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For educational purposes
The Douglas A-26 Invader (designated B-26 between 1948 and 1965) is an American twin-engined light bomber and ground attack aircraft.
Built by Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II, the Invader also saw service during several major Cold War conflicts.
A limited number of highly modified United States Air Force aircraft served in Southeast Asia until 1969. It was a fast aircraft capable of carrying a large bomb load.
A range of guns could be fitted to produce a formidable ground-attack aircraft.
A redesignation of the type from A-26 to B-26 has led to confusion with the earlier and unrelated medium bomber Martin B-26 Marauder, which had already been withdrawn from service when the designation was reused.
The Douglas A-26 Invader (designated B-26 between 1948 and 1965) is an American twin-engined light bomber and ground attack aircraft.
Built by Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II, the Invader also saw service during several major Cold War conflicts.
A limited number of highly modified United States Air Force aircraft served in Southeast Asia until 1969. It was a fast aircraft capable of carrying a large bomb load.
A range of guns could be fitted to produce a formidable ground-attack aircraft.
A redesignation of the type from A-26 to B-26 has led to confusion with the earlier and unrelated medium bomber Martin B-26 Marauder, which had already been withdrawn from service when the designation was reused.
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00:00The
00:30The
01:00In September 1944, Allied forces in Europe started flying missions in a new light bomber.
01:09This was the twin-engine A-26, fast, heavily armed, with a load of 4,000 pounds of bombs.
01:17The manufacturer, Douglas, had christened it the Invader.
01:2125 years later, invaders were still in service and still in combat.
01:33The last U.S. Invader missions were flown in Vietnam in November 1969.
01:39No other American combat aircraft can match this record for long life.
01:51Of course, an airplane doesn't stay in combat service as long as the Invader unless it's truly remarkable.
02:02The A-26 was built as an attack type, though it shared characteristics with several American light bombers.
02:10It outlived the classification of attack aircraft, which was abandoned by the U.S. Air Force, and became the B-26.
02:16Subsequently, however, a change in political climate saw it re-designated the A-26 again.
02:33The Invader was used by many countries.
02:36As late as 1961, they were still flying in the air forces of 21 nations.
02:41During the Bay of Pigs, A-26s were flown by both Castro's forces and the CIA-backed exiles.
02:50The French flew them at Dien Bien Phu and in Algeria.
02:53They operated in the Congo, in Biafra, in Korea, and in dozens of other conflicts.
02:59They have fought in more wars than any other aircraft type.
03:11Invaders were so successful that special efforts were made to keep them on hand.
03:29When the original aircraft began to experience fatigue, the United States Air Force had 41 of the airframes completely rebuilt.
03:37The job they did was so essential that the Air Force eventually had to buy A-7 Corsair IIs to replace them.
03:49The A-26 was not a glamorous fighter or strategic bomber, and is perhaps not as well known as its history warrants.
03:56However, it not only made its marks in the record books, but also in the textbooks, on close ground support, and counterinsurgency air operations.
04:06The history of aerial bombings starts with activity that falls under the modern close-support umbrella.
04:24World War I planes rapidly went from being unarmed scouts to carrying guns and grenades.
04:31Within months of the first grenade attacks, aerial bombs were being developed.
04:35Simultaneously, divisions in aircraft functions were seeing the first development of specialized fighters and bombers.
04:44However, at that time, a large part of the sophistication of bombing was getting the bomb out of the cockpit and dropping it without hitting the plane.
04:53What happened below was random and largely ineffectual.
04:56By the end of the war, there were plans on both sides to build large bombers.
05:11Enthusiastic air combat planners had quickly come to a vision of a future dominated by air power,
05:18where strategic aims would be accomplished by the use of long-range bombers.
05:23More pragmatic army planners had a vision of close ground attack support aircraft dominating a battlefield
05:29where strategic aims were accomplished by the traditional method of occupying territory.
05:34In varying ways, both camps were right.
05:37By the eve of the Second World War, the division of aircraft had progressed to subdivisions.
05:54Bombers had been compartmentalized into tactical and strategic roles.
05:58They were small and large bombers.
06:00Some of the ground attack work was performed by fighters and the rest by specialized attack planes and light bombers.
06:07This spread of involvement in close battlefield support and interdiction made the designation of attack planes fairly irrelevant.
06:15After the war, the division was dropped by the Air Force.
