After our new SB2U went into service, we shifted our attention back to building a monoplane observation replacement for the battleship and carrier-catapult planes, represented by our original Corsairs. For so well had Chance Vought wrought that his little two-seaters, conceived back there in 1926, remained in service until after Pearl Harbor, some fifteen years later. Our replacement was called the “Kingfisher” and it saw service in World War II. One of them saved Eddy Rickenbacker from a watery grave on the vast Pacific, something that alone compensated us for the painstaking design efforts we had put into a complicated project. Meanwhile, in the effort to find a product for export sale and, possibly, break into an Army competition, we built a fighter under circumstances so fantastic as almost to belie the telling. Jack Northrup, who had built a sweet little single-seater for the Army, using the Wright 1510 two-row engine, had won high praise from the Army Engineering Division at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in competition with fighters by Curtiss and Seversky. But during an interlude in the contest, after the plane had gone back to California, it had sailed out over the broad Pacific and not returned. There had been gossip at the time that the Japs might have had something to do with it. At any rate, Jack Northrup had decided not to reenter the Army competition, but Jack Horner, sales manager of Pratt and Whitney, suggested that Vought take over the design from Northrup, reconstruct the model around the Pratt and Whitney 1535 engine, and create an export fighter model for United Aircraft. I conducted the negotiations with Jack Northrup over the telephone and sent our men west by air. Starting with few drawings and no materials, we rushed the airplane to completion in something like forty-five days. During the work at East Hartford, the Connecticut River overflowed its banks and cut off the electric power, but our crews, working night and day, finished the little ship in the light of their automobile headlights. In the competition at Wright Field, which was based not on the actual performance of the prototype but on what the contractor was willing to guarantee in production, we lost out to Alex Seversky. When we offered the airplane to the Navy, with arresting gear, we were unable to arouse interest. While this put us in the clear for an export permit, we failed to sell any of the craft, at least to countries with cash to buy them. One day our European export representative, Tom Hamilton, brought some Japanese officers to Hartford.