When I first went to the Lyon Air Museum, it marked the first time that I saw the Douglas A-26 Invader close air support aircraft in person, and while the A-26 entered service soon enough to see action within the last year of World War II, it saw immensely widespread usage as both a close air support aircraft and counter-insurgency aircraft in the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Bay of Pigs Invasion, not to mention its use in conflicts in Angola, Biafra, Congo, and Indonesia, and it even served with the US Navy as a general utility aircraft and drone launch platform under the designation JD-1. However, most people interested in US combat aircraft from World War II don't think too much about the fact that a few decades after the end of World War II, several examples of the Invader were converted into aerial firefighting aircraft for use by the civilian firefighting company Lynch Air Tankers. Since I've already written about Privateers modified for aerial firefighting, I will devote this post to discussing the use of the A-26 Invader by Lynch Air Tankers during the 1960s to 1990s.
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| A Douglas A-26C Invader (serial number 44-35721, civil registration N9425Z) at the Palm Springs Air Museum in Palm Springs, California, photographed by me on March 11, 2023, and painted in the US Navy color scheme seen on many examples of the JD-1 utility variant of the Invader. This aircraft was the first A-26 delivered to Lynch Air Tankers for aerial firefighting. |
The founder of Lynch Air Tankers Incorporated, John Dennis "Denny" Lynch, was born in Shelby, Montana, on November 21, 1935. In 1940, his father and uncle founded Lynch Flying Service, and years after earning a private pilot license in 1952, he began working for the air service in the late 1950s. By 1964, Lynch himself created an offshoot of the Lynch Flying Service dedicated to aerial firefighting, Lynch Air Tankers, which was based in Billings, Montana. An A-26C/B-26C previously flown by the US Army Air Force with serial number 44-35721 and allocated the civil registration N9425Z after being sold to the Oregon-based firm Central Oregon Aerial Company was acquired by Lynch Air Tankers in 1966 to be fitted with internal 1,200-gallon fire retardant tanks and assigned the serial number A24 (later changed to 57), beginning aerial firefighting activities that year. Another ex-USAAF Invader, built as an A-26C with serial number 44-35371 and later converted to a TB-26C unarmed trainer before being acquired by the Rock Island Oil & Refining Company in Wichita, Kansas, in 1960, with civil registration N4818E, was sold to Lynch Air Tankers in 1967 and received the company serial A28 (later changed to 58). One ex-USAAF A-26B with serial number 44-34102, which later received the civil registration N4060A, was delivered to Lynch Air Tankers in 1972 with company serial 01, and an ex-French Air Force A-26C (USAAF serial number 44-35425) used in Indochina during the early 1950s followed suit in 1973 with company serial B27 (later changed to 59), while one ex-USAAF Invader with serial number 44-34121 and one retired B-26K Counter-Invader (built as an A-26B with serial number 44-34198, reserialled 64-17679 after conversion to B-26K configuration) were converted to firefighting aircraft by Lynch Air Tankers in 1975 and 1978 respectively. In an interesting footnote, the first two A-26 Invaders to be acquired by Lynch Air Tankers were flown by John Dennis Lynch himself in his role as a stunt pilot during filming of the 1989 movie Always by Steven Spielberg (best known as the director of the Jurassic Park film series and Schindler's List).
