The North American SNJ is the U.S. Navy's version of the venerable T-6 "Texan," a big, noisy, radial-engine trainer aircraft from the WWII-era. The T-6 equals "airplane" in the mind's eye of every kid who dreams of flight, as just about every airplane that every kid has ever drawn looks like one. That's not to say the T-6/SNJ is a toy; quite the contrary. The T-6 and the SNJ were used to train thousands of pilots to fly, to fly in combat, and do it better than the enemy. But its elegant lines, its sensible proportions and its cute little triangular vertical stabilizer all suggest "flying machine" better than many planes. The big round nose tells you it has a radial engine; the huge prop tells you that there is horsepower behind it to turn it; the stenciled painted labels tattooed all over the plane's body tell you -- in no uncertain terms -- what the deal is: "HANDS OFF," "NO STEP," "FUEL CAPACITY 55 GALS."Get this: I flew one today.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/a-roll-in-the-sky-with-a-navy-snj