Muroc Yellow Invader

I received a Facebook question from Steven Marcus asking if I could identify the yellow invader from this photo, which he saw in Air Classics Magazine, Jul 1989.

Steven correctly knew that that main subject was the XB-43 and surmised that the photo was at Edwards AFB sometime before Jan 1952. Unfortunately, due to the low resolution, I wasn't able to make any headway with IDing this plane. I did some searching and found this larger version of the photo.

While the photo is larger, it doesn't show us anything new about the Invader. However, we can now narrow some things down. This plane is actually the YB-43 and was the second prototype, serial number 44-61509. It was delivered to Muroc in April 1948, so the photo has to be after that point. The plane flew until Dec 1953, so the photo can't be any later than that. Further research into this plane and project uncovered that the glass nose of the YB-43 cracked due to the temperature variations in the desert and it was replaced with a wooden nose that was painted bright orange. I haven't been able to nail down a precise date as to when this change occurred, however, the earliest dated photo I can find with this nose is Mar 1950, so the actual swap probably took place in 1948 or 1949. But at the very least, this narrows down the time of this photo from Apr 1948 to Mar 1950.

There are two obvious Invaders that immediately came to mind when seeing the all-yellow color scheme. The first was the US Navy's JD-1. The Navy received the first two XJD-1s in Mar 1945. They had similar all-yellow paint schemes, but they lacked the stripes down the side of the plane, and their engine nacelles were all black.

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The rest of the Navy's JD-1s, which started coming into service by Aug 1945, had different, blue and yellow paint jobs. The JD-1s all also had glass noses, and this plane has a hard nose, so it seems unlikely that it's a Navy plane.

The other famous all-yellow planes were those used by AirSpray as fire bombers. They did have similar stripes down the side, but AirSpray didn't start getting Invaders until the late 1950s and they didn't start using this scheme (but with black engines) until the 1960s, so it's definitely not an AirSpray plane.

I do not know of any Invader units that were based at Muroc AAF, so this plane is most likely a single plane that was attached to another unit, probably as a utility plane. Steven suggested that it may be a chase plane, and based on the color and the lack of any other information at this point, I'm inclined to agree. However, I will reach out to Edwards AFB and see if their historian or public affairs office has any more information.