Douglas A-26 Invader from the Movie “Always” Joins the Museum of Mountain Flying

For many aviation enthusiasts that grew up in the last 30 years, the 1989 film Always, which borrowed elements from the WWII film A Guy Named Joe, remains a formative movie to this day, especially for warbird and fire tanker enthusiasts. Luckily for many of these enthusiasts, there has been some interest in preserving the airplanes from this film, as we have covered with the Yanks Air Museum’s now successful effort to bring the PBY Catalina N9505C from Ephrata, WA to Chino, CA. Now one of the film’s two Douglas A-26 Invaders, N4818E, is set to be preserved at the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula, MT.  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.

The aircraft would have two codes as a fire tanker, being initially identified as #A28, and was later recorded as Tanker #59. On June 28, 1975, Tanker 59 was landing at Billings Airport, MT after a short test flight when the aircraft ground looped on landing and the nose gear collapsed. Though the two pilots were uninjured, Tanker 59 required time to be repaired to airworthy condition, but when it was repaired, it carried on as one of many surplus WWII dousing flames in the high mountains of Montana.

N4818E’s big claim to fame was when it was one of two Invaders featured in the Steven Spielberg film Always, with it and another Invader, A-26C 44-35721/N9245Z being among the two most prominent aircraft in the movie as far as screen time was concerned, along with a PBY Catalina recently acquired by the Yanks Air Museum (The “Always” Movie Catalina Arrives at the Yanks Air Museum – Vintage Aviation News). The 1988 Yellowstone wildfires would provide the fire footage used in the film and Dennis Lynch and Steve Hinton flew the two Invaders for the film, which would be released in theaters in time for Christmas of 1989. 

By this point, however, most WWII-era aircraft used for aerial firefighting were being gradually phased out. The reasons for doing so included lack of accessible spare parts, age and corrosion on the airframes, by 1990, N4818E was kept in open storage at Billings Airport, while its costar N9245Z would later go on to be displayed at the Palm Springs Air Museum in California, wearing a US Navy scheme to represent a JD-1 Invader.   But the retirement of the Lynch STOL 26s from forest work was not the end of N4818E’s flying career. In 2001, it was listed by the company Southern Cross Aviation Inc, of Wilmington, DE, and was later operated by the Marine Aviation Museum of Houston TX, being seen at the Wings over Houston Airshow among other events, but by 2017, it was registered to a holding company and was off the warbird community’s radar until now. That was until the Museum of Mountain Flying came in. Established in 1993 in Missoula, MT, the Museum of Mountain Flying honors the legacy of the airmen who have flown in the skies of the Mountain West. Chief among their collections is a DC-3 flown as Miss Montana, which in May 2023 was declared by Governor Greg Gianforte as the State Airplane of Montana. The museum’s president, Eric Komberec, has confirmed to Vintage Aviation News that the museum will be acquiring N4818E, which still retains its Lynch Air Tankers livery and the nose art with the name “Fire Eaters”, complete with a fire-eating pinup on the nose of the Invader. Along with the announcement of the acquisition of N4818E, the museum is also set to expand to an additional location at Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell, which intends to display up to 20 aircraft, and establish an Airframe and powerplant (A&P) training program to instruct students in aircraft maintenance. While details about the Invader’s arrival are still a developing story, we will be providing updates as the Invader gets closer to its new home.  For more information, visit the Museum of Mountain Flying’s website here: Museum of Mountain Flying. Special thanks to Randy Schoneman for providing photos of N4818E in its current state.