The Vultee BT-13

A BASIC Trainer

To best understand what role the Vultee BT-13 Valiant played in the training of military aviators and aviatrixes during World War 2, it is important to understand how flight training was done. Both the USAAF and the USN accomplished their training in three distinct phases. In the beginning was the PRIMARY Phase, was where the cadet learned the fundamentals of flight, including takeoffs, rudimentary navigation, stall & spin recovery, and most importantly, landings in aircraft like the PT-17, PT-19, or PT-22. At the end was the ADVANCED Phase, which was taught in either the single engine AT-6 Texan or the twin-engine AT-10, AT-11, or AT-17, depending on which pipeline the fledgling military pilot had been sent down. In the former, the students were taught aerial combat maneuvers and gunnery while the latter focused on managing their multi engine beasts and strict formation flying.

In between this was the BASIC Phase, and almost to the individual, this training was most likely in the BT-13.

The Vultee BT-13 excelled in this role. More stable than the preceding PTs from Primary but slower and less complex than the ATs in Advanced, the Valiant was used to instruct the cadets in the crucial fundamentals that transformed them from mere pilots to military aviators/aviatrixes. In it, pilots learned how to operate radios, navigate by charts or by electronic beacons, fly “blind” solely by instruments, fly at night, and flying in formation. Despite the jump in complexity (PTs did not have radios, a two position prop to manage, nor landing flaps), some measure of relief from it could be found in the fixed landing gear, gear so widely spaced out that it was genuinely difficult to encounter a ground loop as long as the cadet was halfway paying attention to what he or she were doing.

BT-13 proved to be very adept at it’s “basic” task. When properly trimmed for cruise, it’s near 4,500 lb gross weight made for an aircraft that was more apt to stay “straight & level” while the student split his/her attention on the lesson at hand and was less susceptible to being upset by wind gusts or turbulence. While capable of aerobatics, the BT-13 had more benign maneuvering characteristics; you had to mean it if you wanted to roll it. Overall, aside from it’s well know vibration quirk (it is, after all, known as the “Vultee Vibrator”) and a nasty sudden stall trait when flow too slow, it was a very pleasant plane to fly.

Between Aug 1939 and mid-1944, Vultee Aircraft would crank out 9,525 variants of the BT-13, mostly in the BT-13A and B model, although there was a BT-15 version that was equipped with a different engine due to shortages of the designed powerplant. The Navy dubbed their the SNV, training their own aviators as well as those of the Marine Corps. It would be the second most produced military trainer in the US during WW2, eclipsed only by the North American AT-6 Texan. And since only 260 examples of its counterpart (the North American BT-9) were built, the safe money says that if you think of a US WW2 pilot that went through flight training before the summer of 1945, he or she put some 70 hours of training in the BT-13.

Bud Anderson (2nd from the right), famed triple ace, was one of thousands who cut his teeth in the BT-13.

Specifications

General characteristics

  • Crew: 2

  • Length: 28 ft 10 in (8.79 m)

  • Wingspan: 42 ft 0 in (12.80 m)

  • Height: 11 ft 6 in (3.51 m)

  • Wing area: 239 sq ft (22.2 m2)

  • Empty weight: 3,375 lb (1,531 kg)

  • Gross weight: 4,496 lb (2,039 kg)

  • Powerplant: 1 × Pratt & Whitney R-985-AN-1 (Wright R-975-11 for the BT-15) nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine , 450 hp (340 kW)

  • Propellers: 2-bladed Hamilton-Standard 2-position

Performance

  • Maximum speed: 180 mph (290 km/h, 160 kn)

  • Range: 725 mi (1,167 km, 630 nmi)

  • Service ceiling: 21,650 ft (6,600 m)

  • Time to altitude: 9.2 minutes to 10,000 ft (3,000 m)