06:18Underlining the artificiality of the attack and bomber divisions is the fact that the planes most similar in size and capability to the A-26 were light bombers,
06:38the North American B-25 and the Martin B-26.
06:42The B-25 Mitchell was the slowest of the three and carried the lightest bomb load.
06:50It was also the earliest design of the three and was a more conservative project.
06:55The pilots loved its handling qualities.
06:58Both the B-25 and the B-26 Marauder were pre-war designs
07:02and were based on theoretical projections of what war would be like rather than on actual war experience.
07:15The Marauder reflected a Martin concept of making light bombers very fast.
07:20In some respects, they were looking for a very big fighter bomber.
07:23The aim was to dispense with the need for escort by being able to outrun enemy interception.
07:28With an ability to fly at slightly more than 300 miles an hour,
07:33they were close to achieving that aim, but fighter development overtook them.
07:37During their career, they were to become progressively slower as more weight was added to them.
07:42The original fine design idea was lost in the demands of actual combat.
07:46The Marauder was lost in the demands of actual combat.
07:58The Mitchells and Marauders were both very good aircraft
08:03and tended to overshadow the similar attack types.
08:07The Douglas Company had produced the A-20 Havoc,
08:10which performed reasonably well in both Europe and the Pacific.
08:13The French had been the first buyer for this Jack Northrup-designed aircraft,
08:18and Douglas turned out several thousand for use with most of the Allied air forces.
08:28Flat out, the A-20s were faster than either the B-25s or B-26s,
08:33but had a shorter range and carried a smaller load.
08:37The British, who called the A-20 the Boston, were particularly attached to it.
08:42They flew many daring and famous raids over Europe with them,
08:45as did the Free French Forces.
08:52Despite its small load, there were many missions
08:54that suited the low-level accuracy of the smaller attack bombers,
08:58rather than the random carpet bombing of the strategic high-flyers.
09:10In the lead up to D-Day,
09:12many low-level A-20 missions were flown,
09:14with the planes skimming across the channel
09:16as they raced toward their targets.
09:18The Havoc was a fine airplane,
09:20and in its own quiet way,
09:22it did a number of jobs very well.
09:23First flown in 1938,
09:27it embodied a lot of pre-war theory about air warfare.
09:31It bristled with six defensive machine guns,
09:34and carried a small bomb load for a relatively limited distance.
09:37However, it was the first American combat plane
09:40to employ tricycle landing gear.
09:43Importantly,
09:44it also proved to be sufficiently adaptable
09:46to be changed when war arrived.
09:49It was extensively reworked
09:50into a series of very useful aircraft.
09:53The Douglas Engineers, working under the leadership of Edward Heinemann,
10:22had designed a replacement for the Havoc.
10:25This was not to be another reworking of the A-20 either, but a new aircraft.
10:31Drawing heavily on the early experience of the war,
10:34they were able to take pre-war ideas, extract what had proved true,
10:39add wartime experience, and come up with what worked best.
10:52The immediate effect of the A-26 was to render all other Allied light bombers obsolete.
11:02The new attack plane from Douglas was capable of over 350 miles per hour
11:15with a 3,000-pound bomb load.
11:18The Mitchells and Marauders were more than 70 miles per hour slower.
11:23When the A-26 went on to greater loads at higher speeds,
11:26the pre-war designs became slower.
11:30War experience imposed demands that went beyond the expectation of peacetime designers.
11:35The invader was one of very few designs which were begun, approved, produced, and used during the war.
11:57But although it was successfully deployed, peace cut short its production.
12:03At war's end, nearly 10,000 Mitchells had been built,
12:07but there were only 2,453 invaders to come off the assembly line.
12:12The design team built three prototypes on one airframe.
12:18The main differences were in the nose.
12:21The night fighter A-26A was short-lived,
12:24but the other two were developed and produced.
12:27The A-26B was fitted with a solid nose with six machine guns in it,
12:31whereas the A-26C had a glazed nose for a bombardier.
12:35The first flight took place on the 10th of July, 1942,
12:40and the plane was accepted with very few modifications.
12:50Even before the remaining bugs had been ironed out,
12:54invaders were rushed into combat.
12:56The crews found them delightfully maneuverable and impressively fast.
13:01Visibility was not as good as with the A-20
13:03because of the positioning of the engine.
13:05But the pilot had remarkably good vision to the front and above.
