Drove by the airport to get a pic. I’m a huge WWII aircraft fan but don’t know that I’ve ever seen a flying example in person.

Always loved the A-26 as well as the P-61 Blackwidow. Love the sound of radial engines but
when I worked at RYY in Kennesaw GA that I would not answer the airport's mainline because I knew a noise complaint was coming.

Haha. It was actually the sound of the radial engines that caused me to look up for the source while I was driving. Love that sound.

Love the Invader. Incredible machines!

That particular A-26 is Lady Liberty of the Confederate Air Force (Yes, I know, they changed their name..but I refuse to accept the encroachment of PC into every space, including history and aviation).

The A-26 served in both Ground Attack and Light Bombing roles in Europe during WW II.

IIRC, a few A-26s served in Vietnam during the war there, as well.

Every once in a while we'll see an A-26 air attack tanker heading inbound or outbound to/from a wild fire.

Whenever I think A-26 it reminds me of this movie:



Always- movie trailer

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:
...Whenever I think A-26 it reminds me of this movie:

Always- movie trailer

When I vsited the Billings Airport way back in 1999 that plane had been parked on the ramp for a while.

Speaking of "Always," the C-82 that made a brief appearance is now at the Hagerstown (MD) Air Museum.
https://hagerstownaviationmuse...fairchild-c-82a.html

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:

Every once in a while we'll see an A-26 air attack tanker heading inbound or outbound to/from a wild fire.

Not in the US. the A26 hasn't been used for fire in nearly 30 years. Radial engine aircraft haven't been used for fire (with the exception of a few state contracts in single engine air tankers--SEATs) since 2002. SEAT federal radial engine contracts ended a number of years ago. I flew the last ones.

Canada operated the A26, but has retired them. The largest operator was AirSpray, which had 22 of them, but they were phased out in favor of the L188 Electra in the 80's.

I used to park next to the A26 from the movie Always, in Billings, MT, on a fire contract. I was flying a PB4Y-2 at the time. The flying service still had two A-26's back then, one of which was used as Richard Dreyfus's airplane in the movie. It wasn't being flown; just sat.

We also owned an A26, or rather, my boss owned it. Last I saw it, he'd had it outfitted with oil shutoffs to reduce hydraulic lock in the lower cylinders, and with two fresh overhauls, took the airplane flying one spring. He forgot about the added oil shutoffs, and not long after takeoff, the first engine seized. The second one failed landing, and locked up on the ground.

I'm not sure what you're seeing in the US, but it's not an A26 flying fires. The last multi-engine radials flying fires in the US were retired a few years ago, but they were larger and louder than the A26: the P-2V used two much larger R-3350 radials, and two avgas-burning J-34 turbojets. Two versions, SP2H's, were flying without the jets, but were sold to Argentina prior to 2010, as I recall.

The C-82 at Hagerstown was the only C-82 left flying in the world; I don't recall it being in Always. The airplane you saw in that movie that was owned and operated by Hemet Valley Flying Service, and was a C-119 with a J-34 jet on top. The C-82 at Hagerstown last flew in 2006, when sold at auction from H&P. It was featured in the remake of Flight of the Phoenix.

The C-82 was the personal airplane of Gene Powers at Hawkins and Powers; that is the airplane at Hagerstown now. I've worked on that airplane, and at one point personally fabricated all the fuel lines in the aircraft.

The C-119 seen in Always was a development of the C-82. We had fifteen or so of the C-119's at one point. They were retired from firefighting after several notable wing failures.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:

Every once in a while we'll see an A-26 air attack tanker heading inbound or outbound to/from a wild fire.

Not in the US. the A26 hasn't been used for fire in nearly 30 years. Radial engine aircraft haven't been used for fire (with the exception of a few state contracts in single engine air tankers--SEATs) since 2002. SEAT federal radial engine contracts ended a number of years ago. I flew the last ones.

Canada operated the A26, but has retired them. The largest operator was AirSpray, which had 22 of them, but they were phased out in favor of the L188 Electra in the 80's.

I used to park next to the A26 from the movie Always, in Billings, MT, on a fire contract. I was flying a PB4Y-2 at the time. The flying service still had two A-26's back then, one of which was used as Richard Dreyfus's airplane in the movie. It wasn't being flown; just sat.

We also owned an A26, or rather, my boss owned it. Last I saw it, he'd had it outfitted with oil shutoffs to reduce hydraulic lock in the lower cylinders, and with two fresh overhauls, took the airplane flying one spring. He forgot about the added oil shutoffs, and not long after takeoff, the first engine seized. The second one failed landing, and locked up on the ground.

I'm not sure what you're seeing in the US, but it's not an A26 flying fires. The last multi-engine radials flying fires in the US were retired a few years ago, but they were larger and louder than the A26: the P-2V used two much larger R-3350 radials, and two avgas-burning J-34 turbojets. Two versions, SP2H's, were flying without the jets, but were sold to Argentina prior to 2010, as I recall.

