www.govliquidation.com/list/e962

More accurately, a few hundred pieces of C-141s for sale.

sad  

Do I smell GB! Just think, we could put a few back together, and take over a small island in the south pacific.

The Starlifter was a history-making airplane, being our first heavy jet transport (KC-135 is in a different class).  The taxpayers got their money's worth out of this airframe, but it's getting old now.  After the problems with wing cracks and now parts availability, it's time for this workhorse to go out to pasture.  I had most of my USAF time on them as a Crew Chief and Flight Engineer.  Although time does march on, it's kinda sad to see them chopped up like that.

Chopped under satellite view for treaty conformance with the Russians.

They look a little beat up...

breaks my heart

I jumped from one in 1967 while attending Army Rigger School at Ft. Lee VA. They were fairly new then and we were told that our group of about 120 were the first to make a C-141 jump that wasn't a test jump. It was my only jet jump. [:D]





[devil]

I guess those old air craft are like the family car, when its got a lot of miles on it, it getting to the point where its getting too expensive to keep it going, so it time to get a new one. True, there was some good times, in the old car, but its got to be replaced.

i want one

A little duct tape and JB Weld they'd be almost as good as new.

Aaaah...NOT.
That is for the START II Treaty B-52's.

A C-141 is not a weapons launching platform.

[img]http://www.btinternet.com/~codacomsystems/AMARC/Gallery/640/C141B_Area24_Disposal.jpg[/img]
A row of cut Lockheed C-141B Starlifters in area 24 awaiting outside contractors to transport them the short distance to a metal processing facility.

It was inevitable that owing to the rapid retirement of so many Lockheed C-141 Starlifters to AMARC it would not be long before the large scale scrapping of the type began.

With no airframe life remaining there is no chance of them returning to the USAF active inventory and with so relatively few C-141 left operational there is no requirement for a large number of reclamation aircraft at AMARC.

Due to the size of the C-141 initial scrapping is being carried out in situ using the same method that has been used on the scrapping over the years of the mighty B-52 Stratofortress. A crane with a slipper gear raises a 13,500lb guillitine blade to a height of approx 60 foot and then drops it, severing the aircraft with ease. This technique appears simplistic but it  proves extremely effective.

To make their removal more manageable three or four cuts are made to each aircraft , one to each wing, one to the tail section and sometimes one cutting off the nose section. HVF West, a local metal processing company, are responsible for the removal and processing of the remains at their facility located a few miles from the AMARC main gate. Here the aircraft sections are ground down into very small metal fragments which will be ready for smelting down into ingots for recycling.

HVF West have been heavily involved with AMARC for a number of years, most notably with the disposal of the B-52 bombers cut up as part of the START II agreement.

The C-141 cutting work was started during July of 2003 targeting the older arrivals over in the reclamation area. By mid August areas 23 and 24 have been cleared of the type, many examples from area 3 have also been cleared.

It is unknown how many have been marked for disposal but there could be another 100 destined to this fate.

Ever since the wings started falling off in service, they've been looking at the last flight to AZ.

What wings falling off?

I hate seeing that.  Not to hijack the thread, but during the reign of Comrade Clinton they sank thousands of front line APC's in the ocean to make "artifical reefs".  Comrade Clinton did the military drawdown, took us from an 18 to a 10 division Army, declared all the APC's that the destablihed units had to be "obsolete" and then sank them.  No matter that what was left of our Army was using the same vehicles.  They were obsolete.  I feel much the same way seeing these pictures, especially with our heavy lift shortage already so bad.  

The only one I saw that had a wing separate was a TN ANG bird.  Some maintenance had been done on the fuel system and they neglected to remove the caps on the vent system afterward.  When refueling the airplane the air in the tank ullage had no place to go, and when the pressure reached a critical point the left wing (IIRC) failed.

Beginning in the mid-80s they were having problems with cracks in the wing spars.  IMHO, the USAF shot the dice with some of these problems and got lucky.  

The stresses of SOLL flying and AR, which it wasn't originally designed for, accelerated the aging of these fine aircraft.

Grab a nose section, cut out the flight deck and take Flight Sim 2004 to a new level.  [:D]

LOL, this guy in Washington State has the nose section of a real F-15C. It crashed at an airshow at Soesterberg AB, Netherlands in 1981.
The nose was cut off and sent back to the USA.
It was used as an enviromental trainer and then it went to the Olympic Flight Museum and then was sold as scrap.

[url]http://www.f15sim.com/[/url]

[rofl2]

I had the opportunity to fly a C-141 sim a couple times (I am NOT a pilot!).  The airplane takes some technique.  I estimate I had about a 50% successful landing rate in it.

In contrast, when I flew the C-17 sim I greased it on first try.  The 17 is pretty easy to operate, and there is a lot of automation that reduces the workload on the drivers.  Rumor has it that the only reason we don't have monkeys flying it is because McDonnell-Douglas couldn't develop a reliable bannana dispenser!

(17 pilots hate it when I say that! [BD])