HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- Editor's note: This feature is part of a Hill Air Force Base 80th anniversary series. These articles will feature the base’s historical innovations and achievements, and will highlight mission platforms that have been operated and supported throughout the decades.
The surprise invasion of the Republic of Korea (also known as South Korea) by the armies of Communist-ruled North Korea on June 25, 1950 gave the Ogden Air Materiel Area an emergency opportunity to once again provide superb logistical support to a war effort five years following the conclusion of World War II.
Despite suffering a series of reduction-in-force actions during the late 1940s, Hill AFB immediately rose to the new challenge by realigning its personnel and assigning them to critical areas while reversing the workforce reduction through strong recruitment efforts.
Early in 1950, Air Materiel Command assigned the Ogden Air Materiel Area the project of modifying 42 B-29s, which included the installation of R-3350-57 Pratt and Whitney engines, APQ-13A radar, and seven-person life rafts on each aircraft. The required number of aircraft, and tight schedules for delivery, necessitated establishment of a production-line system.
This posed a particular problem: putting the 141-foot wings of the B-29s through a hangar door only 110 feet wide. At first, mechanics tried removing one of the wings on each plane so it could pass down the production line. This proved too slow and costly. An ingenious idea led to the solution of turning the B-29s at a 45-degree angle so they would fit into the available space.
Next the Maintenance Directorate needed to figure out how to move the aircraft at this angle from station to station in the production line. Mechanics and engineers worked together and devised a way to turn the big landing gear at a 45-degree angle so the plane could be rolled on its own wheels. This took specially devised jigs and braces, a 12-inch steel bar with holes drilled in each end to lengthen the drag strut, another bar of steel on the rear of the main gear to allow the link assembly to part and be held rigidly in place. Painted on the concrete floors, straight lines marked the path of each of the three landing gears. Such guidelines obviated the danger of an aircraft getting out of line and becoming damaged. The newly devised line brought speedier production to meet schedules.
The first of these 42 B-29s entered the line May 4, and by June 30, 1950, all 12 stations showed planes in process. The last B-29 of this project came off the line in December 1950. Many more B-29s, amongst many other aircraft, followed these through the Ogden Air Materiel Area’s production lines over the next two years, contributing enormously to the war effort. Hill AFB continued its support of operations in Korea until the conflict’s combatants signed an armistice at Panmunjom, North Korea, on July 27, 1953.