In the January issue of AIN (page 39), we recounted the origins of the Learjet, complete with references to the well worn tale of the Swiss fighter connection. We then heard from Bill Lear’s eldest son, who suggested that “since you can’t get it straight from the horse’s mouth, here it is from the horse’s offspring, who followed closely in the horse’s hoofsteps!”
My father first moved to Geneva in 1955. I followed in 1956 and resided there until 1975. Therefore, my father did not “jump at the opportunity to fly to Switzerland to look at the P-16 fighter project that the Swiss government had recently scrubbed.” He was already living there and hadn’t gotten serious about designing the Learjet until a few years later–about 1959, as I recall. The airplane envisioned was called the SAAC-23 (Swiss American Aircraft Corporation-23rd design). Only later was it called the Learjet when he moved the project from Switzerland to Wichita in 1962.
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