Tag Archives: SNJ Texan

LTJG Bob Barker, Corsair Jock

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The late Robert William “Bob” Barker, who was the brightest part of staying home sick as a kid, also did his bit as part of the Greatest Generation.

Bob enlisted in the Navy Reserve Aviation Cadet (AvCad) program in November 1942 at age 18 while attending Drury College in Springfield, Missouri on a basketball scholarship. 

He trained at 11 locations including eight Navy air bases on six different types over the next three years:

  • William Jewell College – Liberty, Missouri: 6th Battalion Cadet ground school and athletic training.
  • Ames, Iowa—Iowa State University: Taylorcraft L-2 Grasshopper flight training.
  • University of Georgia: Preflight School and Navy Basketball Team.
  • Millington Naval Air Station- Memphis, Tennessee: Stearman NS2 Biplane Training.
  • Corpus Christi, Texas Naval Air Station: Completed flight training and received Commission as a Navy Ensign.
  • Cabaniss Field Texas: Vultee BT-13 Valiant Training.
  • Beeville, Texas: SNJ Texan flight training.
  • DeLand Naval Air Station—DeLand, Florida: FM2 Wildcat flight training (during his honeymoon)
  • Great Lakes Naval Air Station—Lake Michigan: Carrier landing qualifications on USS Wolverine (IX-64)— the infamous paddlewheel “Covered wagon of the Great Lakes.”
  • Banana River Naval Air Station: Gunnery runs on U.S. Navy Mariner aircraft to train their crews.
  • Goose Island Michigan: F4U Corsair training with VF-97 and advancement to Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG).

He was in line to be deployed to the Pacific to fight the Empire in August 1945 when the whistle was blown.

As Barker summed up:

“I was a Naval Aviator, a Fighter Pilot. I completed all facets of my training, including my qualifying landings on a carrier. I was all ready to go, and when the enemy heard that I was headed for the Pacific, they surrendered. That was the end of World War II.”

Demobilized in November 1945, he remained in the inactive Naval Reserve until 1960.

You will be missed, sir.

And, with that, I’ll leave you with one of his greatest three minutes, which he filmed at a spry 73.

Texan Warming Up

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80 Years Ago: A North American SNJ-4 Texan trainer aircraft warms up. The photograph was released on December 5, 1942.

Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.80-G-22075

Dubbed the AT-6 by the Army and the Havard by Commonwealth forces, the Navy used the “J-Bird” as an all-purpose trainer for instrument flight, aerobatics, bombing, and gunnery, acquiring the first 40 in 1936 and then keeping them in the field as late as the mid-1950s.

Many of these wore a distinctive high-viz “chrome” paint livery, giving them the nickname of “yellow perils.” 

View of SNJ-6B Texans on the flight line at Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS) Barin Field in 1954 Foley

NATC Pensacola, NAAS Barin Field, Foley Alabama. 1943. Rare image of this period. Notice the mixture of national insignias on the SNJs.

If it was not for the thousands of these humble trainers on hand to school future naval aviators at Pensacola and elsewhere, the pilot pipeline for all those beautiful Corsairs, Hellcats, Dauntless, Avengers, and Hellcats that went on to win the Pacific War would have been very narrow indeed.

US Navy SNJ Texan training aircraft making a low-level pass near a three-masted sailing ship Joseph Conrad, built in 1880, photo taken in 1942.

North American production totaled 15,495 of all variants and they have remained durable and popular warbirds in retirement, with over 400 still airworthy in the U.S. alone.

And they went on to fill the void as both Japanese and American carrier aircraft in a number of films. 

A motion picture camera rests on the flight deck during the filming of the ABC-TV movie “War and Remembrance. An SNJ Texan aircraft is in the background. Image from the USNI