Racing invaders

Air Classics, Oct 2002

WITH ALL ITS POWER AND RANGE, IT WAS ONLY NATURAL THAT CIVIL INVADERS WOULD BE ENTERED IN THE RACING FIELD

One of the first surplus Invaders to go on the US civil register was NX67834 which was purchased with a very specific mission in mind - to defeat Howard Hughes's global flight record. In 1938, Hughes and crew, flying a modified Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra circled the earth in a stunning 91 hours and 41 minutes so it was a tough record to conquer.

Bill Odom, a former military transport pilot with 102 crossings of the Hump to his credit, approached Milton Reynolds - the ball point pen king and extremely wealthy individual - to help sponsor the flight. In February 1947, a telephone call from Reynolds told the pilot to get to Chicago as quickly as possible.

The meeting produced an agreement, a check for $11,500, and a condition that the pilot did not expect - a demand that Reynolds go along on the flight. The Invader was purchased and modified to hold another 1000 gallons of fuel. On 12 April 1947, Odom, copilot Tex Salee, and passenger Reynolds tookoff in the Invader - named Reynolds Bombshell - from La Guardia Airport on their epic flight which was completed on 16 April with a flight time of 78 hours 55 minutes 56 seconds which handily beat the Hughes record.

However, Odom considered this flight merely prologue. As a child, Odom's hero was Wiley Post and Post had flown around the world solo and that's what he wanted to do with the Invader. Adding more fuel (for a total of 2460 gallons), Odom took off from Chicago four months later and went via Paris, Cairo, Karachi, Calcutta, Tokyo, Anchorage, Fargo, and back to Chicago in an elapsed time of 73 hours five minutes eleven seconds with a block speed of 269 mph and an average flying speed of 310.6 mph for a new record. Odom would continue long-range flights in other aircraft, including a Beech Bonanza, and would die, along with a mother and child in a house he hit, in the crash of the highly modified P-51 Beguine at the 1949 Cleveland National Air Races, effectively putting an end to that event.

When the Cleveland National Air Races restarted in 1946, the cross-country Bendix race was extremely popular. The event that year would start at Van Nuys Airport in southern California and head to Cleveland - a distance of 2048 miles. A stunning 22 former military aircraft were flagged off from Van Nuys and among them was A-26C NX37428 Race 45 The Caribbean Queen. Basically stock except for the removal of military equipment and the addition of a bomb bay fuel tank, pilot Don Husted made it to Cleveland in five hours 34 minutes six seconds at an average speed of 367.889 mph for a sixth place finish.

For the 1947 Bendix, the field was down to twelve aircraft and among them was Dianna Cyrus and her A-26B NX67807 Race 91 Huntress. Fitted with a bomb bay tank, a navigational error forced Dianna to land in Michigan and put her out of the running.

It was not until 1968 that Invaders returned to air racing when the irrepressible John Lear entered A-26B N3328G Race 76 at the Reno National Air Races. The other pilots had to agree to let the beast go around the pylons and John managed to qualify at a slow 259.32 mph but in the final Bronze race he slipped past a Mustang to take fifth at 283.68 mph.

Since then, Invaders have not been common at air races but Lloyd Hamilton raced an On Mark conversion at Reno while Wally McDonnell raced an A-26A Counter Invader at Mojave and other Invaders have made appearances around the pylons where they serve more as a nostalgic favorite than a real contender.