NA-50A "Torito" /NA-68 /P-64

The single seat fighter developed from the NA-16 was originally designed to meet Siamese ( Thai ) Air Force specifications. The aircraft, designated the NA-50, was powered by an 870 HP Wright R-1820-77 engine driving a three blade propeller.  The wingspan of the NA-50A was some five feet shorter than the AT-6   It was armed with two .30 caliber Colt-Browning machine guns mounted in the cowling, one in each wing, and it had provision for bomb racks beneath the wings for up to 550 pounds of bombs.  The fuselage, one foot shorter than the AT-6, was completely redesigned from the windscreen back, with a shorter canopy and sloping turtleback fuselage.  The aircraft had the same fin and rudder as the BC-1.

The prototype, company designation NA-50A, flew for the first time on the first of September in 1940.   Flight tests showed a speed of  295 mph, a range of 645 miles, and a service ceiling of 32,000 feet.  Peru bought seven aircraft under the designation NA-50A, all of which were delivered during the Spring of 1939.    These aircraft saw combat during a brief  border war between Peru and Ecuador during 1941.  During the fighting, one NA-50A was shot down by ground fire, the only NA-50A lost in combat.

Siam ( Thailand ) tested the NA-50A during September of 1939 and ordered six modified NA-50 aircraft under the designation NA-68.  The NA-68 differed from the  NA-50A in having the angular AT-6 style rudder, improved landing gear doors, and revised armament.  The NA-68 carried a single 20MM cannon mounted in a gondola under each wing along with four 8 MM machine guns in the cowling and two in the wings.  The aircraft destined for Siam were aboard ship in Hawaii when the State Department ( as with the NA-69s ) revoked the export permits.  The aircraft were shipped back to California, stripped of their armament, and taken over by the U.S. Army Air Corps for use as fighter-trainers at Luke Army Air Base under the designation P-64.

Throughout their career in the Training Command the P-64s retained their Thai camouflage finish of  Dark Brown and Dark Green uppersurfaces over Light Gray undersurfaces.  After the war, five of the P-64s were scrapped.  The lone surviving P-64 was later sold to a civilian who restored the aircraft in a pre-Second World War type paint scheme.  The aircraft was later purchased by the Experimental Aircraft Association based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.