Can anyone help me to identify this US Navy aircraft that I saw on Sat, 17-Feb? It was in the vicinity of Wayne, NJ, at the time and may have been in-bound to the Essex County Airport, (KCDW), in Fairfield, NJ. I did not see any cilvian registration numbers, which might also explain why I can’t find it through any of the usual flight tracking services.
I also tried searching for it using the numbers I could read but came up mostly empty. I thought it could be a Beechcraft T-34 Mentor or a T-28 Trojan except this plane has fixed landing gear and all the photos I saw of the thirty-four and twenty-eight show what looks like retractable gear. Also, in these pictures, the wings seem boxy and square to the fuselage where the wings on the other aircraft appear tapered and swept.
Thank you, in advance, for your assistance and consideration.
Could the registration have something with the numbers painted in the front of the aircraft?
Something like N981… I am just guessing.
I tried to look it up in the FAA register, but it does not accept only a portion of the plane reg.
Most likely it doesn’t have the big 12" numbers most people are used to on small aircraft. Some aircraft - most pertinently those >30 years old - are allowed to display much smaller numbers, which would be hard to pick up in a photo like this.
The ‘nose number’ pertains to a specific ‘squadron/air wing’. No correlation to FAA reg number.
Check any Navy aircraft photography sources for examples. Within an air wing 100-series nose numbers would identify the senior fighter sqdn, 200-series the junior sqdn, 300-series the senior attack sgdn, etc. 900-series is typically assigned to training sqdns as appropriately, and proudly, chosen by an undoubtedly proud Naval Aviator.
