Tag Archives: T-6 texan

What’s a pongo and how low can you go?

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From The Observation Post, a great military blog covering the SADF.

This extremely low flying South African Air Force Harvard was flown as a ‘dare’ to the pilot by the South African ‘pongo’ (army) personnel about to be buzzed. ‘Pongo’ is a derogatory term used by other arms of the forces, such as the Navy or the Air Force to describe the Army – comes from the British army tradition of saying .. “where the pong (smell) goes – the army goes”

It gets worse.

Head on over for more background.

DOD gets WWII-era T6 returned, scraps it.

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Not making this up.

The DLA Disposition Services posted this on their website a few days ago.

After WWII the US military gave/loaned out military equipment to dozens of countries to help rebuild defense forces shattered by the war.

t6

One of these was the new Japanese Self Defense Forces. Well, we loaned the JSDF a number of aircraft, tanks, ships, et al including at least one T-6 Texan trainer.

The Japanese used this plane then put it on static display from around 1961 until late 1998 at the Japanese base at Hamamatsu. Well, it was returned to the DOD recently and we promptly turned it into scrap using industrial shears.

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Currently, the scrap material from the demilitarization is being offered for sale.

Because surely it was worth more as scrap right? I mean these things are worthless.