIA aircraft mod shop to creating an airliner repair facility and massive civilian boneyard with similar variety and artistic/historic appeal.