Talk:North American T-6 Texan

Pic question
You may want to change the picture on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-6_Texan. It is of a BT-13 not an AT-6.

The BT-13 is fixed gear. The photo is of a retactalbe gear plane. I believe the photo is correct. Mike Bradford


 * Mike's right; that's definitely a T-6 (the photo, in fact looks much like the one appearing on the cover of the official USAF Pilot Operating Intruction for the type issued in the mid-1950s--my copy is buried in a box somewhere, so I can't confirm, but I'd bet a beer that that's it)71.228.225.234 (talk) 04:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)CBsHellcat

I don't know where the designation "T-6 Texan" comes from; my understanding is that it was always "AT-6 Texan". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.78.71.98 (talk • contribs) 17:45, March 24, 2006 (UTC)
 * BT meant "basic trainer" and AT meant "advanced trainer". At some point, they quit making differentiation and just called all trainers "T" --rogerd 23:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * USAAF diveded trainers into PT "primary trainer", BT "basic trainer", and AT "advanced trainer". In 1947 when USAAF became USAF, all trainers became T only. Same times as P "pursuit" became F "fighter", and A "attack" became B "bomber". AT-16 by the way was the USAAF designation on Harvards. Most of the "Japanese" airplanes in the Tora! movie were actually converted Canadian built AT-16 Harvards, not T-6 Texans! I'm thinking of changing that in the article if no one else does.--Towpilot 18:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

seems a bit odd
It seems a bit odd that the "Service Record" section mentions the one fatal accident of the Skytypers' SNJ-2. The T-6/SNJ/Harvard has been a very available & heavily used airplane since WWII for training, by sportsman & in air show work, & consequently has a substantial accident history as a type (mostly through no real fault of the design). A cursory query into the NTSB's Accident/Incident Database using "North American" under Make/Model & searching only fatal Injury Severity for a time period from 12/24/2007 (the date of this posting) back to 1/1/1980 returns no less than 43 fatal accidents for the type (mixed in with many for the P-51 & a mixed bag of other North American types). If one single accident deserves a mention, it seems it should be "NTSB Identification: ATL05FA079" which shook the T-6 community tremendously by revealing a hitherto undiscovered structural fatigue issue with the airframe. Only 6 years before this accident, a respected T-6 pilot/mechanic I worked with very confidently made the comment "You'll never pull the wings off a T-6," & I think we all felt that way about the airplane until this accident. Many a time I remember looking out past those wingtips to check some horizon or ground reference during aerobatic demonstrations (many times with paying student aboard!) pulling Gs with unquestioning confidence in the wing underneath me. When the Kissimmee accident happened it really took everyone by suprise, not only claiming a widely recognized pilot in the community & passenger, but it threw the brakes on all aerobatic/air combat activity while everyone wondered if the T-6 would find itself a victim of the same structural issues that have plagued the T-34 Mentor in recent years.71.228.225.234 (talk) 09:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)CBsHellcat

Very long service in the SAAF
How does this page manage to not mention that the South African Air Force operated more than 100 of these aircraft from WW2 until the mid 1990's when they were replaced with Pilatus PC7MkII trainers? Roger (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Simple reason: No one has added it yet. If you have a reliable source (it should be easy to prove the SAAF used them, but the details need to be sourced), feel free to do so. Also, you can just give a source here, and I or someone else will check it out and try to add it. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Operators
It seems this list of countries should only contain sublists of forces within the country if there are more than one. Could someone please confirm this. If correct, sublists of one should be deleted. GrahamBould (talk) 09:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no such guideline in the WP:AIR page content guidelines. Perhaps there is one in WP:MILHIST's Style guide, but I don't know. Besides, why should sublists of one be deleted? Because some of the others don't have them? Wikipedia is a work in progress - given time and research, the other can be added. One sublist is useful because it tells which service the aircraft served with. Not all nations which used them had independent air arms/forces. - BillCJ (talk) 09:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to support BillCJ comments not something I have heard of before, I cant see any reason why one operator cant be allowed. This list is missing operators, because as has been said, it is work in progress - just waiting for somebody to get round to it. MilborneOne (talk) 12:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. I have added the missing organisations. Question raised about Argentina - were their aircraft actually T-6s? See hidden text in the article. GrahamBould (talk) 15:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Should individual units/squadrons be listed as in the case of New Zealand? If we allow it for one country we have to allow it for all, but that would make the section very long and clumsy. I propose that the squadron list under New Zealand be deleted. If a reader really does want that much detail it should appear in the RNZAF article. Roger (talk) 11:33, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Dont see any reason to delete the New Zealand units although it might be better to move the list to T-6 Texan operators and just leave a list of countries behind as done on other aircraft articles with lots of users. MilborneOne (talk) 11:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Page Name
Should not this page be correctly called AT-6 Texan - this aircraft only was redesignated T-6 after WWII and when the USAF redesignated all the aircraft (P-51 to F-51, AT-6 to T-6, A-26 to B-26, etc...) in 1947 Davegnz (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The USAF also redesignated the P-80 to F-80, P-82 to F-82, P-84 to F-84, P-86 to F-86, and so on. What really matters in all these cases is the names that the aircraft are better known under and/or when the bulk of their service occurred. I think one could argue that the T-6 is the better-known designation, while it served long periods under both designations.


