North American NA-16 - AT-6 - SNJ - Warbird Tech Vol 11

The North American NA-16 family presents the aviation historian with a simple proposition: one basic aeroplane, several thousand variations and enough names, numbers and national designations to make filing it correctly a respectable lifetime’s work. In the United States Army it became the AT-6 and later the T-6 Texan; the US Navy called it the SNJ; the British and Commonwealth air forces knew it as the Harvard; and numerous overseas customers applied further designations, presumably because three names were clearly insufficient.

In this eleventh volume of the Warbird Tech series, Dan Hagedorn traces the family from the original NA-16 concept of the mid-1930s through its bewildering development into one of the most important military training aircraft ever built. With its tandem cockpit, radial engine and reassuringly purposeful appearance, it prepared generations of pilots for faster and considerably less forgiving combat aircraft. If a trainee could master the Texan’s controls, noise, torque and tendency to demand proper attention during landing, he was deemed ready to encounter the enemy—or at least a machine with even more imaginative ways of punishing carelessness.

The design proved extraordinarily adaptable. Variants appeared with fixed or retractable undercarriages, fabric or metal fuselages, different engines, armament and equipment tailored to the requirements of customers around the world. The family also inspired or contributed to developments including Australia’s CAC Wirraway. What began as an advanced trainer spread through the air forces of North America, Europe, the Commonwealth and Latin America, where Hagedorn’s particular knowledge brings welcome order to a complicated and often neglected part of the aircraft’s history.

Nor did these machines restrict themselves to patiently teaching young pilots which way was up. Armed versions served as light attack aircraft, reconnaissance machines and battlefield controllers, while post-war Texans and Harvards continued working long after more glamorous combat types had been converted into saucepans. Many later passed into civilian ownership and became air-show favourites, their distinctive radial growl allowing spectators to hear history approaching before somebody with a loudspeaker identified the wrong variant.

As expected from the Warbird Tech series, this is not merely a procession of attractive photographs accompanied by the observation that the aircraft was “much loved.” Hagedorn gets inside the machine through technical-manual extracts, exploded views, cutaway drawings, photographs of disassembled aircraft and coverage of experimental models, engines, equipment, armament and post-war developments. It is the sort of book that permits readers to distinguish between variants from a small alteration near the cowling and then become quietly disappointed when everyone else fails to notice.

Compact but densely supplied with information, this is an excellent reference for aviation historians, restorers, modellers and enthusiasts attempting to navigate the great NA-16 family tree without becoming permanently lodged between a BT-9 and an SNJ-5. It celebrates an aircraft whose principal job was teaching others to fly, but which acquired a service history more varied than many front-line combat types.

Published by Specialty Press in 1997, this copy is in Very Good condition. Appropriately for a book about a trainer, it remains fully prepared for further instruction and has not yet been ground-looped into the bookshelf.

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