When a B1-B Lancer’s engine failed, an unexpected savior rose from the desert.
BY KYLE MIZOKAMIPUBLISHED: APR 22, 2024 7:30 AM EST
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U.S. Air Force
- The Air Force is recalling a bomber sent to a desert retirement back to active duty.
- “Lancelot” enjoyed a brief vacation in Arizona before a vacancy in the fleet needed filling.
- The bomber is currently undergoing preparations to return her to the 45-strong B-1B force.
The U.S. Air Force is bringing a bomber back from the dead—or, rather, from the Boneyard. The B-1B bomber #85-0081, also known as “Lancelot,” is undergoing a refurbishment designed to ready the big, swing-wing bomber for active duty, replacing another bomber lost in a fire. The process illustrates how “The Boneyard” is not always a final resting place for America’s warbirds and how planes might be ‘reanimated’ to make up for combat losses.
Bomber Down
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B-1B engine fire on grand at Dyess AFB
In 2022, Dyess Air Force Base mechanics were running the engines of B-1B Lancer bomber while fixing its hydraulics. A crack in an engine disc resulted in the #1 engine catastrophically disassembling, severing fuel lines in the process. The fuel caught fire and the engine was destroyed in a fireball, with parts landing up to five hundred feet away from the parked aircraft. No injuries were reported. The event was captured on video and the bomber was written off as a total loss.
The Boneyard
U.S. Air Force
In 2020 an older B-1B Lancer bomber was donated to Wichita State University from the Boneyard to create a “digital twin”, precisely measuring all the parts that make up the bomber for research and ongoing maintenance purposes.
In 2021, the Air Force retired 17 B-1B bombers from the active force. The B-1B bomber force—stripped of its ability to carry nuclear weapons under the New START arms control treaty with Russia—was often used in Iraq and Afghanistan as a close air support aircraft. Its combination of high speed, long range, and ability to drop precision-guided bombs proved a major asset for troops on the ground. As a result, the B-1B fleet had one of the lowest readiness rates of all aircraft types, due its age (the bombers first entered service in 1986) and years of hard use.
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The Air Force plans to retire all B-1B bombers by the early 2030s, replacing them with the new B-21 Raider bomber. The readiness problem, however, was so bad that the Air Force decided to retire some bombers early to save the rest. The service cut 17 of the bombers from a fleet of 62, flying them to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.
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Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group employees remove a part from a B-1 Lancer bomber stored in the boneyard on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base May 2015.
Davis-Monthan is the home of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, otherwise known as AMARG, or The Boneyard. The Boneyard is the home of thousands of aging Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft retired from flying status. The high desert temperatures and low humidity prevent corrosion and rust, preserving the planes.
In most cases, the planes are stored—awaiting some emergency that might recall them to active duty—and are eventually cut into scrap. Other planes, including B-52G bombers, are cut into pieces and then preserved to allow Russian satellites to verify that they have been permanently retired from the nuclear force. Still other planes are slowly cannibalized for spare parts to keep other planes going. That was the expectation for the retired B-1B planes.
Knight Resurrected
Wikimedia Commons
“Lancelot”, photgraphed in 2000.
B-1B serial number #85-0081 was one of the 17 bombers retired in 2021. The plane had been photographed by aviation enthusiasts for years—visiting Edwards Air Force Base, Misawa Air Base in Japan, Abbotsford Airport in Canada, and other locations. In 2004, the aircraft suffered a collapse of its nose gear after landing at the U.S. airbase on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The plane, call sign SABRE 01, is well known enough among plane spotters that you can buy a reproduction of the nose art online.
Four of the seventeen retired B-1Bs were kept in flyable condition, in case there was a need to bring them back. And as it turns out, that happened sooner than anyone expected. Air Force officials immediately began plotting to bring one of the bombers back, and Lancelot was selected to replace the bomber lost in the 2022 fire.
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Lancelot was first flown to Tinker Air Force Base, where it underwent programmed depot maintenance at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex. According to Arnold Air Force Base, the bomber will also receive upgrades that it missed during its brief retirement to bring it up to par with the rest of the active fleet. Pilots from the 10th Flight Test Squadron flew the aircraft from the Boneyard to Tinker, and then flew test sorties with the rejuvenated plane before handing it over to the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess Air Force Base.
A Lesson for Future War
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Dozens of F-16 fighters, shrinkwrapped in protective plastic, await the call to be turned into silverware…or fly again. Some F-16s are converted into QF-16 drones.
America’s aging warplane fleet means that, often, there are models of aircraft sitting in the Boneyard while the same models are on active duty. While this is obviously not as good as having the latest planes, there is a major, hidden advantage.
In the event of a major war, it is inevitable that the armed services will take aircraft losses. It would take only five lost B-1B bombers to reduce the fighting force by ten percent. Bringing back planes from the Boneyard and refurbishing them to modern standards takes less time than building new ones. The process can also count on decades of institutional knowledge about the airframe. In its press release, the Air Force mentioned one civilian analyst who helped with the resurrection—he had been part of the B-1 program for 30 years.
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Rockwell B-1 Lancer bombers are seen in a boneyard at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base May 13, 2015 in Tucson, Arizona.
In some ways, the Boneyard is not a retirement community for airplanes—it’s a bank and insurance policy rolled into one. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines deposit less useful planes (that are often expensive to operate) and wait. The aircraft sit silently in the desert, among the horned toads, rattlesnakes, and scorpions, until someone decides that they are worth more as scrap than they are as warplanes. Most never leave the Boneyard under their own power. But a few, like Lancelot, turn on their engines and roll down the runway to serve once again.
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he’s generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.