Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Wed Aug 22, 2018 6:09 pm
I visited Hill Aerospace Museum a couple of weeks ago. Here is a review for those who haven't been there, and an update for those who have.
The museum is at the northern tip of Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, about half an hour north of Salt Lake City. It is outside the secure area of the base. Admission is free, with voluntary donations appreciated. The place is run by an outfit called the Aerospace Heritage Foundation of Utah.
At the gift shop you can buy the official guide book to the museum for $5.00. I recommend this as a handy way to get the identities and histories of the individual planes. My only beef with it is that sometimes it identifies the planes by the serial numbers they're painted as and does not tell you what serial they actually are.
The Hill museum only got started in 1982, and what most distinguishes it from other static museums is that it has managed to assemble an almost complete collection of Army Air Force World War II aircraft even though it has always existed during the period when the warbird movement has made these cost-prohibitive for most static museums to acquire. It has P-38, P-40, P-47 and P-51 fighters, B-25, A-26, B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers, C-45 and C-47 transports, PT-17, BT-13, AT-6 trainers, and an L-4. Only Pima has been comparably successful at acquiring static examples of these types in recent years.
Your tour starts in one of the two large display hangars with the museum's two pre-WWII planes, a Burgess-Wright F replica and a Jenny. The Jenny was restored and flown by Jim Nissen in California in the 1970s, and he won a lot of awards with it then. I think it had a prang sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s and was never quite restored back to airworthy.
The World War II planes are a mixed bag in terms of provenance, but as a group, they are convincing and impressive. The B-17, A-26 and B-25 are typical, basically intact museum airplanes. Of the fighters, the P-47 is probably the most original. It seems to be a basically complete airframe that came back from Paraguay and was on its way to restoration as an airworthy warbird, but was purchased and finished to static condition. I like the rendition of Eagleston's markings.
The next most impressive fighter is the P-38. Like the museum's B-24 and P-40, this was obtained by recovering wrecks in Alaska. I haven't seen any photos of the wreck of this P-38 prior to recovery, but the restoration looks very convincing.
The P-51 isn't bad looking, either. It is presented as a composite rebuild. A few details look a little fishy, but it sells well overall.
The B-24 starts to get a little dodgy. This is another Alaskan wreck. Pre-recovery photos show that the front half of the fuselage, pretty much all of the wings, and some smaller bits were recovered. Some parts are conspicuously missing, like there's nothing to any of the nacelles from the wing leading edges back. Parts of it look pretty decent though.
The P-40 -- hmm. The museum, to its credit, candidly admits that this is a mixture of P-40N parts recovered from Alaska and a plastic P-40E mockup. So there are parts of it that look P-40N, parts that look P-40E, and parts that don't look very P-40 at all. Still, I didn't hate it.
Moving into the postwar area, the museum has an "F-80" that is really a converted T-33. The conversion work is attributed to Aero Nostalgia of Stockton, California. I was interested in how extensive the conversion work was, and it seemed to be pretty well done. Comparing the modified F-80 with the stock T-33 also displayed at the museum, you can see they didn't just close up one cockpit, but also seem to have shortened the fuselage properly, so the intake trunks are much shorter ahead of the wing leading edge. Not bad.
The museum has an almost complete collection of cold war USAF fighters from the F-80 to the F-16. There are gaps, but few enough that you'll have fun quizzing yourself to count them. Most are restored to a high standard, and since Hill AFB has been a maintenance and repair base for many kinds of USAF planes for many years, there's the expertise generally to get things like the paint schemes right. With some exceptions. The Sabre is an exception.
It's gray instead of silver, the national insignia are wrong, the lettering fonts are wrong, and I think even the yellow Korean theatre bands are the wrong size and position. Ugh.
But here's a more typical and nicer example, one of two F-105s on display. Notice how some planes in the indoor display are mounted on pylons. These are only 3 or 4 feet high, but they provide enough vertical separation to allow the planes to be packed together more tightly. I'm sure it makes it much more of a production when the aircraft need to be moved, but it's a cool idea. I may copy it in 1/72 to fit more models on my shelf.
There are three F-16s displayed at the museum. This ex-Thunderbird is a very recent arrival.
The crowd in front of this F-105 was there for a combination retirement and Air Medal award ceremony for an airman from the base. It's nice that the museum serves this function for the base.
Stepping outside into the yard, you'll hear jet noise and probably spot some F-35s in the pattern. I didn't bring the right photo gear for ground to air, and didn't have time to scout out the ideal location to watch the aerial action, but you can get a pretty good look just from the museum compound.
Out in the yard is a pretty complete collection of USAF bombers and transports. Many of these planes are getting fresh paint jobs this year, and they look great. Here, for example, is the nicest looking C-124 I've seen in a long time.
