You would never connect “aircraft” and “fragile”, would you? Metal working in harmony with metal to cheat physics and fly in the clouds…it’s not like the early days of flight, with wood frames and fabric wings to make aircraft lighter and flight possible. No, now it’s lightweight metals, honeycomb structures, and powerful engines that make aircraft great. Unfortunately, in the end, no aircraft lasts. After many takeoff-and-landing cycles, millions of miles, temperature changes, and overall wear, there comes a point where you have to retire the old bird out of the name of safety. In the case of the military, that might also include draw-downs, retirements or whatever else causes the branches to park an aircraft. I know that if it isn’t sitting on a tank range as a target, that a lot of the Kiowa helicopters I worked on way back when are probably in the AMARG yard right now. The boneyards are a strangely beautiful thing. Just like a good junkyard, it’s a scene of death…most of these birds aren’t going back in the sky anytime soon, if ever, and there are plenty that have a date with some heavy equipment that won’t be gentle. But just like finding an abandoned car in a field somewhere, there is something surreal about a plane just sitting, the crew long since gone, the logbooks never to be found, the engines hosting bird nests instead of waiting to spin up. You can almost hear the turbine whine in the winds if you listen hard enough.

(Thanks to Barry Donovan for the tip!)