MILTON — The 148th and final T-6B Texan II arrived Tuesday at Naval Air Station Whiting Field.
The landing marked a milestone in aviation training for Training Air Wing FIVE, the Navy’s largest training wing, as it completes the complement of primary fixed-wing aircraft for Northwest Florida from Beechcraft Defense Company.
The final T-6B arrived from the Beechcraft factory in Wichita, Kan. in a three-plane formation with the first T-6B and the yellow centennial T-6B, landing at North Field. The final T-6B taxied from the runway through a water arch to the southwest side of Hangar 1424.
The Navy received its first T-6B on Aug. 25, 2009, with the first student flight in April 2010. The aircraft is used for primary fixed-wing flight training, and TRAWING-5 has flown over 310,000 hours in the aircraft platform since its arrival. Combined with the 74,000 flight hours from Training Air Wing Four in Corpus Christi, Texas, the T-6B has flown an overall total of 384,000 hours as of this writing.
It is the first military aircraft student aviators in the maritime services will fly and provides them with the basic foundations of aviation. By the time a student completes the 28-week program, they will have flown 43 flight events, 75 flight hours, and 36 simulator events. The program prepares students for the Navy’s more advanced training platforms and their fleet aircraft in the future.
“In the foreseeable future, I can see the T-6B in use for another two to three decades,” said Capt. Mark Murray, Commodore of TRAWING-5. “The T-6B cockpit and avionics suite is designed to better facilitate the transition to increasingly sophisticated follow-on training and fleet aircraft, as well as keep pace with emerging air traffic control regulations.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: NAS Whiting Field receives final T-6B