There is a dusty little desert town straddling the
Utah-Nevada border fringing the southern edge of I-80. A ninety minute run from
Salt Lake City. The dull crystalline salt flats hustle into the rocky foothills
of the Silver Island Mountains. The flats stretch for miles. In the winter they
flood with water, and the summer finds rocket cars, motor cycles, and just
about anything else on two or four wheels, playing for speed on its flat,
straight surface.
The place: Wendover, Utah.
And it has a history. It was built in 1908 as a
railroad town, and pretty much stayed that way until World War 2 brought an
Army bomber training base. If it was a B-24, and flew in Europe, there is a
good chance plane and crew touched Wendover. Its most famous trainees were the crews
of Enola Gay, and Bockscar. The fliers and B-29s that
dropped “Little Boy” and “Fatman” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The old
structures, clapboard barracks, box style hangars, concrete swimming pool, rot
in the dry air. A light blue sky above, and a faded alkaline earth below.
The casinos came in the early-1950s. They came to lure
the Mormon population of Salt Lake City across the border to sin. And it
worked. The Nevada side—called West Wendover—has prospered. The casinos hatched
a fully functional small city—schools, neighborhoods, parks, parents, and
children. The east has been stagnant, and poor. Its only draw is the collapsing
old base, the airport, and an old propellerless C-123 Provider with a sign identifying
it as the airplane used in the film “Con Air”.
Its tires flat, a wooden ramp providing access to its
starboard door. A fading blue runner, or cheatline, on its silver fuselage. Faded
block letters, just aft of the wings and above the door, read: UNITED STATES
MARSHAL. The number N709RR painted on the tail. The words “The Jailbird” below
an eagle with a ball and chain in its talons on the nose. The markings are
right; matching perfectly with the “The Jailbird” from the film. The interior
is torn apart. A cavernous bay occupies the majority. Bare aluminum walls, the
odd wire lifting from the surface. A Gatorade bottle jammed in an I-beam near
the ceiling.
The cockpit is barren. Aluminum shine with little
else. Two small windows stare at the desolate desert. The original stick—wheel,
I think, in this case—is replaced with something like a steering wheel from a
bus. If it ever flew it was long ago. In the film the old airbase fronted for “Turner
Field”; the desert location where the convict crew landed and most of the film’s
action happened. If you look around you can see it. The unpainted clapboard buildings.
The rotting airplane hangars, a vintage control tower—now restored—and a
swimming pool, its surface covered with peeling blue paint where Steve Buscemi
likely took tea with an unsuspecting girl and her dolls.
I have wondered about the plane for years. What its
role in the film actually was, and, if it was airworthy then, why leave it to
die? I did some research, finally, and what I found was as interesting as the airplane.
It is a movie star, or nearly one. “Stand in” is more accurate. It was never
flown in the film, but it was used as the Earth bound plane for the desert
scenes. It taxied along the Wendover runways, a bus engine powering its wheels.
It was in the film, and it played a central role, but it wasn’t the star.
Instead it was a prop; part of the scenery. Very much like the abandoned
airbase itself.
But still, it is pretty cool.
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