![]() ![]() But what distinguished the T-6 then is what keeps it alive now: It was over-engineered, yet easy to maintain-and it didn’t become obsolete for a very long time. A little more than 17,000 were built by North American Aviation and its overseas licensees. Like most World War II aircraft, the T-6 was built in vast quantities. The T-6’s endurance comes down to the numbers. He too loves the airplane: “The T-6 is rugged and sturdy and tough as a battleship.” Nobody made any of those things any better.” Scully Levin leads a T-6 aerobatic team in South Africa. “It had a North American airframe, a Hamilton Standard prop, and a Pratt & Whitney engine. “I tell people it was the best-built airplane that ever was,” he says. When Goyer got out of the Navy, he bought two Texans from the service for $450 each. He made his orientation flights at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn in the summer of 1945. Norm Goyer learned to fly in the Navy’s Aviation Cadet Training Program toward the end of World War II. Why? Because as warbirds go, the T-6 is remarkably affordable and accessible. And anyone who attends airshows can tell you that the T-6 Texan is ubiquitous. According to the North American Trainer Association, an advocacy group for enthusiasts of the T-6, T-28, and other trainers, at least 500 T-6s (and variants, SNJs and Harvards) are flying today in the United States alone. More people hear the T-6, see it, smell it, touch it, and fly in it than any other warbird on the planet. “We feel you gotta have plenty of noise, plenty of smoke, and be big enough to see,” he says. “It’s just really fun.” But it’s more than the sound, says Mark Henley, lead pilot of the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, which has been performing in T-6s since 2001. ![]() “The roar of that engine is the biggest thrill in the world, as you power down the runway, coming off the ground, going through all these monkey motions to get the gear up,” says Martha Lunken, who has been flying since the early 1960s. It’s that T-6 howl-that MMMRRROWWRRMmmm that deafens and pierces at the same time. ![]()
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