Free Republic

An Air Force instructor pilot died early in the morning on May 14 from injuries sustained when the pilot’s T-6A Texan II training plane ejection seat activated during ground operations the day before, the 82nd Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, announced in a press release. “An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway,” the wing wrote, adding that the pilot’s name is being withheld for 24 hours to notify his or her next of kin. The 82nd is the host unit at Sheppard, but the pilot was assigned to the 80th Flying Training Wing, the...

A T-6 Texan trainer from Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph crashed roughly 30 miles from the base near Rolling Oaks Mall, Air Education and Training Command officials said Tuesday. “The crew ejected and is safe with minor injuries reported at the site,” AETC said in a Facebook post. “There were no civilian casualties, and the extent of damage to property has not been assessed,” officials said. Members from the base’s fire and safety units from the 12th Flying Training Wing responded to the incident alongside local responders, the announcement said. Two parachutes were seen deploying from the aircraft, indicating the airmen...

Culpeper (United States) (AFP) - There was no mistaking the muscular roar of the big radial engine as the most famous trainer to come out of World War II soared above this rural Virginia town. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the North American T-6 Texan, the big tandem-seat warbird in which countless pilots from dozens of countries honed their flying skills. This weekend, some 30 Texans will set off from Culpeper, 70 miles (115 kilometers) outside Washington, and fly up the Potomac River, over the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, to mark a unique aeronautical milestone.

Learning to fly is hard, learning to fly a military aircraft is even harder. And learning to fly a military aircraft at night is hardest of all. Because of the fact many combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan are flown after dark, more emphasis has been placed in recent years on training military student pilots to fly at night. As a result, every three weeks the men and women earning their wings at Vance Air Force Base do their flying after the sun goes down. The next night flying week at Vance is scheduled to begin Monday. During a recent...

Two veteran pilots -- one a Bakersfield-based national champion in 2004 at a Reno air show -- were killed Wednesday in a World War II vintage airplane they've flown countless times before, according to friends at the crash scene in a canal and open farm field behind the Frito Lay plant. Al Goss, 68, the owner of the blue North American AT-6 (Advanced Training) "Texan" that was based in Shafter's Minter Field, and Steven Ballard, 54, a FedEx pilot from Anchorage, Alaska who worked on Goss's "Warlock team" at Minter Field, died at 11:34 a.m. when the AT-6 broke into...

Local Navy student pilots will learn the craft's digital cockpit Student pilots at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi will begin training for more advanced aircraft when the T-6 Texan II replaces the T-34 Turbomentor. The change will occur in 2012. The single-engine, two-seat T-6 that will replace the single-engine, two-seat T-34 will have a digital cockpit instead of a dial-instrumentation cockpit. The change allows the students to learn a digital cockpit from the beginning, instead of learning a dial cockpit and then a digital cockpit in advanced training, said Lt. Sean Robertson, a spokesman for the Chief of Naval Air...