Its products included the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, the X-15 rocket plane, the XB-70 bomber, the B-1 Lancer, the Apollo command and service module, the second stage of the Saturn V rocket, and the Space Shuttle orbiter.

[1] North American ranked eleventh among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.

The twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bomber achieved fame in the Doolittle Raid and was used in all combat theaters of operation.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) won the election over the International Association of Machinists and represented all the employees at the North American factory in Inglewood, California.

The national union had made a no-strike pledge but suddenly a wildcat strike by the local on June 5 closed the plant that produced a fourth of the fighters.

Nevertheless, NAA continued with new designs, including the T-28 Trojan trainer and attack aircraft, the F-82 Twin Mustang fighter, 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 North American F-86 Sabre started out as a redesigned Fury and achieved fame shooting down MiGs in the Korean War.

To accommodate its Sabre production, North American opened facilities in a former Curtiss-Wright plant in Columbus, Ohio.

[18] Autonetics began in 1945 at North American's Technical Research Laboratory, a small unit in the Los Angeles Division's engineering department based in Downey, California.

The evolution of the Navaho missile program resulted in the establishment of Autonetics as a separate division of North American Aviation in 1955, first located in Downey, later moving to Anaheim, California in 1963.

This division furnished engines for the Redstone, Jupiter, Thor, Delta, and Atlas missiles, and for NASA's Saturn family of launch vehicles.

In 1959, North American built the first of several Little Joe boosters used to test the launch escape system for the Project Mercury spacecraft.

[19][20][21] During this period the company continued its involvement with the Apollo program, building the Command and Service modules for all eleven missions.