See the world's biggest plane graveyard, 'The Boneyard'

For the first time, you can see the world's biggest graveyard for military aircraft, which takes up 2,600 acres of land in Tucson, Arizona.

Called "The Boneyard" -- officially, the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group facility -- the site is a collection of more than 4,200 retired aircraft, including almost every plane the U.S. armed forces has flown since World War II.

Now, for the first time, high-resolution satellite images of the site have been published on Google Earth, showing what amounts to a collector's dream: B-52 Cold War-era bombers retired in the 1990s, dozens of F-14 fighter planesm the kind featured in the movie Top Gun, and so on.

It's such a stunning image that the facility itself was featured in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The facility was first created shortly after World War II and is located on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon. Why Arizona? With high altitude and dry conditions, aircraft can be parked outdoors without deteriorating quickly.

The AMARG facility also renovates aircraft for return to service.

Want to see the entire boneyard? Here's the full-size image of the facility.

[via BBC]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com