N4818E was built in Douglas Aircraft, Tulsa, OK plant as an A-26C with the construction number 28650 and was delivered to the US Army Air Force as 44-35371. The aircraft was converted to become a TB-26C trainer variant of the Invader, where it was assigned to the 3201st Air Base Wing, Air Proving Ground Command, Eglin AFB, FL. After its time in the Air Force as an unarmed trainer, it was declared surplus and was acquired by Rock Island Oil & Refining Co. of Wichita, KS and registered with the FAA as N4818E. The company had planned to convert the Invader into a Monarch 26 executive transport, which would have lengthened the nose and added an executive cabin to the gunner’s compartment. However, the conversion was not carried out for N4818E and was stored at Hutchinson until 1966.
After being acquired from Rock Island by Consolidated Air Parts Corp. of Los Angeles, N4818E was acquired by Danny Lynch, the founder of Lynch Air Tankers of Billings, MT. Lynch used surplus Invaders as fire tankers to assist the Forestry Service in putting out forest fires throughout the northern Rockies, adding 1,200-gallon tanks in the bomb bay for fire retardant chemicals. However, Lynch and his pilots noted that the takeoff and landing characteristics operating out of “hot and high” airfields (airfields at high elevation with heat from the massive fires all round) requiring modifications to the aircraft designed to fly at high speeds and often at high altitudes during WWII. The solution resulted in the Lynch STOL 26 modification, which drastically improved the already versatile Invader’s short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities, a crucial feature for short runways in the high elevations of Montana and Idaho. Lynch installed a leading-edge cuff on the wings, four wing fences across the span of the wing, and slats near the wing tips to improve lateral control.
