A company that built nothing

North American Aviation began life without a single aircraft to its name. On 6 December 1928 the financier Clement Melville Keys set it up as a holding company to buy and sell stakes in airlines and aviation firms. For five years it traded paper. In 1933 General Motors bought control and merged it with General Aviation Manufacturing Corporation, and a year later the Air Mail Act of 1934 forced holding companies of its kind to break up. What was left was a small aircraft factory at Dundalk, Maryland, with barely any orders. It needed someone who knew how to build aeroplanes — and it found him at Douglas.

Dutch heads west

James Howard Kindelberger, born in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1895, was nicknamed Dutch for his German ancestry. At Douglas he had been chief engineer on the DC-1 and DC-2. In 1934 he left with a younger colleague, Lee Atwood, to become president and general manager of North American; Atwood became chief engineer. Kindelberger promptly moved the operation from Maryland to Los Angeles for its year-round flying weather. The first product of the new team was the NA-16 trainer, which flew on 1 April 1935 and grew into the T-6 Texan, the Harvard of the Commonwealth air forces. 15,495 were built, and they served in more than 60 air forces.

One hundred and two days

In 1940 a British Purchasing Commission arrived wanting North American to build Curtiss P-40s under licence. Kindelberger argued his company could design something better. The prototype NA-73X was rolled out just 102 days after the order was placed and first flew on 26 October 1940. With its Allison engine the Mustang was superb at low level and breathless above 15,000 feet. The cure came from a Rolls-Royce test pilot, Ronald Harker, who in 1942 suggested fitting a Merlin 61. The Merlin Mustang became the long-range escort that made its name with the Eighth Air Force. In all 15,686 were built, and in one month the company turned out 571.

Sixteen bombers off a carrier deck

Its bombers made headlines too. The B-25 Mitchell, named after the air-power prophet Billy Mitchell, first flew on 19 August 1940. On 18 April 1942 sixteen B-25Bs lifted off the deck of USS Hornet, launched ten hours early and some 650 nautical miles from Japan, for the Doolittle Raid on the Japanese home islands. Three years later, on 28 July 1945, a B-25 lost in fog struck the Empire State Building between the 79th and 80th floors. By the end of the war North American had built about 42,000 aircraft and employed as many as 91,000 people; in 1946 it was down to 5,000.

Sabre against MiG

It bounced back with swept wings. The F-86 Sabre first flew on 1 October 1947 — three months before the Soviet MiG-15 — and set a world speed record of 671 mph in 1948. Over Korea the two became the defining duel of the early jet age. American pilots claimed 792 MiGs for 78 Sabres, though a later RAND study put the real ratio nearer 1.8 to 1, and closer still against Soviet pilots. With 9,860 built including licence production in Canada, Australia, Italy and Japan, it was the West’s most-produced jet fighter. Its successor, the F-100 Super Sabre, became the first USAF fighter supersonic in level flight.

To the edge of space

From Inglewood and Downey the company reached for space. The rocket-powered X-15 first flew on 8 June 1959 and made 199 flights. In August 1963 Joe Walker took one to 108 kilometres, becoming the first person to fly into space twice by the international definition; on 3 October 1967 William Knight reached Mach 6.7, 4,520 mph. The XB-70 Valkyrie, a six-engined Mach 3 bomber, flew in 1964 but the second prototype was lost on 8 June 1966 when an F-104 drifted into its wing, killing Walker and co-pilot Carl Cross. Meanwhile Rocketdyne engines powered Atlas, Thor and Saturn rockets, and on 28 November 1961 NASA chose North American to build the Apollo command and service module.

Fire, merger and a quiet ending

That contract brought the darkest day. On 27 January 1967 fire swept the Apollo 1 cabin during a launch rehearsal, killing Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The press blamed North American, though a congressional hearing later ruled otherwise, and the review board found serious shortcomings in the Block I design. Eight months later, in September 1967, the company merged with the Pittsburgh industrial group Rockwell-Standard to become North American Rockwell, renamed Rockwell International in 1973. The name lived on in the Space Shuttle orbiter and B-1 bomber, until Boeing bought Rockwell’s aerospace and defence business in December 1996. Its heritage now sits with Boeing.

Továrny

• Dundalk works · Dundalk, Maryland — Original factory before the move west in the mid-1930s
• Inglewood plant · Los Angeles (Inglewood), California — Main fighter plant; P-51, F-86, F-100
• Dallas plant · Dallas, Texas — Wartime expansion plant
• Kansas City plant · Kansas City, Kansas — Wartime expansion plant
• Závod v Columbusu · Columbus, Ohio — Grew from 1,600 staff in 1950 to 18,000 in 1952; A-5 and OV-10
• Downey plant · Downey, California — Former Consolidated-Vultee site; built the Apollo command and service modules

Lidé

• Clement Melville Keys · founder, financier — Created NAA as an aviation holding company in 1928
• James H. “Dutch” Kindelberger · president, then chairman and CEO — Ex-Douglas chief engineer; ran NAA from 1934; chairman until his death in 1962
• John Leland “Lee” Atwood · chief engineer, president, CEO — Joined 1934; president 1948, CEO 1960; led the 1967 Rockwell merger; retired 1970
• George Welch · test pilot — Flew the F-86 on its first flight, 1 October 1947
• Scott Crossfield · test pilot — Flew the first X-15 flight, 8 June 1959
• Ronald Harker · Rolls-Royce test pilot — Proposed fitting the Merlin 61 to the Mustang in 1942

Rekordy a prvenství

• World speed record of 671 mph by Maj. Richard L. Johnson in an F-86, 15 September 1948 (n10)
• F-100 prototype world speed record of about 755 mph, 29 October 1953 (n11)
• A3J Vigilante world altitude record with payload, 91,450.8 ft, 13 December 1960 (n17)
• X-15 reached 108 km with Joe Walker on 22 August 1963, his second flight above 100 km (n13)
• X-15 fastest crewed winged flight, Mach 6.7 (4,520 mph) by William J. Knight, 3 October 1967 (n12)
• XB-70 exceeded Mach 3 (Mach 3.02) on 14 October 1965 (n14)
• B-45: first operational USAF jet bomber and first multi-engine jet bomber refuelled in flight (n19)
• F-100: first USAF fighter capable of supersonic speed in level flight (n11)