After completing Flight Instructor School at Craig AFB, Selma, Alabama in 1952, I was assigned to Reese, which is where I had received a lot of my own training.  New instructors would first be assigned to fly with students in the T-6.  The students got about 40 or 50 hours more flying time in the T-6 there besides the time they got in the basic schools.

I flew with students in the T-6 for about six months, then shifted over to the B-25.  Later the T-6 was phased out in favor of the new T-28 which was designed as a trainer.  It was very easy to fly.  I think the T-6 was designed as a fighter and built in the late 1930's.  Since I've already shown some pictures of the T-6, I won't show any more of those.

I have to tell a story about phasing out the T-6.  We were told that some were being sold to a South American country.  At our base, which was famous for dust storms, some of those planes had sat out in the field for months collecting that fine sand throughout the fuselage.  I was one of three assigned to deliver T-6's to Kelly AFB at San Antonio.  It was dust storm season, and most of Texas was being plagued with fine sand.  We used to joke that the first 10,000 feet was New Mexico, and all above that was Colorado.  One time there was a newspaper headline: "Texas gets the dirt on New York City."  These planes had been stripped to the bare minimum of radio navigation equipment, which in those days was a four-course low-frequency range receiver, a pre-world-war-2 system of aurally mixing dit-dah (A) with dah-dit (N) to get an on-course signal.  Very primitive by today's standards.  Anyway, I happened to get out to the runway first and was cleared for takeoff.  As soon as I got off the ground, the control tower people decided the visibility was below takeoff minimums, so it was "Off I go, into the wild brown yonder..."  The other two pilots went back and parked.  I had to find my way to San Antonio in a blinding dust storm with that old "coffee grinder" radio.  That was bad enough, but since most traffic had been grounded, there was no GCA unit in operation (radar Ground Controlled Approach).  I had to find the field and make a "low visibility approach" which means a tight 360 degree overhead approach, so as not to lose sight of the field.  We had been taught to open the canopy in case of some disastrous landing (for quick egress), so I did that and all that sand blew up in my eyes!

This was very good experience for me.  It wasn't all bad; some fun came of it too.  I sat in Base Operations waiting for a C-47 that was supposed to come and take me back to Reese, but the weather went below landing minimums, so none arrived.  But while waiting, with no one having much to do, a guy caught a huge moth and put it in the container they used for delivery of flight plans up to the tower.  It went up an air chute, like you sometimes see in banks.  All was quiet for awhile, and then the canister came back down with a note: "Thanks, it was delicious!"  I went back home the next morning in a commercial airliner, and I think the other passengers were a bit alarmed to see me coming on board wearing a parachute.
 

All these T-28 in-flight pictures were taken on the same flight by my student in the front seat.

In those days we didn't have flight helmets or ejection seats.

This picture of me was actually taken about four years later, because here I have senior pilot wings and an emblem of the Strategic Air Command.