The B-29, formerly known as Hagarty's Hag, is being repainted as Straight Flush, which was one of the Silverplate B-29s. It flew some practice raids over Japan and a weather recon flight on the morning of the Hiroshima bombing. I have a few photos taken at the museum a couple of decades ago, so I can give you a before-and-after look here. You can see that they've improved the landscaping quite a bit over the years!
Another example of a recently repainted subject is this C-119. The museum calls it "52-2107" (which is actually an F-86 serial) but really it was 22107 with the RCAF, and has no U.S. service history. It was acquired from Hawkins & Powers.
The BUFF is also looking newly painted and spiffy. As of my visit, there were not even any markings on it yet.
On the other hand, some of the planes were showing why this repainting binge is necessary. This is the B-47 that used to be at the Bradley museum in CT, and got beat up by that tornado. I'm glad they at least fixed the physical damage, but I hope it gets a face lift soon.
The B-1B makes an impressive display and is one of the more recent aircraft.
There are many more planes, but you get the idea. By all means visit the museum if you are ever in the Salt Lake City area. The World War II collection really sets it apart from most AFB or former-AFB museums, but the collection of post-1945 USAF types is more comprehensive, better maintained, and better presented than most other such museums as well.
August
The museum is at the northern tip of Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, about half an hour north of Salt Lake City. It is outside the secure area of the base. Admission is free, with voluntary donations appreciated. The place is run by an outfit called the Aerospace Heritage Foundation of Utah.
At the gift shop you can buy the official guide book to the museum for $5.00. I recommend this as a handy way to get the identities and histories of the individual planes. My only beef with it is that sometimes it identifies the planes by the serial numbers they're painted as and does not tell you what serial they actually are.
The Hill museum only got started in 1982, and what most distinguishes it from other static museums is that it has managed to assemble an almost complete collection of Army Air Force World War II aircraft even though it has always existed during the period when the warbird movement has made these cost-prohibitive for most static museums to acquire. It has P-38, P-40, P-47 and P-51 fighters, B-25, A-26, B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers, C-45 and C-47 transports, PT-17, BT-13, AT-6 trainers, and an L-4. Only Pima has been comparably successful at acquiring static examples of these types in recent years.
Your tour starts in one of the two large display hangars with the museum's two pre-WWII planes, a Burgess-Wright F replica and a Jenny. The Jenny was restored and flown by Jim Nissen in California in the 1970s, and he won a lot of awards with it then. I think it had a prang sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s and was never quite restored back to airworthy.
The World War II planes are a mixed bag in terms of provenance, but as a group, they are convincing and impressive. The B-17, A-26 and B-25 are typical, basically intact museum airplanes. Of the fighters, the P-47 is probably the most original. It seems to be a basically complete airframe that came back from Paraguay and was on its way to restoration as an airworthy warbird, but was purchased and finished to static condition. I like the rendition of Eagleston's markings.
The next most impressive fighter is the P-38. Like the museum's B-24 and P-40, this was obtained by recovering wrecks in Alaska. I haven't seen any photos of the wreck of this P-38 prior to recovery, but the restoration looks very convincing.
The P-51 isn't bad looking, either. It is presented as a composite rebuild. A few details look a little fishy, but it sells well overall.
The B-24 starts to get a little dodgy. This is another Alaskan wreck. Pre-recovery photos show that the front half of the fuselage, pretty much all of the wings, and some smaller bits were recovered. Some parts are conspicuously missing, like there's nothing to any of the nacelles from the wing leading edges back. Parts of it look pretty decent though.
The P-40 -- hmm. The museum, to its credit, candidly admits that this is a mixture of P-40N parts recovered from Alaska and a plastic P-40E mockup. So there are parts of it that look P-40N, parts that look P-40E, and parts that don't look very P-40 at all. Still, I didn't hate it.
Moving into the postwar area, the museum has an "F-80" that is really a converted T-33. The conversion work is attributed to Aero Nostalgia of Stockton, California. I was interested in how extensive the conversion work was, and it seemed to be pretty well done. Comparing the modified F-80 with the stock T-33 also displayed at the museum, you can see they didn't just close up one cockpit, but also seem to have shortened the fuselage properly, so the intake trunks are much shorter ahead of the wing leading edge. Not bad.
The museum has an almost complete collection of cold war USAF fighters from the F-80 to the F-16. There are gaps, but few enough that you'll have fun quizzing yourself to count them. Most are restored to a high standard, and since Hill AFB has been a maintenance and repair base for many kinds of USAF planes for many years, there's the expertise generally to get things like the paint schemes right. With some exceptions. The Sabre is an exception.
It's gray instead of silver, the national insignia are wrong, the lettering fonts are wrong, and I think even the yellow Korean theatre bands are the wrong size and position. Ugh.