13:22The first unit equipped with invaders had been flying A-20s.
13:26This was the 416th Bomb Group.
13:29In October 1944, squadrons began retraining,
13:33and over the next month the entire unit changed over.
13:36The first group sortie with the A-26 took place on the 17th of November.
13:42The weather over Europe was lousy that day,
13:44and the group had the distinction of being the only 9th Air Force unit
13:48to complete its mission.
13:49In the European theater, invaders flew over 11,000 sorties in the remaining six months of the war.
14:06Along with other attack and tactical bombing aircraft,
14:08they played a major part in making possible the success of the invading armies below.
14:14The invasion and subsequent liberation of the continent
14:17relied on the close support of the tactical planes at the front lines.
14:22But bombing behind the enemy lines crippled the German combat unit's ability to organize and concentrate.
14:29Tanks, which should have been rushed to the battlefield,
14:32had to make long detours around smashed bridges and under constant aerial harassment.
14:37Not only were heavy losses inflicted,
14:40but German troops arrived in combat already exhausted.
14:44When they got there, there was no guarantee that they would receive enough fuel and ammunition to keep fighting.
14:50The destruction wrought on their supply lines condemned their effectiveness.
14:54By February 1945,
15:08over 9,000 aircraft were attacking the German transport system.
15:13In parallel, the strategic bombing forces were relentlessly pounding the German fuel and aviation industries.
15:20The concentration of attack on the vital German infrastructure
15:23produced results.
15:37The invaders' defensive armament consisted of two twin gun turrets,
15:41one above and one below the fuselage.
15:44These were remotely controlled.
15:47The upper turret, which could be pointed forward to add to the power of the invaders' strafing,
15:52had 500 rounds per gun.
15:53The lower turret guns were supplied with 400 rounds each.
15:57Both were normally operated by the rear gunner.
16:06The solid-nosed version six machine gun barrage was increased on later examples to eight.
16:12In addition, the planes could carry a number of machine guns in packs under the wings.
16:17With four of the twin gun packs, an invader could bring an 18-gun blast to bear in strafing.
16:23The crews also found that once they had released their bombs, the planes behaved like fighters.
16:44At some altitudes, the A-26 could actually turn inside a Messerschmitt 109.
16:51Additionally, the invader was actually faster than the ME-109E,
16:55and only a few miles per hour slower than the F and G models.
16:59Its heavy frontal firepower allowed the solid-nosed version in particular
17:03the serious option of tangling with enemy fighters.
17:06By the time the A-26s entered the conflict, the German air effort was on the decline.
17:30However, German fighters did combat with them, with results which were not guaranteed to favor the Nazis.
17:37Very few invaders were shot down in air-to-air combat.
17:40One A-26, flown by Major Myron L. Durkee,
17:44was credited with a probable kill of a Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter on the 19th of February, 1945.
17:51In other clashes with fighters, A-26 losses were matched by downed Germans.
18:00Delays in deploying invaders into combat were mainly due to the time needed
18:10for the retraining of crews and ground personnel.
18:13The only major problems with the plane were a weak-nosed gear, which often collapsed,
18:18a cockpit hatch that was difficult to bail out of,
18:20and an overly complex cockpit layout.
18:22With these faults rectified, the invaders' combat deployment continued as fast as possible.
18:30Though the German air effort was waning due to fuel shortages
18:39and the destruction of much of the aircraft production industry,
18:43anti-aircraft barrages continued.
18:45Missions were flown against heavily defended targets,
18:48and flak accounted for most of the invaders lost in combat.
18:52In the short period of their deployment in Europe, 67 A-26s were lost,
19:06but they chalked up seven confirmed air-to-air kills and numerous probables.
19:10The invaders were initially powered by 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines.
19:27With the addition of water injection, the engines developed more power,
19:31and the top speed of the aircraft was pushed up from 355 miles per hour to 373.
19:36About half the invaders were produced with this upgraded power plant.
19:45Their experience in Europe was later to serve them well
19:48when the post-war Air Force inventory was determined.
19:51Statistical analysis of the work of the variant of the aircraft
20:21various U.S. light bombers in Europe indicates strongly
20:24that the A-26 outperformed all other types.
20:28Of course, these statistics must be approached with some caution.
20:32The A-26 operated only at the end of the war
20:35when the German fighter defenses were crumbling.
