AVIATION: The Cats of MIG Alley

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First Fiddle. Never satisfied with playing second fiddle (which he would have had to do at Douglas), Kindelberger snapped up an offer from General Motors to take over a Maryland subsidiary of G.M.-controlled North American Aviation (G.M. has since sold its interest). North American, then a holding company (for such companies as Sperry Gyroscope, Eastern Airlines, Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc.), had been ordered by the Government to concentrate either on aircraft production or airlines. It decided to keep its planemaking business, and it needed a production man. From Douglas, President Kindelberger took two men with him: crack Designer "Lee" Atwood, now North American's president; and J. S. ("Stan") Smithson, a topnotch designer who is now North American's manufacturing vice president.

At the time, North American was working on a passenger plane, and was losing money. Says Kindelberger: "We started with an obvious advantage—it couldn't have been any worse."

Quick Switch. Dutch liquidated contracts on the money-losing plane, sold the prototype to a junk dealer for $1,500, and laid plans to build a trainer to compete for Air Corps contracts. He had nine weeks to do the job—and under NRA could not officially work his employees overtime. One night he entered the plant and found his employees shouting and singing at their jobs. They had checked out, had a few beers and come back to "have some fun"—against which there wasn't any law. The plane (BT-9) was completed on time, and North American beat out Seversky for a $1,000,000 contract.

Kindelberger moved the company from Maryland to California, built trainers for foreign countries as Europe armed for war. At a 1938 meeting with Airmen Curtis LeMay, Hap Arnold and Tooey Spaatz, he read a statement on why the U.S. should buy more North American trainers. The airmen agreed, but pointed out that they had no money. Later, when Dutch approached Arnold again, the need was for fighters, not basic trainers. Said Kindelberger: "My dear general, these are not basic trainers. These are basic combat planes.'' He plugged the idea, eventually got an order for the T-6 Texan (to the British, the Harvard; to the U.S. Navy, the SNJ). Early in 1940, when the British asked North American to build Curtiss P-40s Kindelberger answered that he could design and produce a better airplane quicker. In 127 days, he turned out the P-51, the first of the famed Mustangs. The U.S. was cool towards it, would place no orders. Since the services were looking for dive bombers, Kindelberger pulled another quick switch: "We told them the P-51 was a dive bomber, not a fighter, and got an order for 500 of them in the same mail with a letter that said 'We don't want any.' " Thus, thanks to British orders, did the U.S. have the Mustang ready when it entered World War II.