Warbird Information Exchange

Mystery rising from 'Airplane Graveyard'
Property for sale, but planes going somewhere else

By JENNIFER EDWARDS
St. Augustine residents for years have driven past a seeming junk yard for vintage military aircraft on Avenue A just off U.S. 1 North, dubbing the acre-property "the airplane graveyard."

Last year, The Record helped solve the mystery of the intriguing jumble of aircraft reposing under tangled vines and the gray smear of time.

County Property Appraiser records show that Salisbury, Md.-based business Chesapeake Airways owns the lot and aircraft and sells their rare and hard-to-find parts to customers all over the country and world.

Buyers use the parts from the lot, which is next to an auto repair shop and not far from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, to refurbish their own aircraft.

But now that residents know why the airplanes are there, they're handed a new mystery: The lot is now up for sale, and no one is saying what will become of the planes.

"(The owners) just wanted to put the property on the market and they'll be transporting the planes in the next three to four months," said Noah Bailey, ReMax Real Estate agent. "I believe the airline has their own plans for them."

But what are those plans, and what's become of the two-person-owned Chesapeake Airways?

The business seems to have fallen off the map.

The still-active official website says the business sells parts for a variety of aircraft, but the posted number goes to directory assistance -- and directory assistance no longer has a listing for Chesapeake Airways.

E-mails to the official address bounce back and calls to owner Dicky Smith go unreturned. So do calls to the other owner, Charlie White, who in 2010 answered questions for another Record article.

Attempts to contact the owners through the real estate agent proved fruitless as well this week.

And despite the fact that the Chesapeake Airways website says the business is located near the Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Airport, that site has been demolished for years, said a woman in the airport manager's office.

Bailey, the real estate agent, said he doesn't know where the planes will go; he just knows they don't come with the property.

He isn't sure why the owners have decided to the list the lot, which is zoned for commercial or industrial uses.

"They just wanted to put it on the market ...," he said.

The asking price for the property, which has been on the market more than a month, is $199,000, he said.

By JUSTINE GRIFFIN
Record Staff Writer
The "airplane graveyard," which once housed a few dozen vintage military planes for many years, is nothing more than a grass storage lot filled with metal debris today.

Metal salvage workers demolished the last vintage plane that sat in a lot off Avenue A just north of the St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Office on Wednesday afternoon. A large crane grasped the shell of each plane within its claw and tore apart their wings and fuselage -- breaking down the planes to mere pieces.

"The planes were stripped of their stuff of value a long time ago," said Mark Cass, owner of Fort Myers-based Metal Recycling & Salvage LLC, the company hired to demolish the planes. "All that's left are the wings and the tail."

The acre-lot that can be seen from U.S. 1 just north of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office came to be known by locals as the "airplane graveyard" for many years. Well now that local landmark is listed for sale, Record archives show. The lot is listed for sale for $195,000 with RE/MAX 100 Realty in St. Augustine. The price dropped from $199,000 in March.

The Maryland-based company that owns the property, Chesapeake Airways, sells the hard-to-find vintage plane parts to customers all over the world. The planes are no longer made, so the parts must come from other out of commission planes that are still around.

Buyers used the parts from the planes that were stored in St. Augustine to refurbish their own aircraft.

Chesapeake Airways owner, Charlie White, could not be reached for comment.

The S-2 Tracker military planes built in the '60s and '70s would take off from aircraft carriers and flew mainly off shore. They were also used by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and Canadian Forestry to fight against wild fires.

A previous article written in March said the planes were going to be moved from the property in the coming months. At some point those plans changed.

"I'm actually doing this job for free to get the scrap metal," Cass said.

Cass said it will take nearly two weeks for his crew and local contractors to break down all the planes and clear the metal.