My North Americans

Air Classics, Mar 2001 by Reed, Boardman C

This is not a "war story." Do not expect to find combat accounts, heroism or derring-do in this article. It is, rather,, a very personal an subjective story, written by a lucky little boy now over 80 years old, who always wanted to be an aviator. As a young child, he watched what seemed to him to be an enormous khaki-colored biplane (probably just a Curtiss Jenny or maybe even a DH-413 Liberty Plane) with large red, white, and blue Army stars under the wings, fly very low over his home in the orange groves of southern California, perhaps heading for Ross Field, Arcadia (now the Santa Anita horse race track). It made a deep-seated impression. Ever after - even when dirt-track racing his cut-down and hopped-up Model A Ford roadster - he never forgot that boyhood dream to earn the Silver Wings of an Army Air Service (later, the Army Air Corps) pilot.

Having told bits and pieces of some of these experiences at various times, he was urged to write them all out. This, however, is a story with a difference: Instead of a chronological account of all flights and events, it is restricted to just one make and type of airplane...North American Aviation bombers, with major emphasis on the marvelous B-25. A number of other old airplanes are mentioned here and there merely to establish a background for the narrative or maybe because a few readers might enjoy it, or most likely because I'm not consistent! My Air Corps Form 5 File, original Log Book, old letters and the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle helped refresh hazy memories. Others who were there will, of course, remember the over half-century old events differently. If an old man repeats himself, just read past it and go on!

B-21: In late 1935 and during 1936, the management and design team of the recently reorganized North American Aviation, Inc., in their new California factory on Mines Field, (now LAX, the Los Angeles International Airport), decided to expand their line of single-engined military trainers to include a twin-engined bomber. Their new trainers were inspired designs sold all over the world, setting future trends.. but their Model (Charge Number) NA-21, unfortunately, was only a bigger and heavier version ol the lumbering and already-flying Douglas B-18 Bolo. The Model NA-21 first flew in spring 1937 as the US Army Air Corps XB-21 s/n 38-485 (company serial NA21-84). The repetitive "21" (NA21/13-21) was merely a coincidence. It was "all silver" (shiny aluminum) with the regular old red, white, and blue Air Corps markings: Rudder stripes and star insignia on all four wingtips. It was powered by two experimental 1200-hp Pratt & Whitney R-2180-1 Twin Hornet engines - also an unfortunate design from an excellent manufacturer.

About that time, probably in 1938, I

parked my Ford V-8 roadster alongside the road and walked all around the XB-21. I was able to look it over at very close range, parked in the dirt just east of the North American factory. Just imagine casually doing such a thing in later years! It had recently returned from a test flight during which the F-10 supercharger on the right engine had shed its turbine buckets, and I saw the ragged holes in the metal skin, looking - I imagined - as if shrapnel had hit it. Possibly, by that time, it was already under the later NAA Charge Number NA39 (NA-21 modifications). Unofficially, the company had called the XB-21 the Dragon and fortunately it became as extinct as that mythological monster when five potential YB-21s were canceled, and the program ended.

NA-40: About two years after the unfortunate design of the XB-21, North American's chief designer, J. Leland Atwood and his teammate Raymond H. Rice, came up with a fast twin-engined model. The NA-40 was a really new and inspired light bomber designed for low-level attack. It sat on the new tricycle landing gear and looked as modern as tomorrow. The company painted Air Corps stripes on the twin rudders, but the Army never owned the craft. Instead the plane had civil registration X14221 on the twin fins (company serial was NA40-1052). It first flew in January 1939 and that spring went to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, for acceptance trials. The prototype crashed on one of its test flights because of propeller problems and the attack contract went to the similar

Douglas 7-B (which had flown three months before the NA-40, also at Mines Field) in its improved DB-7 model, which the Air Corps called the A-20 Havoc (five years later I flew a couple of DB-7Bs and an A-20G in England). Apparently North American had lost again.

B-25: Under increasing pressure from the growing threat of war in Europe, however, the Army Air Corps urgently needed to replace its aging and totally inadequate B18A medium bombers. The NAA design team of Atwood and Rice, therefore, did a complete redesign of the NA-40 in the summer of 1939, resulting in their similar but heavier NA-62 proposal, far advanced over any medium bomber in the world. Although approximately the same weight as the lumbering old B-18A, it was considerably smaller, about a hundred miles an hour faster, and carried a larger load of bombs. It was hot!