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I visited Salt Lake City, UT, to attend 13th International Meshing Roundtable conference.  I arrived at Salt Lake City Sunday a little after noon, and drove to Hill Aerospace Museum located next to Hill Air Base.  The museum was just 30 minutes drive away from Salt Lake City International airport, but I once took a wrong exit of I-15, and took a little longer to reach there.

Hill Aerospace Museum	C-124 Globemaster II

As soon as you drive in to the museum, you will be greeted with a lot of historic and modern static-display aircrafts outside the museum such as C-124 Globemaster II, A-7 Corsair II, B-1B Lancer, B-52 Stratofortress, H-21 Shawnee (a.k.a. Flying Banana), C-123 Provider, C-119 Flying Boxcar, B-48 Stratojet, etc.

Inside of the museum was dark like other museums, and it was not easy to take pictures without a tripod, and I didn't have a tripod.  In fact, my camera was not able to focus on those inside display airplanes.  I just upload some of the pictures came out nicely.  But, I liked the collection of century series fighters, F-102, F-105, F-106, and F-111.  Also, an interesting display was ADM-20 Quail decoy.  ADM-20 was supposed to be launched from B-52 to deflect guided-missiles tracking the mother airplane.  But, I believe it was never used in a real combat.  (I may be wrong).  In fact, I like the idea of decoy, and I suppose it can be used in more aggressive way.

P-38 Lightning	ADM-20 Quail decoy	B-25 Mitchell and F-5 (maybe T-38)

I often hear that a fighter airplane should carry some missile facing backward so that it can be fired at another airplane chasing it.  There is a fundamental problem in this idea.  Imagine you throw a dart backward.  Within a second, the dart flips 180 degree and points to the direction of its flight path.  So, unless you make a very fast controller, the missile you launch at an enemy fighter behind you will flip 180 degrees and fly toward yourself.  Instead, I think someone should come up with a missile that gradually decelerates after launch and stays behind its mother airplane.  Such a missile can intercept a missile fired from an airplane behind the mother plane, and the enemy airplane would need to give up the pursuit to avoid the missile approaching from the forward.

Random shots of inside of the one of two hangars.

You can see a nice collection of historic aircrafts outside the museum as well.  Some of them are rusting, unfortunately, but some of them are shiny as new.  I suppose the museum re-paints those outside airplanes whenever they can afford.

C-7 Caribou	B-1B Lancer	7 wishes

Some pigeons were taking a break on the vertical tail wing of the B-1B bomber.  This bomber airplane does no longer have to fly through the fire and happily resting with birds.

Birds are taking a break on the retired bomber.	Mountains beyond the Hill air base.	H-21 Shawnee, or Flying Banana

C-123 Provider was a familiar airplane to me because the Air Heritage Museum at Beaver County airport is maintaining a flyable C-123, and I often see it on display in nearby air shows.

C-123 Provider	C-119 Flying Boxcar.  A twin-tail cargo.	B-48 Stratojet

And, what made this museum special was that I was able to take almost profile look of B-52 Startofortress bomber in one picture.  Many air museum put so many airplanes close together, and there is little chance of taking a profile look of a B-52 without being blocked by another airplane.  Or, I cannot step back far enough.  But, here I was able to.

B-52 Stratofortress	What is it?  It says B19 and J18.  But, it cannot be from a B-19	A-7 Corsair II.

The A-7 Corsair II near the entrance of the museum says "YA-7F".  According to the web site of National Museum of U. S. Air Force (Dayton Ohio), the air force once considered to purchase air-force version of A-7 Corsairs, and ordered two A-7Ds to be modified for evaluation.  This A-7 probably was one of them.

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