Texan N696RE
The aircraft was manufactured in 1943 as an AT-6C-15-NT Texan in Dallas, assigned by the USAAF with the number 42-44038. In the following years she served to train new USAAF pilots in Texas.
May 1, 1950 the plane was bought back by the manufacturer, and modified in to AT-6D standard and sold to South Africa – SAAF in 1953. For the next few years it has been shrouded in secrecy, it is not clear whether it was stored or used for training. Other clear signs of the fate of Harvard are from the SAAF flight documentation until the late 1970s, when it flew in SAAF with the fuselage designation "7696". During the eighties she was equipped with SAAF at that time a very modern avionics from Becker and served, among other things, as an instrument trainer. The equipment allowed IFR flights under all weather conditions. She served in SAAF without a break until the mid-1990s, when she was withdrawn from service and sold to private owner in the USA.
After being withdrawn from the South African Air Force, she remained in a crate and was stored in the US for the next ten years. Then it was purchased by a pair of owners from the southwest of the US who have restored her while maintaining the maximum of original parts. Texan remained in its original livery, in which she ended her service with SAAF in 1995, including a fairly faded paint, which won the 2009 Oshkosh Award for the most original AT-6 / SNJ / Harvard.
Due to the loss of health qualification of one of the owners, Harvard was offered for sale. During the winter of 2011 it was purchased by a group of enthusiasts from the Czech Republic. The original owner flew it along the Montrose (state of Collorado) - Rockford (state of Illinois), where it was crated in a container and transported by road to Montreal, Canada where she was loaded onto a ship, then sailed to Hamburg and subsequently transported by road to Hungriger Wolf. Here she was reassembled, and then flew across Germany to it’s new home in Pilsen.
North American AT-6C Texan
The North American Aviation T-6 Texan is an American single-engined advanced trainer aircraft used to train pilots of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), United States Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force and other air forces of the British Commonwealth during World War II and into the 1970s. Designed by North American Aviation, the T-6 is known by a variety of designations depending on the model and operating air force. The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) and USAAF designated it as the AT-6, the United States Navy the SNJ, and British Commonwealth air forces the Harvard, the name by which it is best known outside the US. Starting in 1948, the new United States Air Force (USAF) designated it the T-6, with the USN following in 1962. It remains a popular warbird used for airshow demonstrations and static displays. It has also been used many times to simulate various historical aircraft, including the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero. A total of 15,495 T-6s of all variants were built.