HISTORY
Clement
Melville Keys founded North American
on December 6, 1928, as a holding
company that bought and sold
interests in various airlines and
aviation-related companies. However,
the Air Mail Act of 1934 forced the
breakup of such holding companies.
North American became a
manufacturing company, run by James
H. "Dutch" Kindelberger, who had
been recruited from Douglas Aircraft
Company. NAA did retain ownership of
Eastern Air Lines until 1938.
General Motors Corporation took a
controlling interest in NAA and
merged it with its
General
Aviation
division in 1933, but retaining the
name North American Aviation.
Kindelberger moved the company's
operations to southern California,
which allowed flying year-round, and
decided to focus on training
aircraft, on the theory that it
would be easier than trying to
compete with established companies.
North
American's first planes were the
GA-15 observation plane and the
GA-16 trainer, followed by the O-47
and BT-9, also called the GA-16.
The
BC-1 of 1937 was North American's
first combat aircraft; it was based
on the GA-16. In 1940, like
other manufacturers, North American
started gearing up for war, opening
factories in Columbus, Ohio, Dallas,
Texas, and Kansas City, Kansas.
North
American's follow-on to the BT-9 was
the T-6 Texan trainer, of which
17,000 were built, making it the
most widely used trainer ever. The
twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bomber
achieved fame in the Doolittle Raid
and was used in all combat theaters
of operation. The P-51 Mustang was
initially produced for Britain as an
alternative to the Curtiss P-40,
which North American had declined to
produce under licence. The
derivative A-36 Apache was developed
as a ground attack aircraft and dive
bomber. A suggestion by the RAF that
North American switch the P-51's
powerplant from its original Allison
engine to the Rolls-Royce Merlin
engine may have been one of the most
significant events in WWII aviation,
as it transformed the P-51 into what
many consider to be the best
American fighter of the war.
Post-war, North American's
employment dropped from a high of
91,000 to 5,000 in 1946. On V-J Day,
North American had orders from the
U.S. government for 8,000 planes. A
few months later, that had dropped
to 24.
Two years
later in 1948, General Motors
divested NAA as a public company.
Nevertheless, it continued with new
designs, including the T-28 Trojan
trainer and attack aircraft, the
odd-looking F-82 Twin Mustang, B-45
Tornado jet bomber, the FJ Fury
fighter, AJ Savage, the
revolutionary XB-70 Valkyrie Mach-3
strategic bomber, Shrike Commander,
and T-39 Sabreliner business jet.
The
Columbus, Ohio division of North
American Aviation was instrumental
in the exclusive development and
production of North American's A-5
Vigilante, an advanced high speed
bomber that would see significant
use as a Naval reconnaissance
aircraft during the Vietnam War, the
OV-10 Bronco, the first aircraft
specifically designed for forward
air control (FAC), and
counter-insurgency (COIN) duties,
and the T-2 Buckeye Naval trainer,
which would serve from the late
1950s until 2008 and be flown in
training by virtually every Naval
Aviator and Naval Flight Officer in
the US Navy and US Marine Corps for
four decades. The Buckeye's name
would be an acknowledgment to the
state tree of
Ohio, as
well as the mascot of Ohio State
University.
The F-86
Sabre started out as a redesigned
Fury and achieved fame shooting down
MiGs in the Korean War. Over 9,000
F-86s were produced. Its successor,
the F-100 Super Sabre, was also
popular.
Some
6,656 F-86s were produced in the
United States, the most postwar
military aircraft in the West, as
well as another 2,500 elsewhere. To
accommodate its Sabre production,
North American opened facilities in
a former Curtiss-Wright plant in
Columbus, Ohio. It also moved into a
former Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft
plant at Downey, California, and in
1948, built a new plant at Downey.
By the end of 1952, North American
sales topped $315 million.
Employment at the Columbus plant
grew from 1,600 in 1950 to 18,000 in
1952.
In 1955, the
rocket engine division spun off into
a separate company, Rocketdyne, but
it was North American that designed
and built the airframe for the X-15,
a rocket-powered aircraft that first
flew in 1959.
The
cancellation of the F-107 and F-108
programs in the late 1950s, as well
as the cancellation of the Navaho
intercontinental cruise missile
program, was a blow to North
American from which it never fully
recovered. In 1959, North American
built the first of several Little
Joe boosters which were used to test
the escape system for the Mercury
Spacecraft. In 1960, the new CEO Lee
Atwood decided to focus on the space
program, and the company was the
chief contractor for the Apollo
Command/Service Module and the
second stage of the Saturn V.
However, the Apollo 1 fire in
January 1967 was partly blamed on
the company. In March, it merged
with Rockwell-Standard, and the
merged company became known as North
American Rockwell. The company
changed its name again to Rockwell
International and named its aircraft
division North American Aircraft
Operations in 1973.
Rockwell
International's defense and space
divisions (including the North
American Aviation divisions
Autonetics and Rocketdyne) were sold
to Boeing in December 1996.
Initially called Boeing North
American, these groups were
integrated with Boeing's Defense
division. Rocketdyne was eventually
sold by Boeing to UTC Pratt &
Whitney in 2005.
Source:
Wikipedia
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