List of Arizona Airports and Facilities

"Warbirds' Swansong"

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE engines and propellors, as the weight is removed from their noses, they settle back on their tails in heart-breaking fatigue. Perhaps at Kingman they find the peace they fought so valiantly to gain.

But let's look at these "white elephants with wings."

We walk away from Ol' Gappy, its olive drab paint job scaling... wings drooping with weariness... spiders in the cockpit where Lieutenant B. A. Bidick left his name.

Here, now, is the Milk Wagon... 129 missions indicated on its nose by pictures of tiny white milk bottles. Over there is the Stormy Weather, and she looks it. Nearby is Leading Lady, pock-marked by flak and shells during 133 missions.

Another in the long rows is Embarrassed, one of the most battle-scarred of all. This big B-24 was a member of the "Flying Circus" of the 380th Bombardment Group, flew 108 missions with the Fifth Airforce in the Pacific, sunk three Jap ships and downed three enemy planes. She's home for good now.

And where is her crew... the men who left their names beside such home towns as Pensacola, Florida... Burlington, Iowa... Wellesley, Massachusetts... London, Washington?

Climb into the plane... into the stale air... dirt and dust collecting on the huge instrument panel... the expensive flying equipment. Multiply that by thousands.

Up forward... an empty box which contained lemon drops... a single G-I shoe. Amidships... the emergency drinking water-still good, but brackish; or perhaps that's imagination. Back in the tail gunner's spot, a soiled, torn magazine. More heavy bombers... wings and fuselage spotted with flak patches... already stripped and only biding their time until they will be crushed beyond recognition. There's Hi-Ho Silver, a B-17 which on 130 bombing missions bagged four Nazi planes; Our Gal Sal, which accounted for three German craft during 90 missions; Desperate Daughter, with 48; Satan's Second Sister, with 42; Pop's Angels, which flew 71; Gambler's Luck, Indiana Queen, The Senator, Hot To Go, Dragon Lady, Duke The Spook, Final Objective, I-Dood-It and D-Day Doll. Art work which adorns many a fuselage must have been a great source of pride to the men who flew these ships.

The neatly-lettered "Unfinished Business" close to the nose of one big ship had been changed by the crew which brought her home. A quickly-wielded paint brush eliminated the "Un," for today her business is finished.

These famed warbirds stand silent and dusty, wires dangling from wings where once there were engines. tumbleweeds clumped again open bomb-bay doors, forgotten...

But are they forgotten? Every so often a stranger comes to the airfield gate and asks to see a plane. With thousands parked on the desert, if it isn't one of the better known of the combat giants, they can't always tell the exflier just where his old ship can be located. Sometimes he spends hours and walks miles in the forest of planes, and comes back disappointed.

But many find the ships they flew... out in the wild, blue yonder. They climb into the cockpit... fondle the instruments... walk around the giant craft with a misty eye. A youth who seemed hardly old enough to vote appeared with his parents. They had been driving on Highway 66, which traverses one side of the long storage depot. In the forest of tail fins visible from their automobile, he had spotted a squadron insigne.

Could he please show his folks the ship from which he helped drop bombs...?

So they walked through the rows of propellors stacked on the desert like crosses in a cemetery. Down a long line of towering Forts. And they found the ship.

"That's it, Mom!" exclaimed the youth. "Boy, there she is!"

And he walked slowly up and patted the metal side of the old Fort just as he might bestow a loving caress on a faithful old dog.

Such was that big bomber's swan song.

But you knew then that when these big birds die, the sagas they wrote in war-torn skies won't die with them.

Occasionally, perhaps, one of the famous ships escapes the fate that awaits most of them. There was, for instance, The Swoose. One of the last B-17s out of Manila before the Japs took that city, she was noted for helter-

Silent in the Sun . . . .

skelter exploits. Recently she was refurbished a bit, flown to Los Angeles, and given to that city as a memorial.

Kingman will get one of the big planes to commemorate its war heroes and the great training record established at its airfield, a flexible gunnery base which once had an army population of 17,000 officers and men.

The city of Athens, Georgia, preparing a memorial to its World War II fliers, purchased eleven types of military planes, including a Flying Fortress, a Liberator, a Mustang and a Hellcat.

The Enola Gay, which dropped America's first atom bomb, was sent to Tucson to rest its wings among hundreds of Superforts shimmering in the sun at Davis-Monthan Army Air Base there. But, instead of being "pickled," it will become a museum piece.

Unlike the combat-weary B-24s at Kingman, the Tucson Superforts are not yet ready for the wrecker's hammer. From engines to giant rubber tires, they have been carefully preserved and are periodically inspected.

They are an awe-inspiring sight, glistening in the bright afternoon sun, and for a few minutes after sundown, when huge tail fins reflect the brightness in the sky to give the impression from a distance of a desert city with row upon row of lights.

Many rained death and destruction on the Japs; others played their part in the training of combat crews. Some made heroic flights over the "hump" carrying badly-needed gasoline, supplies and men. Some are patched where flak and shells found their mark, but failed to bring them down.

In the desert storage area are the Buccaneer, the Coral Queen, Inchliffe Castle, The Duchess, Deacon's Disciples, and The Thinper, which was featured in a movie about the B-29s.

The gigantic influx of planes to the Arizona desert depots began soon after the end of World War II. Battleworn ships quickly were declared surplus by authorities at Wright Field in California once an army inspection team had determined their status.

Confronted at Kingman with one of the nation's biggest storage jobs, the dimunitive Myers four months after the Japanese surrender saw one of the big ships arriving on an average of every few minutes. Some of the fourengined craft came directly from overseas bases, brought home to their final resting place by their own combat crews.

In fact, some of the warbirds fluttered down to the Kingman landing strip with props feathered, one or two engines dead, barely arriving in one piece. Occasionally one had to make a "belly landing" because its worn landing gear just wouldn't slide into place a last time.

But so outstanding was the Kingman depot's safety record that in the delivery of 7,000 planes involving an estimated 21,000 flying men, there wasn't a fatal accident.

Only planes with low flying time were "pickled," yet Kingman soon had 1,100 such B-24s standing wing tip to wingtip.

At one time last summer the Kingman storage records showed 2,567 B-24 Liberators, 1,832 Flying Fortresses. 478 of the P-38 Lightnings, another 200 of the P-38 photo planes, thirty-seven of the B-29 Superforts, not to mention 141 B-25 Billy Mitchell medium bombers, and hundreds of P-47 Thunderbolts, P-40s of Flying Tiger fame and the A-26s, then America's newest and fastest medium bombers.

The depot sold B-17s at $13,750 and B-25s at $8,250. Prices asked on other types of aircraft included the A-26 at $2,000 each; P-61, $6,000 each; P-47, $3,500 each; P-40, $1,250 each, and A-24, $1,650 each.

None but American citizens could purchase planes at Kingman, and before being offered for sale the ships were stripped of all confidential equipment such as bomb sights, radar and some radio installations.

Many of the planes sold individually were to be scrapped for parts, and the materials turned to commercial uses other than aviation. These include use of engines as rural power plants to furnish light and energy to lighten farm and small-town chores; use of engines and propellors to ventilate mine shafts, or prevent frost damage to truck crops and citrus orchards by circulating frost-repelling blankets of smoke from smudge pots. But the old combat ships, the planes once pampered and petted by crews of young Americans writing history boldly in the skies . . .

They stand idle in the desert, awaiting death. Tomorrow the wrecker's hammer will beat out ingots of peace.

The engines will roar no more. Fighting machines are ready for storage houses.

Engines gone, the soul remains.