The Aerospace Legacy Foundation began in 1995 by a group of scientists, engineers, business people, educators, retirees, and the public at large. Incorporated as a nonprofit foundation in 1997, our mission is to preserve Southern California's innovative aerospace and aviation heritage.
Over seventy-five years of discovery from Boeing, North American Aviation , Rockwell International, Douglas, and McDonnell Douglas, continue to influence many generations. Through our website and public meetings we honor and preserve the legacy of flight and space travel. We have an opportunity to teach future generations the magic created in Downey and Southern California. Most importantly, honoring the people who made it all real. The foundation is currently working with the City of Downey planning and promoting the future Columbia Memorial Space Science Learning Center. We also do presentations to groups.

For more information call 562-922-8068.

Downey California, former North American Aviation Plant.
The Aerospace Legacy Foundation has  offices in Bldg 11 at the former site, now Downey Studios and IRG Inc. Below is some information about North American Aviation and a great picture of the front entrance at 12214 Lakewood Blvd.
Office hours for ALF at Tuesday thru Thursday each week by appointment.
Give us a call at 562-922-8068

Downey NASA Site:

"The history of this industrial plant and a number of its extant buildings and structures precedes NASA ownership. Originally constructed on farmland owned by James Hughan, the earliest buildings (or portions thereof) were constructed in 1929 to support the emerging aircraft industry. Since that time, the plant has expanded physically several times, modernized to accommodate the changing needs of developing aircraft and aerospace programs, and expanded and contracted its workforce as a result of defense-related research and development and various military conflicts.
Although it has experienced periods of very little activity, it never completely closed its doors and has since 1929 provided uninterrupted economic security for the people and community of Downey California.                                 

DOWNEY-The first aviation tenant of the land we now know as Rockwell International in Downey was EMSCO, a firm which made a name for itself by manufacturing oil field equipment, and which diversified in 1929 by designing a two place sports airplane.

The first EMSCO (the name stemmed from its founder, E. M. Smith), was built at Long Beach Airport. But the same year EMSCO bought four acres here and built a small aircraft factory and airstrip adjacent to old two-lane Cerritos Road (now Lakewood Boulevard) in Downey.

The second EMSCO aircraft was built at the new Downey plant and flown from the small airstrip that was carved from cow pasture here. Called the Cirrus, the EMSCO plane developed a following when a more powerful version was developed.

From The Downey Eagle

More on North American Aviation from Wikipedia
North American Aviation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

North American Aviation was a major US aircraft manufacturer. The company was responsible for a number of historic aircraft, including the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, and the X-15 rocket plane, as well as Apollo Command and Service Module, the second stage of the Saturn V rocket, the Space Shuttle orbiter and the B-1 Lancer. Through a series of mergers and sales, North American Aviation is now part of Boeing.

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-relation companies. However, the Air Mail Act of 1934 forced the breakup of such holding companies. The upshot was that North American became a manufacturing company run by James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger (who had been recruited from Douglas Aircraft Company), although it retained 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. Its first planes were the GA-15 observation plane and the GA-16 trainer, followed by the O-47 and BT-9. The BC-1 of 1937 was North American's first combat aircraft.
Like other manufacturers, North American started gearing up for war in 1940, 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 theaters. The A-36 Apache was developed as a ground attack aircraft and dive bomber. Originally powered by an Allison engine, a suggestion by the RAF that North American switch to the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine may have been one of the most significant events in WWII aviation, as it produced the P-51 Mustang, considered by many 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. 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 P-82 Twin Mustang, B-45 Tornado jet bomber, the FJ Fury fighter, AJ Savage, the revolutionairy 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 2005 and be flown in training by virtually every Naval pilot for four decades. The Buckeye's name would be an acknowledgement to the state tree of Ohio, as well as the mascot of the 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.
The rocket engine division spun off into a separate company, Rocketdyne, in 1955, but North American designed and built the X-15.
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 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, and in March they merged with Rockwell-Standard, then known as North American Rockwell. The company changed its name to Rockwell International and named its aircraft division North American Aircraft Operations in 1973.[1]

Aircraft
P-51 Mustang

• P-82 Twin Mustang
  
• B-25 Mitchell
  
• F-86 Sabre
  
• F-100 Super Sabre
  
• YF-107
  
• T-6 Texan
  
• L-17 Navion
  
• T-28 Trojan
  
• T-2 Buckeye
  
• XB-21
  
• O-47
  
• BT-9
  
• A-36 Apache
  
• XB-28 Dragon
  
• AJ Savage
  
• P-64
  
• T-39 Sabreliner
  
• B-45 Tornado
  
• FJ Fury
  
• YF-93A
  
• X-10
  
• A-5 Vigilante
  
• XF-108 Rapier
  
• OV-10 Bronco
  
• X-15
  
• XB-70 Valkyrie
  

• Hagedorn, Dan. North American NA-16/AT-6/SNJ. North Branch, MN: Specialty Press, 1997. ISBN 0-933424-84-1.
  
• Fletcher, David & Macphail, Doug. Harvard - The North American Trainers in Canada. Dundas, ON:DCF Flying Books, ISBN 0-9693825-0-2
  

• North American Aviation history
  
• Centennial of Flight page on North American
  
• Aerospace Legacy Foundation
  
• 
  

NAA's original proposal for WS-110A. The "floating panels" are large fuel tanks containing conventional JP-4 fuel used during the long subsonic cruise, each is the size of a B-47. Once ejected, the engines would burn "HEF", or zip fuel, during the high-speed dash phase.

Source of information:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aviation