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A few weeks ago, I found myself at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, checking out Durham University's solar car. While the students were putting the finishing touches on their car, I decided to take my own vehicle for a spin. As I pelted around the track, and obtained some quite silly speeds on an IndyCar-like corner and then down the two-mile-long runway, I noticed that there were all sorts of old, dilapidated planes strewn about the airfield. Here an old RAF transport jet, there a smaller private plane. I even spotted a couple of legendary VC10s. But most of all, there were lots and lots of old 747s.

I didn't know it at the time (there was no one around to ask)—but after I got home and did some research, I found that Bruntingthorpe, in addition to being an automotive proving ground and private aerodrome, was also an aircraft graveyard. Not a huge boneyard like Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in the US, which stores thousands of aircraft in various stages of scrapping and cannibalism, but still more than enough to pique my inner nerdy-engineery interests.

Bruntingthorpe started out as RAF Bruntingthorpe back in 1942. The Vickers Wellington, a long-range bomber, used to take off from there during World War II. In 1953, as the Cold War brewed, control of the airfield was ceded to our American cousins, who needed a forward base for the B-47 Stratojet strategic (nuclear) bomber. To accommodate the rather large and heavy B-47s, the runway at Bruntingthorpe had to be lengthened to 10,800 feet (2 miles, 3.3 kilometres). Later, in the '60s, the UK's Ministry of Defence decided to knock down some of the older buildings and sell the aerodrome at public auction. For a period in the '90s, the last airworthy Avro Vulcan (XH558) was based at Bruntingthorpe.

Fast forward to 2015 and Bruntingthorpe is now a multi-use site. Car makers use the runway and taxiways for high-speed testing. There's a Cold War-era aircraft museum. Acres of tarmac are covered in new cars and trucks, either for long-term storage or awaiting auction. And, because of its lengthened runway, it's one of the few privately owned aerodromes that can accommodate jumbo jet take-offs and landings.

There are two main reasons for sending airplanes to the graveyard. Most aircraft, commercial or military, have some kind of pre-designated operational lifespan. The lifespan, which might be measured in years or more usually a number of flights, can be extended, but eventually the craft will be retired. Alternatively, some planes just aren't economical to keep in the air, due to high maintenance or fuel costs. In any case, in the months that follow a plane's arrival at the knacker's yard, specialist plane scrapping companies remove any valuable components (mostly just the avionics and engines), and then conventionally dispose of whatever's left of the flayed and neutered carcass.

Anyway, enough talk. Take a look at some of the photos. Marvel at the exposed innards of those first-gen Pratt & Whitney JT9D high-bypass turbofan engines. Check out how they removed the nose-cone from that Olympic Airlines 747 to get at the delicious avionics equipment within, and then just left the cone sitting on the asphalt. Watch the video, too, and let me know if you were as mystified by the gently turning jet engine fan as I was.

If it sounds like I had a quasi-religious experience as I walked beneath the wings of a 747, it's because I did.