It looks like a boneyard for old airplanes, the kind you might expect to see in a dusty, wind-blown Arizona desert. Derelict, rusting, worn-out jets rest on cracked asphalt, surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence.
Also inside the 15-acre lot, not far from Dobbins Air Reserve Base and Lockheed Martin, sits a vintage jeep that bounced over gullies in Korea. And an old gray Huey, the signature chopper of the Vietnam War. And often, 30 or so volunteers, most retired from Lockheed or the military.
There’s an F-14 that flew combat missions in the first Gulf War. And a 1963 Intruder that bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Many of the boneyard’s relics are crammed inside five 60-foot trailers donated by Lockheed.
The yard’s centerpiece, however, is a giant, paint-chipped C-141B cargo jet, which flew to Vietnam, the Mideast and other hot spots — and which didn’t have wings until the volunteers reattached them.
The park, the “aviation wing” of the Marietta Museum of History, has been funded by Lockheed and a few other companies on land leased from the U.S. Air Force for 50 years at $1 a year, about three miles from I-75 and I-285.
Dan Cox, founder of the city-owned museum, said in a few years it will be one of Georgia’s biggest tourist draws.
“And nobody knows about us yet,” he said.
All sorts of military hardware, including World War I machine guns, clutters the mobile homes. A few old jets are strewn haphazardly among forklifts and crates.
“We’ve done a lot on a zero budget,” said Jim Cook, the aviation wing’s director. “If it weren’t for the dedicated volunteers, we wouldn’t be here.”
He said the men, including a retired chemistry teacher, “come out here because they love planes and want to roll up their sleeves and work.’’
There’s another benefit: Memories.
Bill Paden, 75, of Marietta, was a Lockheed engineer for 41 years and helped design the big cargo jet. John Kennedy, 62, is a retired Air Force and Delta pilot who flew the C-141 to Southeast Asia during Vietnam and to Tel Aviv during Israel’s 1973 conflict.
“It is an honor to help fix up this old plane,” he said, standing next to Paden in the huge cockpit.
Sometimes the volunteers do heavy lifting, but most days they can be seen washing planes, screwing in bolts, and “anything mechanical.”
Crane owner Richard Engalsbe, 73, helped reattach the cargo plane’s massive wings. Bob Elliott, also a retired Lockheed manager, organizes the volunteers.
Plans call for a 40,000-square-foot building to house artifacts, including machine guns, uniforms and stacks of stuff that look like junk, but isn’t.
“We just want to get this thing off the ground,” Cook said. “It may not look like much now but give us a few years.”
Cook said when finished, a small admission fee will be charged to cover expenses of the non-profit charity.
Lockheed patrols the area 24 hours a day, and it’s also monitored round-the-clock.
The focus of the museum will be aviation’s importance to Cobb County, going back to the Bell Bomber factory that preceded Lockheed.
“This is going to bring a lot of tourist dollars to Cobb County,” Cook said.
He said the city hopes to team up with the Georgia National Guard “so we can have even more” from the Army.
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