But here's a more typical and nicer example, one of two F-105s on display. Notice how some planes in the indoor display are mounted on pylons. These are only 3 or 4 feet high, but they provide enough vertical separation to allow the planes to be packed together more tightly. I'm sure it makes it much more of a production when the aircraft need to be moved, but it's a cool idea. I may copy it in 1/72 to fit more models on my shelf.
There are three F-16s displayed at the museum. This ex-Thunderbird is a very recent arrival.
The crowd in front of this F-105 was there for a combination retirement and Air Medal award ceremony for an airman from the base. It's nice that the museum serves this function for the base.
Stepping outside into the yard, you'll hear jet noise and probably spot some F-35s in the pattern. I didn't bring the right photo gear for ground to air, and didn't have time to scout out the ideal location to watch the aerial action, but you can get a pretty good look just from the museum compound.
Out in the yard is a pretty complete collection of USAF bombers and transports. Many of these planes are getting fresh paint jobs this year, and they look great. Here, for example, is the nicest looking C-124 I've seen in a long time.
The B-29, formerly known as Hagarty's Hag, is being repainted as Straight Flush, which was one of the Silverplate B-29s. It flew some practice raids over Japan and a weather recon flight on the morning of the Hiroshima bombing. I have a few photos taken at the museum a couple of decades ago, so I can give you a before-and-after look here. You can see that they've improved the landscaping quite a bit over the years!
Another example of a recently repainted subject is this C-119. The museum calls it "52-2107" (which is actually an F-86 serial) but really it was 22107 with the RCAF, and has no U.S. service history. It was acquired from Hawkins & Powers.
The BUFF is also looking newly painted and spiffy. As of my visit, there were not even any markings on it yet.
On the other hand, some of the planes were showing why this repainting binge is necessary. This is the B-47 that used to be at the Bradley museum in CT, and got beat up by that tornado. I'm glad they at least fixed the physical damage, but I hope it gets a face lift soon.
The B-1B makes an impressive display and is one of the more recent aircraft.
There are many more planes, but you get the idea. By all means visit the museum if you are ever in the Salt Lake City area. The World War II collection really sets it apart from most AFB or former-AFB museums, but the collection of post-1945 USAF types is more comprehensive, better maintained, and better presented than most other such museums as well.
August
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Wed Aug 22, 2018 8:06 pm
I haven't seen her in a while.
Thanks,
Phil
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 12:20 am
The B-52G looks great in fresh paint, better than than they did in service as the paint aged fairly quickly.
The C-124 looks odd in (silver) paint. It looks like a model kit. To the best of my knowledge, they were never painted in service. Not silver or gloss MAC gray (though T.O. 1-1-4 did show a SEA camouflage design that thankfully was never applied. It would have looked like a flying salad). I like the application of red conspicuity markings...though should they be orange day-glo and not red (IIRC...red was used for arctic markings which covered more of the tail).
These are not criticisms of the museum, after all outside aircraft need protection from the elements...so we see some odd stuff (like old fighters painted in current color schemes at some based...the F-86 and 105 at Langley comes to mind, as does the gray B-47 at Tinker) as well as NMF types painted silver for protection.
The C-124 looks odd in (silver) paint. It looks like a model kit. To the best of my knowledge, they were never painted in service. Not silver or gloss MAC gray (though T.O. 1-1-4 did show a SEA camouflage design that thankfully was never applied. It would have looked like a flying salad). I like the application of red conspicuity markings...though should they be orange day-glo and not red (IIRC...red was used for arctic markings which covered more of the tail).
These are not criticisms of the museum, after all outside aircraft need protection from the elements...so we see some odd stuff (like old fighters painted in current color schemes at some based...the F-86 and 105 at Langley comes to mind, as does the gray B-47 at Tinker) as well as NMF types painted silver for protection.
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:11 am
Thank you for taking the time to post this trip report.
I like the P/F-80 conversion. I do hope that someone does this with a flying T-33 and we get a "close enough" F-80 flyer. The forward plug that was used to make the T-33 is a constant cross section plug, so fairly straight forward. The rear fuselage plug could likely remain as it is less notable.
Agree that silver paint can be a good compromise for outside displays of natural metal aircraft.
Any sign of the B-26 remnants?
Well done to the folks at Hill.
I like the P/F-80 conversion. I do hope that someone does this with a flying T-33 and we get a "close enough" F-80 flyer. The forward plug that was used to make the T-33 is a constant cross section plug, so fairly straight forward. The rear fuselage plug could likely remain as it is less notable.
Agree that silver paint can be a good compromise for outside displays of natural metal aircraft.
Any sign of the B-26 remnants?
Well done to the folks at Hill.
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:50 am
I looked for any B-26 bits, but didn't see them. They had a few storage lots adjacent to the museum that were difficult to peer into.
August
August
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:07 am
A nice photo essay, thanks. A few years ago here on the WIX it was mentioned the museum wanted to get rid of some of its collection. Did that happen??
