Second lives for the Invader

In the 1950s America was awash with surplus Douglas A-26 Invaders, fast twin-engined bombers left over from the war. On Mark Engineering, founded in 1954 at Van Nuys Airport in California, saw them as raw material. Its first conversions stripped out military kit, sealed the bomb bays and added windows and soundproofing. Around 1957 it replaced the main spar carry-through with a steel ring spar, freeing the cabin, and sold the result as the On Mark Executive and Marketeer. From 1961 the Marksman added full pressurisation, making the old bomber a fast high-flying business aircraft.

The Blue Goose and the CIA

Only eight Marksmen were built, and the last two were anything but corporate. Fitted with terrain-following radar and a floor hatch for low-level air drops, they went to companies tied to the CIA. In 1967 one, painted blue and nicknamed the Blue Goose, flew night supply drops for Air America in Laos during the Secret War, until it was judged too fast to drop accurately and too much like a strike aircraft. Both were later evaluated by a clandestine USAF squadron and scrapped.

Counter-Invader and the Pregnant Guppy

On Mark’s biggest military job came in the early 1960s, when the USAF chose it to rebuild the Invader for counter-insurgency. It turned a single B-26 into the YB-26K prototype and then converted 40 B-26K Counter-Invaders with new engines, rebuilt wings and tip tanks; the first production aircraft flew on 30 May 1964. Redesignated A-26A for political reasons, they flew from Thailand against traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and others went to the Congo. On Mark also did conversion work on the Boeing Stratocruiser that became Aero Spacelines’ Pregnant Guppy, first flown at Van Nuys in 1962.

Fábricas

• Van Nuys works · Van Nuys Airport, California