We had 370 of them ordered, built in Canada. We retired them 22 June 56.
There was a problem with early models...
“In his memoirs, Gen. Chuck Yeager relates to a story where the flight didn’t go according to plan, or his expectations. As a young USAF test pilot, he was asked to fly the then new F-86 Saber to determine why several had unexpectedly crashed. Several Sabers had last been seen flying at low altitude, inverted before crashing with no survivors. Yeager mounted his Saber to determine the cause of these tragic accidents. I short order, he had his answer. Once inverted, the ailerons on his Saber would lock up and become immovable. Once the aircraft was rolled right-side-up, he regained aileron control. Upon detailed inspection after the flight, it was determined that a crucial bolt in the aileron assembly process had been installed incorrectly, leading to the jamming of the controls when inverted. When the manufacturing process was inspected at North American Aviation, it was determined that a factory worker was installing the bolts upside-down, because they were installed that way on every other NA aircraft he had built in his lengthy career at NA (P-51, T-6, etc.)”
Basically the fitting instructions called for the bolt to be fitted upside-down and held in place by the nut. The old guy thought best practice would be to put the bolt in from above so that if the nut came off it wouldn’t drop out. This killed a couple of pilots but the guy wasn’t told, they just retired him early (or so it says in the biography)