T-34B Information / History and Paint schemes request

[Ken]

Nice work Steve, great to see your posts. As always, I vote for a scheme actually worn by that plane. Looks like you're coming up with some good stuff. As interest in the Vietnam-era increases, I think a case could be made for the 1968-1970 scheme.

Ken

[ChrisK48]

Another recruiting scheme. Smaller gold wings on the nose than some, I think. 1967.

Last edited by ChrisK48 on Mon Oct 13, 2014 8:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

[Booshka]

Yep - great info. EXCEPT...

As I mentioned in the post above yours the basic Navy trainer scheme wasn't white with red trim.

It was international orange or for a time was da-glo (fire orange).

For some reason people seem to think this is red.

[planeoldsteve]

It's been a while since I have posted but I thought I'd show the outcome

[Robbie Stuart]

Looks nice Steve!
Robbie

[Courier Sportster]

seeing the insides of a delta maintenance hangar is way interesting! love that moving catwalk deal.

[wendovertom]

awesome! Dis Delta volunteers painted it? or did I miss that in the thread earlier?

Tom P.

[Ken]

Awesome Steve!

[FlyingsCool]

Hi

Bringing this topic back to life since the search facility here doesn't seem to work (when I search for T-34B, it says no posts contain this text :-/ T-34B Navy, T34B nothing. Thankfully google brought me here from outside.).

I've recently been doing some research on these planes because my dad trained at Saufley field in 1957, and flew both T-34's and T-28's and got as far as soloing in both, but washed out soon after and became an Air Traffic Controller on I think it was the Ben Franklin. I've created some I think period skins for the T-34 in Microsoft Flight Simulator and modeled Saufley field close to what it looked like at that time as well (still working on it, looking for info on lighting and other stuff as well as pictures of the facility from back then if anyone's got any). I'm a private pilot myself, and hope to be getting back up in the air this year (it's been a while).

If anyone's got any info on what 140826 looked like in 1957 I'd love to know. That's the plane my dad soloed in on 5/6. It's N34LW up at Helena Regional Airport today. I'd love to know what number was painted on her at the time. I don't think it's the plane behind him in the photo, but maybe it is. I did find some other pictures of that particular plane, but I don't know what it's bu no is and I saw a reference that that particular plane behind him was the weather plane? I've only seen a couple of pictures of a plane striped like that, and I think they are all the same plane. Maybe it is 140826?

A person posted in this thread previously about their restoring 140725 in the Netherlands... My dad flew a solo flight in that plane on 5/21/1957, and I was born 6 years later Any info on that plane, like it's side number would be cool too! How did they come up with the side numbers they painted on these planes. Certainly isn't related to the bu no. Is there a list of the correlation anywhere? (that's not my dad in the photo at the bottom, just a photo of a T-34 in a similar paint to the plane behind my dad in his photo. Maybe the stripes were a short term thing in 1957?

There's a bunch more photos of the T-34 at the blog post that pic came from.
http://replicainscale.blogspot.com/2016/05/another-yellow-airplane-they-wouldnt.html

Thanks!

[JohnB]

Maybe the stripes were a short term thing in 1957?

Just a guess...they might be visibility markings
(just in case overall yellow wasn't high-vis enough).

After the 1956 Grand Canyon collision between a Connie and DC-7 and the 1957 DC-7/F-89 collision over the LA suburbs, everyone was paying attention to the collision threat (the collision the next year of a DC-7 and F-100F over Vegas would increase the concern).

It wasn't long before the USAF put day-glo paint on many types, and for awhile the CAA proposed all general aviation aircraft have some high-visibility paint as well.

[FlyingsCool]

The Navy started going day-glo orange and white in 1957/1958. That pic with the stripes is from 1957, obviously they was at least one plane painted like that in the May time frame, as that is when my Dad's pic was taken. My question is, was it applied generally, or to just a base airplane? I'm gonna see my dad hopefully in the next couple of weeks and I'll ask him, not sure if he'll remember though.

I haven't seen many pics of planes painted like that. Interesting what you said about the collision affecting these things, thanks!