Am sure many of us have seen the pictures of rows bombers at Kingman, but does anyone have any pictures of the aircraft being wrecked and the smelter?
The reason I’m looking is that other than flying R/C aircraft, and touring Military Vehicle events in my jeep, I also make model railroads. I want to make a model of the railroad that ran past the Kingman graveyard, so I’m looking for pictures from the area.
I read that the smelter was moved around the site so it must have been semi portable, but I don’t have a clue what it looked like.
They also used 6100 lbs steel blade to cut parts up, presumably from a small crane?
Any info, particularly pictures would be really helpful.
Steve
By: Steve T - 10th November 2006 at 19:21
Vultee–
That would be a fascinating, if melancholy, diorama. Haven’t iirc seen photos of the smelting operations at Kingman (or Walnut Ridge, or wherever) in the 40s, but there certainly was TV footage of the “Argus massacre” at CFB Summerside in 1982. They did indeed use giant blades dropped from a construction crane (or in this case a “destruction crane”?) to guillotine the CP-107s into smelter-size chunks. Crude but effective… 🙁 Somewhere in cyberspace I bet there’s streaming video of that operation, which wouldn’t be any too different, hardware-wise, from the smithereening of Forts and Libs circa ’47.
(BTW, the CP-107 Argus was Canadair’s piston-engined ASW/sea patrol cousin of the Bristol Britannia. The scrapping of all but five of the fleet made the TV news because there was controversy over a civilian company’s blocked plan to buy the CP-107s and convert them for firefighting.)
S.
By: Dakkg651 - 10th November 2006 at 17:33
I don’t think I want to see pictures of dying aeroplanes on here.
Dismembered corpses I can cope with but lovingly created flying machines being picked at by the scrap vultures brings tears to my eyes.
Besides, the recent horrors at Cosford are far too fresh in my mind.
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November 10, 2006 at 4:07 pm