Mustang's Colt

Like many another planemaker, James Howard Kindelberger was left with nothing to do after V-J day. He had committed his North American Aviation, Inc. to military production (Mustangs, Mitchells, trainers), and had no plans for commercial models.

But on Labor Day "Dutch" Kindelberger got an idea. He was sitting on his front porch leafing through aviation magazines. The light planes he saw did not impress him, and he decided then & there to build one himself. He sketched his idea on the back of an envelope and turned it over to his engineers. They whipped up a prototype in time to give it to the boss as a Christmas present.

Last week Kindelberger proudly showed the public his new "plane. It looked so much like North American's P-51 fighter planes that one ex-Mustang pilot labeled it "The Colt." As Kindelberger had planned, the all-metal 185 h.p. Navion was faster (160 miles top) and carried more (four passengers plus baggage) than most light planes. But it was also expensive enough to take it out of the light-plane price class; the tag said $6,100.

North American will be turning out ten Navions a day by August. But Dutch no longer has all his eggs in one basket. While working on the Navion, North American's engineers turned out a new military fighter plane, did such a good job that the Army & Navy have ordered $75,000,000 worth.

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