 * In truth, it's a matter of preference in this case, and how many support which preference. One other factor to continue is the USAF's "brilliant" decision to reuse the "T-6" designation for the Beechcraft Texan II (the reuse of the name is fine here). Having this page at AT-6 Texan would help to further distinguish it from T-6 Texan II. I used similar logic with T2V SeaStar (rather than T-1 SeaStar to distinguish it from the also-brilliantly designated T-1 Jayhawk, both being in the post-1962 designation system. In these cases, any way to help disambiguate the re-used designations is helpful. (PS, it's called a Watchlist - nothing to do with anyone emulating the mating habits of dogs!) - BillCJ (talk) 16:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This page should be called the Harvard, not any US designation. As the article states, this aircraft is known as the Harvard almost everywhere but the US. I don't see why it is under the US designation no matter what it is. TurtleTrax (talk) 14:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * We have to pick one name to use and it is normally the common name, the aircraft originates in the United States and they choose to name it the T-6 Texan, a foreign customer decided to call it the Harvard and I would agree it is used widely but we have to choose one and that was the one from the originating country. Harvard redirects here so should not be a problem to find the article. MilborneOne (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Defunct operator added
Re: War in Laos, Kenneth Conboy, page 9: Royal Laotian Air Force operated T-6 in counter-insurgency role. Unit insignia was the erawan or three headed elephant (also common with RTAF) if some kind soul would dub in a graphic.

Georgejdorner (talk) 17:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC

Addendum: Royal Lao flag image available at Royal Lao Army. Georgejdorner (talk) 19:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I believe that North American BC-1 should be merged into this article, since the BC-1 (and BC-2) were, essentially, 'pre-series' Texans, as it were, and it would be better off all in one place, I think. - The Bushranger (talk) 01:41, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Support - My first instinct was to oppose the merger, but after some independent research, I concur with B-ranger on this. - BilCat (talk) 06:48, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Absolutely! The BC-1 is nothing but an early Army version of what in the Navy became SNJ-2, already mentioned in the T-6 article. --Towpilot (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Done! - The Bushranger (talk) 02:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Kyushu K10W
I have been attempting to move this to similar where it belongs but keep getting reverted. The K10W1 had nothing in common with any variant of the T-6/NA16 family, used an aluminium monococque fuselage as opposed to a steel tube structure. Empty weight was 1,476kg vs 1,886kg for the T-6 Its wing was further aft and smaller in both span and chord, while having much less sweep, and used a different airfoil section. There were no components in common, and none of the development work referred back to anything NA built. The confusion stems from the usual American propaganda bs from ww2 which asumed anything the Japanese did HAD to be a copy of something. Might as well add the Ki-36 or anything else Japanese with a cranked wing to the list of related. The only connection is that the IJN requested something similar to the NA.16 (2 of which had been bought by Mitsubishi). NiD.29 (talk) 23:01, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Unclear sentance
"In late 1937 Mitsubushi purchased two NA-16s as technology demonstrators and possibly a licence to build more. " They definitely purchased a license which would allow them to possibly build more? OR They possibly purchased a license which would allow them to definitely build more? 159.245.32.2 (talk) 16:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)


 * They MAY have purchased the licence - sources are somewhat confused on that. They definitely never built anything that matched the licence, so there is no MORE for them to have built.&#32;- NiD.29 (talk) 06:31, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Hurricane reconnaissance
I'd like to see the plane's role in pioneering Hurricane reconnaissance mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfowlewebs (talk • contribs) 15:07, 6 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Not really pioneering they were just pratting about, I cant see anything that says they collected scientific data, really just trivia thats not worth mentioning. MilborneOne (talk) 16:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

'Operational history'
This section is ridiculously out of balance. The T-6 was designed as a trainer aircraft, and its overwhelming operational usage was as such. Yet the section makes no mention of this at all. Why not? 2A00:23C1:8250:6F01:14BD:58C0:3B0A:D1F3 (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes I would agree but Wikipedia is a work in progress and nobody so far has added the history and the effect the aircraft had on training pilots, if you have a reliable references then you are welcome to add a section on use as a trainer. MilborneOne (talk) 00:27, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Developed into: North American P-64?
I don't think this can be right, as the North American P-64 is an older aircraft (from the '30s) --80.42.75.225 (talk) 20:52, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

AeroShell Team
https://naat.net/aircraft.html

The AeroShell team uses T6's for their aerobatic show.

I see in the popular culture section another team is listed so figured id see about adding aeroshell Naliao (talk) 19:50, 31 July 2023 (UTC)