12 Most Amazing Abandoned Planes

even though passenger transport through aviation has been with us for a long time now there's still a sense of glamour about flying unless you fly every week for business getting on a plane and taking to the skies is a rare treat and one which many people look forward to maybe that's why plane spotting has become a hobby people like to watch planes taking off and coming into land fascinated by their journeys and a plane spotter would be horrified by the contents of this video though here are some proud old planes which became completely abandoned let's start off with a plane that has some exceptional provenance it was once the private jet of rock-and-roll legend Elvis Presley Elvis was a man of means and owned three planes in total this one however had special meaning to him because he co-owned it with his father Vernon Presley it's a red Lockheed Jetstar one made in 1962 while it may look a little faded and from the outside which is understandable because it's been stood on a runway in Roswell New Mexico for over thirty years inside the plane everything is pristine no restoration work has ever been done so the plane is still kitted out according to Elvis's own specifications that explains the gold tone of the woodwork the thick red carpet and the luxury red velvet seats for a long time the plane was thought to have been lost but it had been bought by a secretive private collector who acquired it shortly after Elvis died now it's headed to auction again and it's expected to sell for over three million dollars as of right now there's only one intact b-17 Flying Fortress plane left in the world and she has quite a story to tell this is swamp ghost who's in surprisingly good condition for an aircraft that spent almost 70 years trapped in a swamp in Papua New Guinea Captain Frederick C Eaton was sat at her controls during 1942 when he found himself involved in an aerial dogfight his plane was damaged and he had no option but to ditch it in the closest piece of flatland he could find that was the swamp eaten escaped but was unable to tell his supervisors exactly where he'd left his plane it therefore wasn't seen again until 1972 when a passing helicopter sawed from the sky by chance because of its remote location it took a further 34 years for a salvage team to come and drag the old plane out of the mire by 2010 she was finally back home in the USA where she's stationed as a permanent exhibit at pearl harbors Pacific Aviation Museum the Buran project was supposed to be the Soviet Union's answer to the American space shuttle project the two vessels had very similar designs and were intended to perform very similar duties while the American space shuttle program served its country proudly for many years the Soviet equivalent barely got off the ground the Buran flew into space only once spending two hours in orbit during November 1988 and then landing back on earth in Kazakhstan it then sat disused for 14 years before being destroyed when its hangar collapsed in 2002 now all we have to remember it by is this wooden prototype which is standing forgotten in Zhukovsky airfield near Moscow built to a one-third scale of the real buran it was made for Windtunnel testing but then discarded when there was no further use for it it might not look at its best but then given that it's made of wood and exposed to the elements it's surprising it's lasted this long the British developed Bristol type 170 freighter was supposed to be a breakthrough in terms of air transport combining all the best features of an airliner and a freighter when the first model took to the air in 1946 it was hailed as a revolutionary aerial cargo solution when the model was retired 12 years later it was sadly viewed as an accident-prone liability 214 Bristol type 214 freighters were built over the 12 years that the model was in production of those 214 68 were either completely destroyed or damaged beyond repair in accidents that's a failure rate of over 25% one such accident is the one we see here which occurred in beaver lodge Lake in Canada on May 30th 1956 the crew lands it on the frozen lake when the left main gear broke through the ice tipping the plane and bending the left wing fortunately everyone on board was rescued but the plane was beyond salvage what's left of it has been here by the lake side ever since Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a series of aviation advances on both sides not all of which were successful the Soviets should be saluted for their ambition when it comes to the design of the bereaved vva 14 amphibious aircraft which was envisioned as a plane that could take off and land from water as well as sea it should also have been able to fly high like a normal plane but also conduct high-speed low altitude flights over the sea so it could take out enemy submarines the Soviets brought an Italian expert Robert Barr teeny to work on the design and he had a semi operational prototype built in 1972 it worked fine in the air but takeoff and landing from the water were proving to be more problematic unfortunately Barr teeny passed away in 1974 before he was able to resolve the issue without his genius the project was doomed and the prototype was abandoned he was eventually moved to the Soviet Central Air Force Museum in 1987 where it remains on display finding a crashed or forgotten aircraft in a lake or on an airfield is one thing coming across one in the middle of a busy street is quite another back in 2007 drivers and pedestrians in Mumbai India were considerably inconvenienced when an entire Boeing 737 airliner was abandoned in the middle of their city the plane had been decommissioned and was being slowly driven through the city on its way to a flight training facility when the driver took a wrong turn realized he was lost panicked and then ran away that left the plane blocking a flyover and the city with severe congestion problems air Sahara which operated the plane said that it was sold and therefore no longer their responsibility the 75 foot fuselage of the plane was effectively trapped in situ by the drivers wrong turn and remained there for over a week eventually it had to be cut into pieces and airlifted out the flight training facility never got there delivery and we have no idea what happened to the runaway driver when an armed conflict between nations has come to a decisive end there are