@ Half Moon Bay, CA
April 2012
This example of the Douglas A26 Invader entered service with Conair Aviation in the spring of 1970. It completed over 2,000 hours of firefighting duty in its new role, until its last operational flight in 1984. Conair donated the aircraft to the British Columbia Aviation Museum in 1989 where it was decided to keep the A-26 in its firefighting configuration. This aircraft was delivered as an A-26B and somewhere during its career was converted to a A-26C. The A-26B was the solid-nosed attack version of the Invader, armed with six .50 cal machine guns with 400 rounds per gun. Invaders destined for service in the Pacific theater lacked the ventral turret which was replaced by a 125 gal auxiliary fuel tank for extra range. First flown in 1942, a total of 1150 A-26Bs were built at Long Beach and an additional 205 were built at Tulsa. In 1948 the A-26 was re-designated B-26, without any issue of confusion with the Martin B-26 Marauder since that aircraft was out of service by then.
