| Hill Air Force Base | |
|---|---|
| Part of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) | |
| Located near: Ogden, Utah | |
388th FW F-16 Fighting Falcons |
|
| Built | 1939 |
| In use | 1939-Present |
| Controlled by | United States Air Force |
| Garrison | 75th Air Base Wing 388th Fighter Wing |
| Airfield information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| IATA: HIF – ICAO: KHIF – FAA LID: HIF | |||
| Summary | |||
| Elevation AMSL | 4,789 ft / 1,459.7 m | ||
| Website | |||
| Runways | |||
| Direction | Length | Surface | |
| ft | m | ||
| 14/32 | 13,508 | 4,117 | PEM |
Hill Air Force Base (IATA: HIF, ICAO: KHIF, FAA LID: HIF) is a major U.S. Air Force Base located in northern Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and near the towns of Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, Sunset, and Layton. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Salt Lake City. The base was named in honor of Major Ployer Peter Hill of the U.S. Army Air Corps, who died test-flying a prototype of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. In this decade Hill A.F.B. is still the sixth-largest employer in the state of Utah, and the third-largest one excluding the State Government and Higher Education employers.[1] Hill A.F.B. is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command's (AFMC) Ogden Air Logistics Center which is the worldwide manager for a wide range of aircraft, engines, missiles, software, avionics, and accessories components. The commander of the Air Logistics Center is currently Major General Andrew E. Busch. The Ogden Air Logistics Center is one of the three USAF Air Logistics Centers, with the others being the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, and the Warner-Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins AFB, Georgia.
The host unit at Hill A.F.B. is the Air Force Material Command's 75th Air Base Wing, which provides services and support for the Ogden Air Logistics Center and its subordinate organizations. The Wing and Installation Commander of Hill Air Force Base is presently Colonel Patrick Higby. Additional tenant units at Hill A.F.B. include operational fighter wings of the Air Combat Command (ACC) and the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC).
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The Utah Test and Training Range is one of the only live-fire U.S. Air Force training ranges within the United States. It is located in far western Utah, close to the Nevada border, and it extends both north and south of Interstate Highway 80, with several miles of separation on each side of the Interstate Highway. The portion of the bombing 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 the land is owned by the state of Utah, but the use of the airspace and training exercises are scheduled by Hill A.F.B.
On September 8, 2004, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Genesis space probe crash-landed on the nearby U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as planned.
Hill Air Force Base is named in honor of Major Ployer Peter Hill (1894–1935), the Chief of the Flying Branch of the U.S. Army Air Corps Material Division of Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio. Major Hill had died as a result of injuries he received from the crash of the Boeing Aircraft Company's experimental aircraft Boeing Model 299 at Wright Field, the prototype airplane for what became the famous B-17 Flying Fortress.
Hill Air Force Base traces its origins back to the ill-fated U.S. Army's Air Mail "experiment" of 1934, when the idea originated for a permanent air depot in the Salt Lake City area. In the following years, the Army Air Corps surveyed the region for a suitable location for the permanent western terminus of the air mail. Several sites in Utah were considered, and the present site near Ogden emerged as the clear favorite.
In July 1939, Congress appropriated $8.0 million for the establishment and construction of the Ogden Air Depot. Hill Field officially opened on 7 November 1940, and with the outbreak of war for the United States in December 1941, it soon became a key maintenance and supply base of World War II, with a peak of 22,000 military and civilian workers in 1943.
During World War II, Hill Field was an important maintenance and supply base, with round-the-clock operations geared to supporting the war effort. Battle weary warplanes like the A-26, B-17, B-24, B-29, P-40, P-47, P-61, and others depended on the men and women of Hill Field for structural repairs, engine overhauls, and spare parts. The peak wartime employment at Hill Field was reached in 1943 with a total of just over 22,000 military and civilian personnel. These dedicated men and women rehabilitated and returned thousands of warplanes to combat.
Starting in 1944, Hill Field became responsible for the long-term storage of surplus aircraft and their support equipment, including outmoded P-40 Tomahawks and P-40 Warhawks which had been removed from combat service and replaced by newer and better warplanes. Also ending up at Hill Field over the approaching years were warplanes like the P-47 Thunderbolt, the B-24 Liberator, the B-29 Superfortress, and many other types of airplanes were prepared for storage and stored at this air base over the course of the 1940s and 1950s.
Hill Field became the Hill Air Force Base on 5 February 1948, following the transition of the new U.S. Air Force away from the Army and the United States Army Air Force, into an independent service, as called for by the National Security Act of 1947. This transition actually took place in October 1947, but it took many months to fully implement.
During the Korean War, Hill A.F.B. was assigned a major share of the Air Materiel Command's logistical effort to support the combat in Korea. Hill A.F.B. personnel quickly removed needed warplanes from storage, renovated them, and added them to active-service U.S.A.F. flying squadrons.
Then during the 1960s, Hill A.F.B. began to perform the maintenance support for various kinds of jet warplanes, mainly the F-4 Phantom II during the Vietnam War, and then afterwards, the more modern F-16 Fighting Falcons, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and C-130 Hercules, and also air combat missile systems and air-to-ground rockets. Hill A.F.B. continues to carry out these tasks to the present day.
Hill A.F.B. has also housed the 30-acre (120,000 m2) Hill Aerospace Museum since 1981. This contains more than 80 former U.S.A.F. airplanes and helicopters.
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.
Note: Much of this text in an early version of this article was taken from pages on the Hill Air Force Base Website, which as a work of the U.S. Government is presumed to be a public domain resource. That information was supplemented by:
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