usually pieces of the losing sides military hardware left laying around in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein what used to be the mighty all Baqir airbase was renamed Joint Base Balad when the Allied forces took control of the facility and everything on it there wasn't much left for them to salvage it looked like a graveyard for wrecked mig-23 fighter planes located 50 miles to the south of Baghdad this is where Hussein ordered his planes be transported in order to avoid Allied air strikes and hidden as well as possible one of them even ended up in a cemetery just north of the base the plan didn't work many of the planes were struck by aerial assaults anyway and the Allies ultimately conquered the land when they did the whole mig-23 fleet was assessed and all of them were deemed to be beyond repair the site is now a junkyard although many of the old planes have been spray-painted by board American soldiers most snorkeling tours and days out in the Bahamas offer you the chance to see colorful exotic fish through the crystal clear blue waters find the right tour operator though and you can go on a snorkeling trip with a difference one that takes you to the corroding Hulk of a curtiss c-46 commando plane just below the surface off the coast of Norman's Bay near eczema it might not be as colorful as the fish you'd see on other snorkeling trips but there's plenty of color in its past it's the former property of notorious international drug trafficker Pablo Escobar the plane was one of many the Colombian used in his illicit import and export trade Escobar and his gang were active in Norman's Cay in the late 1970s after buying pieces of land from locals and constructed a high-security fortress complete with the 3,500 foot long runway even at that length the plane somehow managed to miss it entirely in 1980 landing well short of its mark and embedding itself in a sand Bank it's not far below the surface and is clearly visible during fair weather our next aircraft comes to you from a top-secret location in the United Kingdom various urban explorers have visited it to take pictures of it but none of them will be drawn on precisely where it is they are concerned that too many people will turn up and cause damage to the aircraft that can be found there and they're already pretty rusty as it is some reports suggest it's an abandoned air museum near Long Marston the star of the show is this dirty yellow 1962 Westland whirlwind helicopter which should be more appropriately termed as a rotor craft the turboshaft engine is still inside but the 11 seats which used to make the passengers of the large chopper comfortable have been ripped out as we can tell from the markings on the side of the helicopter it's a former RAF rescue vehicle if you got into difficulty while climbing hills or mountains this is the type of aircraft that would come out and airlift you to safety given its current state it's now in need of rescue itself abandoned museums and hangars are a good place to look for forgotten aircraft and if you're lucky you might find several of them at once this disused hangar in Belgium has five different planes in it all in various states of dilapidation it looks like it might once have been a repair center there are extra wings scattered around the hangar as well as a few spare jet engines although nobody knows who owns the hangar or why it came to be abandoned they clearly had a passion for vintage aircraft one of the planes is a stamp sv 4 which was in everyday use by the French army during the 1930s all of the aircraft appeared to have a military pedigree so it's possible that the hangar belonged to the army or someone with a keen interest in military history there are probably enough spare parts here to build a new plane from scratch although given how long they've been in there abandoned state we wouldn't recommend trying to fly it if you did when the military equipment of the losing side is destroyed by the winning side after a battle that makes some degree of sense when a country decides to destroy or abandon its own military equipment because there's been a regime change that's a little harder to understand surely the country would still need defending no matter who's in charge of it nevertheless when communism came to an end in Hungary in 1989 the new government decided to dump a vast swath of its air force by the runway of an old military airfield which has been there since 1936 10 years later when it was decided that the mig-21 would be withdrawn from duty the airfield was permanently closed now it's a plain graveyard containing 28 MIG 21s two mig-21 two cedar training planes and five su-22 in threes for aircraft that have stood out in the open for 20 years they're in remarkably good condition elsewhere in the airfield you'll find tanks that were in full working order before the government filled them with mint what a strange thing to do out the Saudi Arabian desert you'll find an old pby-5a catalina riddled with bullet holes which it suffered while protecting its owners from a savage assault and it's been there for more than four decades the plane was once the property of Thomas Kendall an American businessman who acquired it from the US Navy during the 1960's Kendall had his purchase converted into a flying yacht and then went on a pleasure trip around the world with his family they landed in the Strait of Tirana on March 22nd 1960 and anchored the Catalina before heading further inland to stay at a hotel the following day they were attacked by gunmen they fled to their plane and tried to take off but in their panic they ran aground into a coral reef as they sheltered inside the Catalina it was hit by bullets 300 times but miraculously avoided bursting into flames even when the fuel tanks were hit eventually they were captured and interrogated by the Saudi government for unclear purposes but set free after a complaint from the US Embassy the Catalina couldn't be saved and is still there now subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you soon

Channel: Amazing Stock

Views: 2,516,182

Rating: 4.5148902 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Abandoned Planes, abandoned aircraft, abandoned, most amazing, most incredible, planes, plane left, amazing abandoned, fast plane, unique plane, rare plane, 12 most, top 12

Id: RNABAOBPL5s

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019