WOW235 Douglas A-26 Invader

Description

WOW235 Douglas A-26 Invader

The A-26 was Douglas Aircraft’s successor to the Boston Havoc, also known as the Douglas Boston, one of the most successful and widely operated types flown by Allied air forces in World War II.
The A-26 was originally built in two different configurations. The A-26B had a gun nose, which originally could be equipped with a combination of armament including .50 caliber machine guns, 20mm or 37mm auto cannon, or even a 75mm pack howitzer (which was never used operationally). Normally the gun nose version housed six (or later eight) 50 calibre machine guns, officially termed the “all-purpose nose”, later commonly known as the “six-gun nose” or “eight-gun nose”. The A-26C‘s “glass” nose, officially termed the “Bombardier nose”, contained a Norden bombsight for medium altitude precision bombing. The A-26C nose section included two fixed M-2 guns, later replaced by underwing gun packs or internal guns in the wings.

A-26s began arriving in Europe in late September 1944 for assignment to the 9th Air Force. The initial deployment involved 18 aircraft and crews assigned to the 553d Squadron of the 386th Bomb Group. This unit flew its first mission on 6 September 1944. No aircraft were lost on the eight test missions, and the 9th Air Force announced that it was happy to replace all of its A-20s and B-26’s with the A-26 Invader.
the A-26 was well received by pilots and crew alike, and by 1945, the 9th AF had flown 11,567 missions, dropping 18,054 tons of bombs, recording seven confirmed kills while losing 67 of It’s A-26 aircraft.
Post-war the A-26 served in the Korean, Vietnamese, Angolan and Indonesian conflicts.
Size wise the A-26 is almost identical in length and width to our B-25 Mitchell.

Our 1/32 scale all silver A-26 ‘For Pete’s Sake’ is a limited edition of 5 models and is priced at $1300 plus $200 postage.