Trainers Soar in Museum’s South Wing
The recent addition of two training aircraft to the museum’s South Wing – the last TH-57C Sea Ranger to flying in the Naval Air Training Command and an example of the long-serving T-34C TurboMentor – have solidified the area of the museum’s South Wing just off the Blue Angel Atrium as the trainer central. It has long been the home of the iconic “Yellow Perils,” including both landplane and seaplane versions of the N3N biplanes that dotted the skies over NAS Pensacola and the surrounding area during the World War II era. The Stearman N2S, its open cockpit once hosting a shivering Aviation Cadet George H.W. Bush during two training flights in the dead of winter at NAS Minneapolis, MN, is also displayed nearby as is an SNJ-5C Texan.
Recent preservation efforts by the museum staff have added to the “orange and whites” located near the earlier trainers, the T-28B Trojan having been suspended in the location for many years. The first to join it was the T-2C Buckeye, which was placed on indoor display in March 2023 after spending years outside on the museum flight line. The museum’s example, BuNo 157058,was the last one to make a carrier landing, catching a wire on the flight deck of USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) on July 25, 2003. We concurrently placed cases containing artifacts from the first women to enter flight training in 1973 near the Buckeye, drawing attention to that milestone chapter in Naval Aviation history.
In early 2026, the TH-57C and T-34C, the former aircraft’s final flight having been for delivery to the museum and the latter a part of the collection since 2011, joined the mix. Both are suspended, the TurboMentor in landing configuration as if returning to NAS Whiting Field from a training flight.
While this concentration of training aircraft is not the only place in the museum to see the platforms in which generations of Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers have learned to fly, it is a fitting assemblage of the training legacy that began on board NAS Pensacola with the arrival of the first aviators and ground support personnel in 1914.
