On Saturday morning, I was back in the store's receiving dock after I was scheduled to leave for the day, putting all those empty cardboard boxes in their place. As I emptied all the carts the stocking team I serve had filled up and left for me to deal with, a delightful deep roar filled the sky above. I knew exactly what it was: a six hundred horsepower Pratt and Whitney R-1340-49.
Most of the big old radial engines sound largely the same, though after awhile around old aircraft one can learn to tell the difference between a smaller displacement model with fewer cylinders, such as the 1340, and a very large one, such as the fourteen cylinder R-2800. 2,800 cubic inches - that's 46 liters! That engine is over ten times larger than the one in my car! In June of 2006, I closely observed an F4U-4 Corsair fuel up at Spencer, Iowa. Eighty four gallons of 100 Low Lead Avgas went into the main tank, and as 100 LL was about $4.50 at that time, the total bill was roughly $375! And you think filling the gas tank in your pickup or SUV hurts.
I knew it was a 1340 I was hearing, versus a Wright Cyclone, or other similar radial of the era, because I knew that it was in an old AT-6 'Texan' that was visiting the airport, just a couple of miles to the west, that morning. For a few hundred dollars or so, rides were available in the back seat of this old trainer.
A year or so ago, when I used to stand out with the smokers at our six o'clock break, a coworker of mine asked me about old aircraft visiting the airport here. The T-6 is a relatively frequent sight there, as far as old 'warbirds' go. Of the World War Two era planes still flying, the majority of them are T-6's, though the ones the Navy operated were known as SNJ's. When I explained that the type was an advanced trainer (why the Army/Air Force designation was AT-6; the Navy used letter designations, such as PBY, TBD, SBD, PBJ, etc. The last letter was a manufacturer's code, and 'J' was North American Aircraft Corporation.), old Dave, age 60 or so, just about flew off the handle, demanding to know why taxpayer dollars were spent on training aircraft when that money could, or in his opinion, should be spent entirely on combat aircraft.
He did have a good point. On the face of it, it does seem somewhat redundant and potentially a waste of resources during a time of war. Still, they always had both primary and advanced trainers, going back to the thirties or before. What gives?
I had the answer right away, and I'd had it all along. I tried to explain it to Dave, but I'm not sure if he was willing to accept it or not. I'd say it really was the case of trying to teach the old dog new tricks.
I told Dave how combat aircraft are traditionally the cutting-edge state-of-the-art as far as performance goes. They are meant to climb out hard and fast, reach the highest top speeds of any aircraft available, out maneuver most anything else they're likely to encounter, and not be particularly efficient in the process. They've got large, thirsty engines and to gain the agility needed to fly circles around an adversary in a dogfight, these designs feature only minimal stability. They'll snap right or left, climb nearly straight up, or be able to pull out of a vertical dive. But trying to get them to fly straight and level without a hand on the control stick might be a bit much to ask of them.
A Cessna 172, or almost any Cessna you'll see in the sky above you or at your local general aviation airport, will just about fly itself once you get the trim tabs set correctly. Aerobatics, eh, not so much. In contrast, you will never see an accurately scaled flying model of an F-16 'Falcon' fighter jet, be it radio controlled, balsa wood, or otherwise. It will not stay in the air. The real F-16 is so inherently unstable that it is strictly a 'fly by wire' proposition, as are several other modern combat aircraft I can think of. The control stick does not operate cables and pulleys to move the control surfaces as in a conventional aircraft. The control stick literally is a joystick controller like in a computer game. It is simply an input device - the pilot uses the stick to tell the computer which direction the aircraft needs to go in, and the computer controls actuators for the control surfaces, which actually flap rather wildly to keep the airplane headed in one direction. The best pilot out there couldn't hope to do it. Imagine driving a car and having to frantically jerk the steering wheel back and forth just to keep in your lane. How long do you think you could 'keep it all together' before you ended up in in a spin or in the ditch? But the tradeoff is wonderful. The F-16 is rated for nearly nine times the force of gravity in turns, and it can twist and turn faster than pretty much anything else that flies.
All jet fighter pilots start in the same place: while in the Academy, or even earlier, they earn their private pilot's certificate, after soloing in a single engine, propeller driven airplane like the Cessna. I believe the last few years the Air Force Academy has been using Diamond aircraft. And they're simple aircraft, as the FAA categorizes them: fixed pitch prop, fixed landing gear, less than 200 horsepower. This would be the definition of a 'primary trainer'. During WWII, the PT-17 'Stearman' biplane was the primary trainer. It was simple, easy to fly, rugged, and very forgiving. If you could learn to fly a Stearman satisfactorily, you were skilled enough to try to qualify in the AT-6, which had an adjustable pitch propeller, retractable landing gear, and six hundred horsepower. Both aircraft seated two, the trainee pilot and the instructor pilot.
