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.htmlThanks!