Thirty-eight years after they arrived in northern Utah, Hill Air Force Base pilots remain in love with the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the raw sensations that arrive as the jet races past the speed of sound.
“It’s like strapping into a rocket,” Col. Lee E. Kloos, commander of Hill’s 388th Fighter Wing, said Friday. “You are part of that aircraft.”
But the F-16 is leaving as the transition to a next-generation warplane, the F-35, continues for the 388th and the reserve 419th Fighter Wing. The remaining dozen or so F-16s stationed at Hill will be gone by the end of the month, most heading to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, where Air Force officials hope to expand a pilot-training program.