From there, a qualified T-6 pilot could move up to a genuine combat aircraft, such as a P-38 'Lightning', a P-47 'Thunderbolt', or a P-51 'Mustang'. All of those were very sophisticated aircraft for that era, and also very expensive. All had well over a thousand horsepower, and took a fair amount of skill to fly well. They were definitely NOT for the novice.
The Germans operated in a way that Dave would have agreed with. I'm sure they had trainers, but I can't think of what they were right off the top of my head. Whatever they were, it's doubtful there are more than a few, if any, left today. The Messerschmitt Me/Bf-109 was Germany's top fighter until the Focke Wulf Fw-190 came on line in late 1942 or so. The '109 was a very high performance airplane, and was notoriously difficult to handle. As a result, many were lost in training accidents. On the other hand, the Luftwaffe did field the Bf-109G-12, which was a two seat version of the '109. Such a configuration is common today, but this may be the earliest example of a training version of a combat airplane.
Most of the surviving trainers, the PT-17, the AT-6, and also the T-28 'Trojan' the Navy once used, were sold as surplus when they were no longer useful as trainers. Since they're relatively simple and considerably cheaper to operate and maintain, they're still in use. Having two seats also provides a valuable source of revenue. The P-51 'Mustang' was a single seat fighter, but most of those still in the air have had the old radio gear that sat behind the pilot removed and a jump seat installed in its place. That sure says a lot! Without trainers, a good number of us would never see any World War Two aircraft in action today.
In the USAF, quite often the 'B' model of any given marque is the two place trainer, and every wing will have at least a couple amongst its squadrons for pilots to check out in the actual combat aircraft with an experienced pilot before they fly missions on their own. In more recent years, two seaters have found use in more involved roles where the back seater isn't an instructor pilot but rather a weapons system operator, or essentially what used to be known as the bombardier. The ground attack variants of the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Falcon are both two place aircraft.
It all comes down to common sense. If you take any number of prospective pilots into flight training, it's almost inevitable that not all of them are up to the challenge. They may do all right in ground school, but in the air, not everyone can always get the knack of flying the airplane. Which aircraft should those who just didn't have the right stuff discover this in? A simple, durable, forgiving aircraft such as a primary trainer, or an expensive, sophisticated, demanding combat aircraft? If a trainer is brought in for a hard landing, odds are good it'll survive and be returned to service. If not, it's not that big of a loss. If a high performance combat aircraft gets beat around too much, what will be apparent is that high performance comes from light weight and lots of power, which is a combination that often makes for a very fragile airplane that doesn't stand up to much abuse and may be very easy to irreparably damage.
One could analogize this to motorbikes. Would you prefer to see your son or daughter start out with an old moped, or would you like to hand them the keys to a new sport bike with a four cylinder engine that's capable of reaching one hundred fifty miles per hour in less time than it takes your car to reach sixty? Your kid isn't going to hurt too much if they make a few mistakes with a $500 used moped while they're learning. Then they can move up to a small motorcycle, such as a 250cc or 350cc twin cylinder motorcycle. From there, they might someday proceed to a ten thousand dollar sportbike capable of reaching speeds faster than what the tires can safely handle.
Another great analogy: Those few real gunfighters that existed in the Old West, come to find out, were horrible shots. Part of it was that a box of fifty cartridges cost almost as much as the gun itself did, which was roughly a months' pay for most people of that time. Not only did they not practice much, if at all, but the serious guns to tote around back then were chambered for .44 Winchester and .45 Colt, both big bore numbers that use big, heavy bullets and generated volumes of thick white smoke and a healthy dose of recoil. The .22 Smith and Wesson revolvers were looked upon more as toys or novelties than anything else, and the .32-20 or even the .38-40 guns were highly underestimated by those who should've known better. I'm sure they were considered to be guns a woman would use by the rough-and-tumble crowd of the day. Of course no one ever plugged their ears back then, either. At the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881 the Earps and the Clantons were something like twelve to fifteen feet apart and only a couple of shots out of a bunch fired ever hit anyone. You can imagine the flinching problem any of these hombres must have had! No wonder they couldn't hit anything most of the time. A successful pistol shot today starts with a .22 rimfire handgun which is mild and cheap to shoot. Once the .22 is more or less mastered, a .38 or a 9mm is next, and then one can move up to a .44 or .45 with excellent results. It works the same way with motorcycles, and it especially works that way with aircraft. By the time a pilot is qualified to fly an F-15 or similar aircraft, they're probably able to fly pretty much anything out there without a whole lot of trouble!
Crawl, walk, run, my friends!
the TiGor
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