WWII vehicle boneyards were essentially war machine landfills
Might be fun just to go thru a place like this, if they still existed.
Might be fun just to go thru a place like this, if they still existed.
The disgusting thing is that so many things would be either interesting or useful to have available, yet are denied to us even though they are in fact ours, bought with our money.
The linked material alluded to efforts by domestic manufacturers to prevent bringing home such things as vehicles in order not to interfere with new sales (never mind that often such sales would merely put used equipment in the hands of people who couldn't afford new anyway). My understanding is that it is part of the supply contracts for new military vehicles now (i.e., with humvees) that they cannot be sold as surplus on the domestic market. That should be categorically illegal given that, once again, they are ours paid for with our money.
Huh, didn't know we were already scrapping B-52s in 1949. (1st pic)
Huh, didn't know we were already scrapping B-52s in 1949. (1st pic)
I can't figure out what the items are in the picture just above the pic of all the flat bed trucks. Anyone know?
I can't figure out what the items are in the picture just above the pic of all the flat bed trucks. Anyone know?
Many of the aircraft that survived the war were not worth the expense of transportation back to the States, and were dumped or destroyed in their theatre of operation.
I think someone at Mashable lumped together a lot of photos that may or may not have anything to do with the Kingman/Storage Depot 41, but the statement quoted above is dead-on.
My Dad was an US Army Air Forces mechanic in the Pacific during WWII right up until Japan surrendered. He said as soon as that happened everything just stopped, and the number one objective became GOING HOME. Aircraft that they had been busting their butts to fix the day before got scrapped on the spot, anything that couldn't already fly on its own got bulldozed to the side of the runway.
Every ship that could be pressed into service transporting soldiers and marines back to the US did so. Thus, ships in the harbor dropped crates of brand-new airplanes and other equipment over the sides in order to make room to haul soldiers back to the US. (Dad said he came home on a battleship (damned if can remember which one), and it was pretty cramped -- but it rode much more smoothly in heavy seas than the other ships in the convoy.)
Best I can figure is that it's the base/cleat for some sort of large artillery... those big, odd-shaped flat panels things would fold down and dig into the earth...
Disclaimer: I have NO idea what they are, I'm just throwing out an educated guess based up what I've seen of current artillery pieces...
I'm a huge Jeep fan. I'd love to have one of those that are just sitting there rotting.
It's a shame.