20:38Therefore, the fact that there were fewer A-26 losses per 1,000 sorties
20:43is perhaps unbalanced.
20:44However, the fact that the invaders dropped more tonnage permission
20:49than the A-20, the B-25, and the B-26
20:52is not as readily questioned.
20:54In many indicators, the figures similarly show the A-26
20:58with a clear edge over those earlier designs.
21:01The B-26
21:24in size the a-26 was very similar to the two light bombers it fitted neatly between the
21:41Mitchell and Marauder the invader had a wingspan of 70 feet was 50 feet long and had an empty weight
21:49of around 22,000 pounds the maximum takeoff weight ranged up to 37,000 pounds the plane could carry a
21:574,000 pound bomb load up to 1,400 miles a few were equipped with radar and painted black for night
22:03bombing some are also later re-equipped by the french as night fighters but in the european
22:09theater the majority operated in the designed role as light attack bombers in the pacific more use was
22:18made of their powerful gunnery in close support of ground troops though the pacific-based groups also
22:23made good use of their virtues as stable heavily armored bomb platforms however the arena where
22:29they really made their mark and prove their worth was europe
22:46at war's end the air force cancelled almost all production contracts and reviewed its future needs
22:53among the contracts abandoned were orders for a further 5254 invaders however the review of future
23:02needs determined that the standard light attack bomber for the u.s air force would be the a-26
23:08an important factor in the success of the design was the structure of the wings they were given a new
23:22low-dragged laminar flow airfoil the use of cord wise stiffeners gave the wing more strength allowing it
23:29to carry the great loads of underslung stores that rounded off the invaders operational force
23:36the design incorporated a good deal of sophisticated engineering it was originally almost unique in its
23:42square shape unlike the cylindrical monocoque form the invader structure relied on materials rather than shape
24:05the strength of the invaders design combined with its limited combat record ensured continuation of this
24:18type when other wartime contemporaries disappeared
24:33after the war the a-26 remained in service and efforts were even taken to turn it into a three-engine
24:40aircraft by installing a jet engine in the fuselage a prototype was tested in june of 1946
24:46and reached a speed of 413 miles an hour the prototype was the only sample of the invader to be built
24:54after vj day the invaders were evidently retained in the air force inventory as a stopgap measure until
25:02serviceable jet-powered bombers could be developed and deployed but they were to become much more than a
25:08stopgap when the korean war began
25:17despite the distance from major jet capable airfields in japan the war in korea was essentially one of
25:23short distances and intense battlefield environments as such it was ideally suited to the invaders which
25:31could operate from rough strips or make the trip from japan with fuel to spare
25:35they proved to be all important in the assertion of air strength against the overpowering ground
25:41force advantage enjoyed by the communist forces
25:51as bridges were destroyed and the u.n forces withdrew in the initial onslaught of invasion
25:58the a-26s contained the attackers with constant raids both with bomb runs and the withering fire from
26:05their massed machine guns by now they were called the b-26 having taken over the mantle of the marauders
26:13they had replaced the creation of the u.s air force had seen the doing away of the attack classification
26:19and for convenience the name change had been limited as much as possible
26:40they were still the same mixture of glass-nosed sea models and gun-nosed bees perceived as largely
26:47irrelevant pre-jet dinosaurs they had not been noticeably re-equipped or upgraded the invader
26:54continued to be classified as a plane whose days were apparently numbered there was only one factor
27:00which really kept them in the inventory they filled a niche no other plane could fill in korea they rammed
27:07this message home with considerable force by being such an important part of the air power deployed
27:13but the lessons they taught during the conflict were largely forgotten and when vietnam involved the
27:20u.s 15 years later the a-26 would still be needed no suitable replacement had been developed
27:43in korea korea was however the last major campaign where they operated in their originally designed
27:56role as a medium bomber in vietnam this role would be the duty of other types mostly fighter
28:02bombers like the f-105 thunder chief in the korean conflict some of the invaders used were recalled from
28:09storage events that proved their retirement to be seriously premature they fought all through the
28:16seesaw battling and flew the last combat missions of the war korea set the stage for a change in the
28:29nature of geopolitics with the technological defeat of the chinese the communists were reluctant to indulge in
28:36further head-on confrontations guerrilla activity would replace the normal battlefield evolving
28:43initially into a succession of localized revolts even soviet russia offered little assistance to this
28:50guerrilla activity in korea the soviets had withdrawn before the conflict began and in the course of the war
