AMARG: America's Military Aircraft Boneyard

by Nicholas A. Veronico

This country's largest military aircraft storage center began in the heady days following the end of World War II. At first only a small desert site holding bombers and transports in reserve for possible future use, it later became more of a salvage and parts recovery operation, and in many cases, a final resting place known as "the boneyard". In the 1950s and 1960s, with new wars erupting in Korea and Vietnam, certain aircraft stored in this desert center were once again in demand, and this famed storage and salvage facility in Tucson, Arizona, answered the call. Numerous photographs taken both from the air and on the ground show the reader vistas of the 4,000 total airplanes stored at this site, while a detailed appendix gives a comprehensive listing of all the aircraft types currently at AMARG (Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group). In many cases, the numbers are quite staggering and are sure to surprise the reader.

Genres: Military Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2010

About the author

"I research and write for my personal enjoyment and educational enrichment. I am honored and humbled by the people I meet who so generously give of their time and share their stories for my projects."
-- Nicholas A. Veronico

Author Nicholas A. Veronico comes from a family of pilots, both his mother and father held private tickets, and his brother is a commercial pilot who flies for a major airline.

Veronico got his start in aviation journalism as a freelance journalist in 1984, then joined Pacific Flyer Aviation Newspapers. He then went on to serve as editor of In Flight USA, contributed extensively to FlyPast magazine, and in 1994 joined Airliners: The World's Airline Magazine. On a freelance basis, he has contributed to Air Classics, EAA Warbirds, Warbirds Worldwide, Airliner World, Classic Wings, and many others. His career path lead to the high-tech industry where he worked for an embedded systems-on-a-chip magazine, Silicon Strategies. Subsequently, he served as editor of "Gridpoints, the quarterly publication of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division," which covered NASA's scientific achievements in computational physics using high performance computers. He now works as a science and technology journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to working in the magazine field, Veronico has collaborated with a number of today's best historians and authors and has written more than 30 books on a wide range of aviation and military topics, and local history subjects. He also served as the lead scriptwriter for Scrapping Aircraft Giants, a TV documentary by Daurg Productions and shown on The Discovery Channel. His homepage is www.pacaeropress.com.

Recently, the Military Writer's Society of America (www.militarywriters.com) recognized Veronico's history of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration team and his book on military aircraft storage (AMARG) with distinguished book awards.