By Rick Steelhammer, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Forty-five fledgling military aviators have traded the coastline and flat farmland of Western Florida for the green, rolling hills of West Virginia as the terrain over which they will learn to fly T-6 Texan II trainer aircraft during a monthlong Charleston-based training session.
The U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard student pilots are from Training Squadron Two, or VT-2, part of the Navy’s Training Air Wing Five, based at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, near Milton, Florida. Accompanying them on their summer session in West Virginia are 25 flight instructors, 10 T-6s, plus contract ground crew and maintenance personnel.
“We came up here looking for a little better weather than we have this times of year in the Pensacola area, where widespread thunderstorms are common and the hurricane season’s about to begin,” said Maj. Joe Messmer, The Marine aviator who serves as VT-2’s student control officer and is the man in charge of the unit’s flight training mission in Charleston.