29:02nothing had transpired to make them confront the usa
29:10revolutionary forces in the third world were coming to rely on their own resources
29:15or what they could steal from their governments
29:27in a near vacuum of outside support revolutionary groups particularly in south america fought long
29:54campaigns which were more irritating than threatening to their opponents some of these wars of attrition
29:59are still running
30:07the a-26 with its low-level speed and powerful accurate armament was recognized as an ideal counter-insurgency
30:14aircraft
30:34many of the revolutionaries in these campaigns were not communists but nationalists poorly equipped and
30:40desperate for outside help the development of guerrilla techniques required a new approach to conflict
30:48and new methods of counter-insurgency most of the developed military hardware was designed for combat with
30:54other military hardware of similar sophistication no advanced design effort was going into combating basic
31:01primitive weapons yet the threat being faced was largely at that level
31:16the invaders offered many advantages in counter-insurgency work they had a long range at a speed slow enough to allow close
31:37observation of an area they also carried enough armor to be impervious to all but the luckiest rifle
31:44if they identified any guerrilla activity it would generally be on such a small scale that a single invader
31:51could be largely assured of destroying it
31:56of the a-26 to give it the offensive power moderate speed and long range for
32:23the job it had those built in being a world war ii aircraft it had many relevant virtues producing jets to take
32:31its place was not a particularly glamorous role and nobody got around to it for some time
32:37shortly after his inauguration president kennedy directed that counter-insurgency be an area of specific importance in u.s military planning
32:58he was almost too late the a-26 was still available the airframes were approaching exhaustion
33:05events in southeast asia provided a counter-insurgency testing ground and the invaders were deployed again
33:23but the airframes soon began to crack up due to old age low hour airframes were rebuilt by the on mark engineering
33:31company into virtually new planes called the b-26k on the outside these were still invaders but the modifications
33:39were extensive the fuselage was remanufactured without the turrets the wings were rebuilt and strengthened
33:47the tail was enlarged and the engines were replaced they were needed in battle again this time there was
33:54no battlefront only jungle
34:16the k had eight underwing hard points and could carry a powerful assortment of weaponry
34:23forty of these highly modified invaders were produced
34:37before the b-26k could be deployed there was a small diplomatic protocol to be accommodated
34:44the thai government declined the opportunity to have bombers stationed at its airfields
34:49and operating against its neighbors to accommodate their hosts the united states air force re-designated
34:55the b-26k a-26a an attack plane was not a bomber or so the story goes certainly the planes that
35:05landed in hawaii on their way to the indochinese jungles were once again a-26s whatever their designation
35:12designation they were douglas invaders
35:25the first b-26 action in vietnam had been way back on the fourth of november 1950 the french air
35:49force had been a beneficiary of the korean war in that the u.s alarmed by the apparent spread of
35:55communism spared 120 of its already precious invaders to aid the french cause in indochina
36:02the invaders went on to support the legionnaires throughout the doomed occupation of dian dian fu which fell
36:13in 1954 the contracts for the b-26k or a-26a were let almost exactly 10 years later
36:33perhaps the most important effect of early french use of the invaders was the defeat inflicted on
36:39the viet minh forces at vinyan with his frontline formation shattered by bombing and napalm raids
36:46the north vietnamese general vo nguyen xiap resolved to avoid any future set-piece battlefield wherever
36:52possible involvement of the united states and of the douglas invader continued in vietnam long after
37:00the departure of the exasperated and defeated french
37:17there had been no such thing as a vietnamese air force so in 1951 the french had created one
37:24the most successful pilots became part of the retreating french forces as did most of the
37:29aircraft the vietnamese air force establishment left by france was 28 nearly unserviceable grumman
37:36bearcats and an assortment of non-combat planes on the 12th of february 1955 the united states took
37:44over responsibility for the vietnamese air force and its training
37:48when armed conflict resumed in 1959 it was the united states which responded to the vietnamese needs
38:04with continuing shortages of pilots and administrators the vnaf was far from an effective force
38:11to bolster it american counterinsurgency units were transferred to south vietnam in 1961
38:19because the u.s was not involved in the war these aircraft were flown with vnaf markings
38:25officially there for training local air crews the embargo on u.s involvement in combat was artificially
38:32maintained by the presence on each flight of at least one vietnamese personnel in theory no attack