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| An in-flight view of an A-26B Invader aerial firefighting aircraft (ex-USAAF serial number 44-34121, civil registration N4805E) in service with Lynch Air Tankers. Note the Lynch Air Tankers serial number 58 on the vertical stabilizer. |
Although the Invader bombers operating for Lynch Air Tankers played a special role in putting out forest fires in Montana but also other US states with extensive woodlands in their first decade of service with Lynch Air Tankers, they encountered some aerodynamic issues during take-off and landing as well as in flight. To solve these problems, Lynch himself conceived a modified wing section which was also designed for efficient high-speed flight as well as take-off and landing at "hot and high" airfields that were used each summer, since greater angles of attack were achievable during these phases of the flight. The two A-26s that had been acquired by Lynch Air Tankers in the late 1960s and the A-26 with civil registration N4060A were modified in 1975 with leading edge cuff running from the fuselage out to the wingtip and four wing fences across the wing and main body of the aircraft, and these Invaders became known as the Lynch STOL 26. Two other A-26s in use by Lynch Air Tankers which originally bore the USAAF serial numbers 44-35497 and 44-34121 were also modified with this new wing section and converted to STOL 26 standard. One of the first two A-26s converted to STOL 26 configuration, serial number 44-35371, sustained some damage when its nose landing gear while landing at the Lynch Air Tankers headquarters in Billings, Montana, on June 28, 1975, but was eventually repaired and resumed aerial firefighting services with Lynch Air Tankers. The A-26 fleet conducting aerial firefighting while operating with Lynch Air Tankers was kept flying using spare parts from ex-USAAF aircraft and retired Portuguese Air Force Invaders, so two A-26 aircraft were given to Lynch Air Tankers in the late 1970s for use as spare parts airframes to support the company's Invader fleet, an ex-USAAF A-26B with serial number 41-39303 and an ex-French Air Force A-26C (USAAF serial number 44-35439) used by the French in Indochina in the early 1950s. On August 8, 1976, A-26 serial number 59 (originally B27) crashed into a hill during a low-level turn after suppressing a forest fire in the Rocky Mountains near Grand Junction, Colorado, killing its pilot. Consequently, Lynch Air Tankers in 1977 acquired an A-26C firefighting aircraft from Evergreen Air (USAAF serial number 44-35497, civil registration N3426G) as a replacement aircraft, assigning it the company serial number 56; this Invader had been allocated the serial number A17 when it served firefighting duties with Johnson Air Service before that company was acquired by Evergreen Air in 1975, which led to the serial A17 for N3426G being changed to 17. One of A-26s of Lynch Air Tankers that had been modified to Lynch STOL 26 standard, serial number 01 (USAAF serial number 44-34102, civil registration N4060A), crashed into a forest in Hubbard Fork, Kentucky, on March 5, 1983 while fighting forest fires while making an additional turn after having made two runs over the forest fire area, killing the pilot.
The last firefighting mission involving an A-26 of Lynch Air Tankers took place in 1990, the last-ever operational use of the A-26/B-26 as a firefighting aircraft in US service, and by 1992 Lynch Air Tankers retired its A-26 fleet, including the two aircraft given to the company as spare parts airframe. The A-26 with civil registration N74833 was made airworthy again in 1989 and given to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, in March 1990, while the A-26B with serial number 41-39303 was donated to the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa, California, in 1992. The first A-26 Invader to be delivered to Lynch Air Tankers is now on display at the Palm Springs Air Museum in Palm Springs, while the A-26 with civil registration N4818E is currently displayed at the Marine Aviation Museum in Houston, Texas. The only B-26K to be operated by Lynch Air Tankers was sold to the Vintage Flying Museum in Houston in the early 2010s, where it has been restored to airworthy condition (this Invader was involved in minor incident on September 9, 2022 when its landing gear collapsed and a tire blew as the aircraft was landing at Forth Worth Meacham International Airport). Lastly, the A-26 Invaders with serial numbers 44-34121 and 44-35497 were sold to the Canadian aerial firefighting firm Air Spray Limited in the 1990s and early 2000s, receiving the new civil registrations C-GHZM and C-FOVC respectively, although they still retain the Lynch Air Tankers serial numbers on their vertical fins.
As a side note, the ex-Lynch Air Tankers A-26 that I've seen at the Palm Springs Air Museum is painted in one of the US Navy color schemes applied to the JD-1 (redesignated DB/UB-26J after 1962) utility and drone control variant of the A-26 Invader for the US Navy. Although this is paradoxical because no JD-1s are known to survive today, the Palm Springs Air Museum probably found it convenient to apply US Navy markings to the aircraft because the A-26 that was allocated the serial number 57 by Lynch Air Tankers was no longer in service as an aerial firefighting aircraft. As a matter of fact, an A-26B Invader on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida is also painted in JD-1 guise and marked with the number "446928" on its vertical stabilizer, but was actually allocated the serial number 41-39215 when it was ordered by the US Army Air Force (the serial number 44-46928 in actuality was never allocated to an A-26 but instead belonged to a canceled production contract for the General Motors P-75 Eagle fighter plane).
References:
Ogden, B., 2007. Aviation Museums and Collections of North America. Tonbridge, UK: Air-Britain.
Thompson, S., 2002. Douglas A-26 and B-26 Invader – Crowood Aviation Series. Marlborough, UK: Crowood Press.
"Lynch flying service." Douglas A/B-26 Invader. https://napoleon130.tripod.com/id368.html. Accessed 27 April 2023.
