__For more than six decades after its birth in 1937, the North American AT-6 Texan and its offshoots (the Navy SNJ and the Canadian Harvard) were used throughout the world as advanced trainers, artillery spotters (in Korea and Vietnam among other theaters), and even as counterinsurgency and fighter-bombers by numerous developing countries. The last known military use of the Texan was by the South Africa Air Force as a trainer, in 1995, which gives it a working history of 60 years, a figure virtually unrivaled in the history of military aviation.
The reason there are so many T-6s still flying is in part because so many were built. From 1937 to the early 1950s North American and other manufacturers produced more than 16,000 Texans to satisfy the demand for advanced trainers.
