Photographs taken on a sunny winter day in January 1978 capture a boneyard of B29s at the U.S. Navy's China Lake weapons test facility in California's Mojave Desert. Dozens of B29s made oneway flights to China Lake in the 1950s, where they became ground targets to test new aerial weapons. The survivors in this boneyard and on the ranges yielded the flyable B29 "Fifi", of the Commemorative Air Force (then Confederate Air Force) as well as the B29 "Doc", now flying out of Wichita, Kansas after many years of restoration. At least two other B29s flew out of China Lake; one became the museum piece at the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, Calif. and another flew across the Atlantic to Duxford, England, for display. The March Field B29 was already gone when these photos were taken; the future Duxford Superfortress can be seen as the blackbellied B29 with remnants of the SquareY tail logo. Other aircraft in the boneyard collection at China Lake in these 1978 photos include a Republic RF84F (537524) that later went to the Oakland Aviation Museum in California's bay area. The B47E Stratojet in the pictures (532275) was later restored and displayed at the March Field Museum. Wild burros roam the vast China Lake ranges, as seen in one photo. An older red F6F Hellcat flying drone that was shot down over China Lake yielded the jagged tail seen here. In the decades since these photos were taken, these aircraft and components have been removed for a variety of purposes. But with these photos, we can take an evocative walk through an aircraft boneyard of years gone by.

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