What Happened to the Surplus WW II Planes-- Part 2

Kingman, Arizona, became a huge and well-known desert parking lot for a surplus fleet estimated at more than 5,000 aircraft.  But there were many smaller "parking lots."

Most of the planes were scrapped in the postwar 1940s.

Army Air Force depots near Spokane, Washington, and Ogden, Utah,  yielded scrap in an era long before these machines were prized as historical icons.

Meanwhile,bases in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Pyote, Texas,  parked aircraft in the dry sunshine.  Pyote is said to have stored as many as 2,000 warplanes, including many B-29  Superfortresses.

Walnut Ridge, Arknasas, as well as Clinton and  Altus, Oklahoma,  also swelled with surplus aircraft, with Walnut Ridge storing nearly 4,000.  Augusta, Georgia, was another RFC storage center.

The current military aircraft storage and salvage facility at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson also stored Army Air Force craft  after the war.  Included in this was a number of foreign and domestic artifacts destined for the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

--GreGen