38:39could be delivered unless it was authorized and directed by the vietnamese observer in fact even by
38:45december 1961 several attack missions had been flown without even the formality of the observer's presence
39:01the b-26 aircraft in use had begun to fall apart under the strain when in august 1963 and again in february
39:151964 wings fell off invaders in combat the rest were grounded operations in vietnam had to be transferred
39:24to ex-navy sky raiders it was not until the arrival of the rebuilt a-26 a's in june of 1966 that the invaders
39:32once again entered the vietnamese combat operating from the nakom phnom air force base in thailand the invaders
39:46were flown on trail interdiction missions against the vietnamese guerrilla supply lines by day and night
39:53operating as part of a team with other types they sought out targets of opportunity there was no
39:59specific target at a specific location to destroy instead there was a maze of jungle tracks to cover
40:14the planes were flown by crews from the 606th and 609th air commando squadrons again they brought to
40:28the counterinsurgency operations simpler virtues of a time long past and were far more appropriate to the
40:35task than mach 2 fighters even the planes that had replaced them in their role as light bombers the excellent
40:43b-57s lacked their ability to loiter at low speed waiting for a target to be identified
40:57operating over laos and cambodia and both parts of vietnam the invaders hit everything from troops to
41:04supply concentrations their specialty was truck busting on the ho chi minh trail under the callsign nimrod
41:12they dodged through the mountainous terrain to attack the north vietnamese road traffic
41:16they were very effective as they had been in germany and korea
41:20the b-26 k's rebuilt by on mark had upgraded engines and extended fuel storage including permanently
41:35fixed wingtip tanks the rebuilt planes could deliver a load of over 6 000 pounds this would typically consist
41:42of napalm high explosive bombs and fragment clusters the machine guns carried 1600 rounds apiece
41:50the invaders had become even more potent weapons in their final form
42:02the counterinsurgency methods built up around the invaders served as a model for future anti-guerrilla
42:08air warfare even after they were finally retired they left a legacy of knowledge which continued to be
42:14important in vietnam has influenced actions elsewhere this is particularly so with the methods developed
42:21for night interdiction
42:39there's a part of this war that's known to only a few i'm talking about the night interdiction war
42:46this war is being fought at night in some of the most rugged mountainous terrain any place in the world
42:54the terrain and the weather and the night create an environment that is special and requires a special
43:03type of aircraft and a crew to be able to function in that environment
43:15the candlestick mission is merely the lighting of a target for strike aircraft
43:25although it is usually true that the strike aircraft carry their own flares it's very difficult for the
43:31pilot to compute wind locate the target and also keep his eye on the surrounding terrain this is the
43:37purpose for the candle which is the mission of the c123 section there are probably three basic
43:42reasons why the 826 is used for our night missions against enemy supply vehicles first reason is that
43:48aircraft craft can carry a pretty respectable load of ordnance the second reason is 826 can remain in
43:54the target area for an effective period of time which is something that jets don't generally do as a
43:59rule the third reason that this old bird is real rugged and can take an awful lot of damage and still make it back home safely
44:07the invaders continued their operations in vietnam until late in 1969 by then spare parts were getting
44:25scarce and attrition had again reduced the numbers available the squadron stood down and the planes were
44:32ferried back to the united states they were so few and they were so tired that they were not even
44:38considered worth mothballing they were stripped of usable gear and scrapped
44:46rumors abound as to the nature of some of the missions flown by the air commandos in indochina with
45:05their invaders a veil of secrecy surrounds some of their activity and prevents a further telling of
45:11their tale certainly they flew covert missions in laos against the path of law and north vietnamese
45:18presumably there will come a day when with restrictions lifted old stories will be
45:23substantiated in the interim the end of the career of the a26 dips into a gray wall of secrecy
45:41all that is left of the a26 is its legacy of service the innovative techniques it perfected and the
46:00affection of its crews the invaders were not widely recognized the relatively few were built
46:06they were worked until they dropped their demise nearly occurred several times but each time they
46:13had to be recalled even at the close of their career it wasn't that the 26 wasn't still wanted
46:21there were just none left to use very few military aircraft have been used to the last like this
46:28or have served for so long there are many things about this truly remarkable aircraft story that are quite
46:34unique the douglas invader deserves its glowing reputation
46:58so
47:04so
47:06so
47:08so
47:12so
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