Hill Air Force Base
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hill Air Force Base is an Air Force Materiel Command base of the United States Air Force. Located in northern Utah, Hill AFB is the largest employer in the state as of 2004. It is mostly known as the home of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Hill AFB is located in Davis and Weber counties, near Ogden.
[edit] History
Originally authorized in 1939 as the Ogden Air Depot, it was soon named Hill Field after Major Ployer Peter Hill, who had died testing a Boeing Model 299 aircraft.
Hill Field officially opened on 7 November 1940, and soon became a key maintenance and supply base of World War II, peaking at 22,000 military and civilian workers in 1943.
In 1944 Hill Field became responsible for the long-term storage of surplus aircraft and support equipment. B-24, P-40, P-47, B-29, and many other types of aircraft were eventually prepared and stored at the base.
Hill Field became Hill Air Force Base on 5 February 1948.
During the Korean War Hill AFB was assigned a major share of the Air Materiel Command logistical effort to support the war. Hill personnel quickly removed needed aircraft from storage, renovated, and added them to the active Air Force inventory.
Also in the 1950s, Hill began maintenance support of various jet aircraft (mainly F-16s, A-10s and C-130s), missile systems, and rockets. It continues to do so to this day.
The base also houses the 30-acre Hill Aerospace Museum which contains over 80 historical aircraft.
[edit] Utah Test and Training Range
The Utah Test and Training Range is one of the only live-fire air force training range in the United States. It is located in far-western Utah, near the Nevada border, and lies both north and south of Interstate 80 (with several miles of separation on each side of the interstate highway). The portion of the training range that lies north of Interstate 80 is also west of the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Test and Training Range lies in Tooele County and is owned by the state of Utah, but the airspace and training is scheduled by Hill AFB.
On September 8, 2004, the Genesis spacecraft crashlanded in the nearby Dugway Proving Ground.