It's probably been a few years now, but I'm %100 certain it was a radial engined A-26. I can't say for certain where it was flying from or to, but I did notice that it was only in the area in the hot months and only observed it when there were wild fires in the area, and made the assumption that it was an air attack tanker.

Here in Colorado we do have a state air attack fleet, with a mix of aircraft and contracts, and while I'm certain of some of the included a/c types, I don't know the entire list.

Is it possible some outfit is using an A-26 for FAC duty on a fire?

No possibility that A-26's are in use on fires. they were all retired. They were never never used for air attack operations, just tanker work, primarily in Canada, where they were phased out some time ago.

In 2002, two large air tankers broke up over fires, and all multi-engine tankers in the US were grounded. The radial engine aircraft were all removed from service permanently, with the exception of the P2V's which returned to service a few years later and were just retired a few years ago.

The A-26's were phased out of fire in the late 80's. Canada continued to operate some, but they were expensive and phased out in favor of Electras.

Canada has sent aircraft to the US from time to time, but these were turbine powered Convair aircraft, and don't sound like radial powered airplanes.

The A-26's at Billings belonged to Denny Lynch of Lynch's Flying Service; his were still in use in the very early 90's, but were retired by about 92, I think.

SLAFCO and Flying Firemen had the Catalina PBY, but those were gone by the mid 90's. Ardco and Aero Union, and Butler had DC-4's, and DC-6's, and T&G had the DC-7; all gone by about 2000. None resembled the A-26, however. The last A-26 operator in the US was Lynches, in Billings. Denny kept two around, for sale, for a number of years through the early 2000's, but they'd been long since retired from firefighting by then.

Two of Denny's A-26's went to Air Spray in Canada, but the very last of their aircraft was retired off contract in 2005. The two remaining A26's belonging to Lynch's were kept at Billings; one of those two was used in Always; those were the last two A-26 tankers in the US, albeit long retired from fire.

^^^^
Thanks for the info. After another quick search I didn't find the A-26 listed among our state fleet of tankers so I'll chalk it up to an interesting coincidence that I repeatedly saw the same A-26 in the area while wild fires were burning.

I wish they were still around. Other than catching fire a lot, lacking fire equipment, and being in the middle of the fire with nowhere to go (and being very expensive to operate), they were great airplanes.

Thanks for posting this.

For some reason it is one of my favorite airplanes. (The others are the P61, P-47, JU-87G, A1E Sky raider)

I would love to see one out in the wild.

My dad had some A-26 time in Vietnam when we lived there in the very early 60’s. I think it brought back memories of his A-20 time in New Guinea in 1942-43.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

...The C-82 at Hagerstown was the only C-82 left flying in the world; I don't recall it being in Always. The airplane you saw in that movie that was owned and operated by Hemet Valley Flying Service, and was a C-119 with a J-34 jet on top. The C-82 at Hagerstown last flew in 2006, when sold at auction from H&P. It was featured in the remake of Flight of the Phoenix....

I stand corrected, I've been inside both museum planes several times and got the movie roles mixed up.

More "Always" trivia: There's a scene where they get splashed from an A-26 drop, it's in the trailer Modern Day Savage posted. That sure looks like an old ammo bunker/igloo/earth covered magazine. I'd bet that was filmed at the long closed Black Hills Ammo Depot in SW SD.

Most of the movie was shot in Ephrata, Washington, Wendover, Utah, and Libby, Montana. The wheat field was in Sprague, Washington, and some of the exterior fire and crash scenes in Boise, and Bull Lake, MT.

The bunker drop on John Goodman was outside Wendover, I believe, but it's been sometime since I saw it.

The bunker:

https://youtu.be/0zKPkdvAxLg

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

...The bunker drop on John Goodman was outside Wendover, I believe, but it's been sometime since I saw it.

The bunker:

https://youtu.be/0zKPkdvAxLg

The movie trailer show what appers to be a solitary igloo that sort of matches what you just posted. But a pal took this shot of the Wendover ammo storage area with multiple igloos:

https://www.airforcebase.net/t..._UT_20080524_093.jpg

It seems odd that Wendover would have another ammo area with just one igloo, but who knows.

Black Hills had 500+ igloos in row after row, so I'm again stumped.

Pretty slick plane! That'd be neat to see in the air.

That area is has one of the largest weapons storage facilities in the world. A lot of them are unused.

There are thousands of bunkers.

The movie was never shot in the Black Hills.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096794/locations

The A-26 that was in Always is in Texas now.

https://wacotrib.com/news/loca...2a-4ab96792edfc.html

I was told that Lyndon Johnson had an A-26 that had been converted to executive use. I was also told that LBJ's A-26 was later purchased at auction by a group of would-be drug runners. I have no idea whether the story is true, but it was told to me by a guy in Chicago who claimed to be an attorney with the DEA.