Originally Posted by
Proplinerman
I have read that one Stratocruiser survived at Tucson till the early 1980s. Someone realised its significance, so it was slated for preservation, but then the airport decided it was time they cleaned out the wrecks area and altho the scrapmen were told not to smash up the Strat, the bloody fools did and thus perished the last Stratocruiser-what a tragedy.
This will be Strat N74603, an ex-Northwest aircraft traded in to Lockheed for Electras in 1959. It was never used again, it sat in Mojave for 15 years and was then flown (brave crew !) to Tucson, where it was slowly robbed for spares for C-97s (many parts were common) and for the Guppys modified as Airbus transporters. By 1984 it was missing the whole rear fuselage and tail, so wasn't really a preservation candidate, although the engines and props were still in place, along with a somewhat faded Northwest livery.
I recall there was still a commercial C-97 operator out of the north side of Miami International in the mid-1990s, although they didn't seem to put many hours in, the fleet always seemed to be on the ground there whenever I passed by.