Slingsby T-3A 'Firefly'

[Tulio]

During February 2001, I went a couple of times to Hondo, TX and managed to shoot some 20 photos of the Slingsby T-3A Fireflies stored there.

I just finished scanning my photos, and this made me do a quick web-search on the status of the aircraft:

A recent photo shows the airplanes rapidly degrading.

The USAF / US Government, while trying to force the manufacturer to re-engine the aircraft (purchase them back cheaper than the price they sold them to the USAF), is letting these 50 or so aircraft go downhill fast.

This will never happen, but if the USAF decided to sell them at an affordable price, I would jump at the chance to buy one of them....


Tulio

[Randy Haskin]

There have been many ideas on what to do with these airplanes. The one I heard which is most likely is that they will be used by the UAV squadrons to allow pilots to keep their stick and rudder skills, like the old "ACES" program from back in the SAC days.

Where are the photos?

[Tulio]

I have the photos with me, in my computer.

PM with your mailing address, and I will copy them to a CD and mail it to you.

Saludos,


Tulio

[JBoyle]

As I recall the USAF paid more than $300,000 each for the T-3s!
That's a lot of money for a two seat SEL fixed gear plane...especailly 10 years ago.
First they overpaid for the plane...
then they lose faith after a 2-3 fatal accidents....not all of which were the plane's fault. After reading the crash reports, I came to the conclusion that the biggest problem was with the only jet-trained IP's not knowing how to fly a light plane with the skills required (it's different than flying a T-38 or F-16 guys!!!!).

[Cvairwerks]

There were more than 3 fatal crashes of the T-3. Add on top of that at least a hundred IFE's due to engine power loss and the manufacturer coming out with a mandatory limitation on the airframe structural temperature prior to flight coupled with lousy flight characteristics and you see why the USAF dumped the T-3's so fast. Also, due to the temp limitation and the fact that they have never been able to solve the power loss problem, you will never see the USAF T-3's released to the market.
I'd be willing to bet that if they were ever used again for anything, it would be for gunnery targets.

[marine air]

I was at Oshkosh around 1990, and saw the first one imported into the U.S. and it was being flown by a couple of Brits. At this point I had transferred to the Air Natl Guard, and had a crew chief friend, a mechanic for American Eagle with me. The Brits told me "It's the T-3 Firefly, the newest trainer for the U.S. Air Force." WE both laughed as that was beyond comprehension, because doing a walkaround, it looked like a piece of junk. We both agreed there was no way the U.S. military would let a piston engine acft. back into the inventory, much less a foreign design. It was sitting on the line with the T-34's and L-17 Navion's and no one was even stopping to look at it. It's that "F"UGLY!
A few years later I talked to a couple of "butterbars" that had done their initial flight screening in it. I few things I vaguely remember were that it could only do limited aerobatics, snap rolls could cause tail separation, engine overheating and the aircraft were being used out west, and theree wasn't enough room in the seats to wear U.S.military parachutes, so they did their flight screening without parachutes!
I think the aircraft also has composite materials in the construction that were not suited for the U.S. southwest.

That being said, I would take one for the right price in a heartbeat, just to tool around in. I think, if possible the Air Force should put them back in the system for pilot profiency hacks and morale flights for the ground maintenace personnel. Units used to have "hacks" around for that reason.