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:24 am
I should add that there have been some comings and goings at the museum in recent years. There is a good deal of empty space in the pre-century-series hangar created by the exit of at least two planes, the F-86L pictured below, which had been at the museum since its early days and appears to have left the collection, and the F-89 which has been shifted outside to the parking lot. Something like a B-26 would fit that space nicely, or maybe they are thinking of moving the C-47 inside. They used to have an F-18A that is no longer on display, and they seem to be paring down their helicopter and missile collection, with the H-34 Choctaw gone, the Piasecki flying banana having its rotors removed and possibly ready to depart, and the Minuteman III and Peacekeeper not in evidence. On the other hand, they have added a third F-16, a KC-135, and an H-53 Pave Low chopper since the guide book was published in 2007.
August
August
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 10:17 am
k5083 wrote:I looked for any B-26 bits, but didn't see them. They had a few storage lots adjacent to the museum that were difficult to peer into.
August
the B-26 was sold and is the one being restored in CA
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:32 am
Thanks for that August. My visit there dates to the early '90s so it is nice to see the improvements and additions.
Regarding the ceremony in front of the F-105, I've attended a few multi-day business meetings in the Vietnam hangar at the Robins AFB Museum in Georgia. Of course the acoustics aren't optimal but it affords an opportunity to see the museum during the breaks.
As much as the WIX community complains about potentially airworthy aircraft being made into static displays, and I'm one of them, I'm still impressed by how much better many of these museums have gotten.
Regarding the ceremony in front of the F-105, I've attended a few multi-day business meetings in the Vietnam hangar at the Robins AFB Museum in Georgia. Of course the acoustics aren't optimal but it affords an opportunity to see the museum during the breaks.
As much as the WIX community complains about potentially airworthy aircraft being made into static displays, and I'm one of them, I'm still impressed by how much better many of these museums have gotten.
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:46 am
Nice photos!
FYI, I believe that there may be Alaskan B-24 parts included in the restoration of the aircraft, but the fuselage is actually a PB4Y that was recovered from the Florida Everglades by Jay Wisler many years ago. The Hill AFB team modified it to be a B-24.
Jerry
FYI, I believe that there may be Alaskan B-24 parts included in the restoration of the aircraft, but the fuselage is actually a PB4Y that was recovered from the Florida Everglades by Jay Wisler many years ago. The Hill AFB team modified it to be a B-24.
Jerry
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Thu Aug 23, 2018 12:04 pm
Great shots! 
I finally got to the place during our cross-country road trip but didn't have a lot of time (we were going to hit this and the Golden Spike monument and be in Boise that night). The weather wasn't great but I was very impressed at their collection.
I finally got to the place during our cross-country road trip but didn't have a lot of time (we were going to hit this and the Golden Spike monument and be in Boise that night). The weather wasn't great but I was very impressed at their collection.
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:12 am
Great post August, thanks!
Any comment on the A-1E? It was a VNAF combat vet. While I have nothing against the COIN paint, it’s a shame they elected to basically replicate Col Fisher’s ‘649; almost like a “Movie Memphis Belle”.
Its actual serial is unknown although I sent a suggestion via NMUSAF in 2016 as to the potential location of an alternate Bu No tag. Never heard back.
Ken
Any comment on the A-1E? It was a VNAF combat vet. While I have nothing against the COIN paint, it’s a shame they elected to basically replicate Col Fisher’s ‘649; almost like a “Movie Memphis Belle”.
Its actual serial is unknown although I sent a suggestion via NMUSAF in 2016 as to the potential location of an alternate Bu No tag. Never heard back.
Ken
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:54 am
Very nice photo essay, indeed! Many thanks...
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:41 am
Ken wrote:Great post August, thanks!
Any comment on the A-1E? It was a VNAF combat vet. While I have nothing against the COIN paint, it’s a shame they elected to basically replicate Col Fisher’s ‘649; almost like a “Movie Memphis Belle”.
Its actual serial is unknown although I sent a suggestion via NMUSAF in 2016 as to the potential location of an alternate Bu No tag. Never heard back.
Ken
The museum's blurb on the A-1E hints at an interesting history, saying that it was built up in Vietnam from components of other A-1s, both Air Force and Navy. So I guess, it's as if the "Swoose" were painted as a "Movie Memphis Belle." It may not have any true single serial. But if they had any idea what it looked like in Vietnam - and they may not! - that look would surely be more interesting than painting it like Fisher's plane.
August
Re: Hill Aerospace Museum, a recent visit
Mon Aug 27, 2018 7:41 am
Since it appears as if they did not spend 6 minutes on the potential of a serial plate, I’m going to assume they would not be interested in the time required to update the paint scheme. When 649 was repainted at NMUSAF decades ago, some errors were made. Unfortunately some of those were repeated on the Hill Spad, having used 649 as gospel. 