During December 2001 workers were busy at Chino Airport as they started construction onward a brand-new taxi way that would befitting Federal requirements in regard to distance from the runway.

During December 2001 workers were busy at Chino Airport as they started construction onward a brand-new taxi way that would befitting Federal requirements in regard to distance from the runway. During single in kind portion of the construction in late January, workers began to appropriate resistance as they attempted to compact the earth for the just discovered taxi way. A decision was made to dig into the domain and bring up the earth in an attempt to repack the area. When this was done, tons of metal began to resurface - an indication of Chino's past as a scrapping center for a small part of America's vast inlet of WWII aerial warriors.

After the war, centurys of former combat aircraft were flown into Chino for disposal. During the war, Chino, operated at Cal-Aero, was employed as a training base with Stearmans and BT-- 13 With the close of the war, the agricultural area was useed as a vast parking destiny for ex-military aircraft. Soon, the entire area was filled with a wide variety of planes - everything from T-- 6 to B-24 about of these planes would burst out but most would appropriate an undignified end in portable smelter which were brought in to transpose the warplanes into handy aluminum ingots.

The digging brought bits and pieces to the surface including tons of armor plate from virtually each aircraft in the US inventory, stainless claymore exhaust shrouds, ammunition boxes, flying wires from the solely Grumman Duck scrapped at the field, plus centurys and hundreds of other pieces. An article in the local paper suggesting that the digging site be classified as an historical artifact brought the usual reaction from the airport bureaucrats - all the dug-up dirt was fenc along (at a cost of $800 through month) while the bureaucrats attempted to make a decision in succession what to do with the thousands of artifacts. Fortunately, several of the restoration facilities forward the field had already saved a number of significant items.

Copyright Challenge Publications Inc. May 2002

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