Invader Weapons

The A-26B Invader had an outstanding armament load-out. In this section we'll cover all of the various ways this plane could be armed and equipped.

Nose Guns

The Invader was capable of being equipped with a wide variety of nose-mounted armament.

Cannons

75MM

The first production Invaders were built with a 75mm cannon in the nose. A very small number of Invaders were actually produced at the factory with this configuration. Production block 1 (5 planes) and block 5 (15 planes) were built with this nose. By production block 15, the nose was altered to be a swappable "general purpose" nose. Officially there are no reports of this cannon being used in combat. Unofficially, I've heard unverified tales of at least one plane in Korea that was equipped with such a nose specifically to combat trains hiding in tunnels. Here you can see the wooden mock up for the original 75mm cannon placement. This photo has given rise to the idea that the 75mm cannon was deployed with 2x .50 caliber machine guns. However, this doesn't seem to be the case.

This is an early housing prototype that allowed the gun to move up or down by 15 degrees. Ultimately, this design was not used.

Here is the 75mm cannon on the XA-26B prototype Invader.

And here is one of the earliest production model invaders to come equipped with such a nose.

This photo is perhaps the most telling of what was eventually installed on the production model units. This early model Invader is equipped with the 75mm cannon, but it is lacking the 2x .50 caliber machine guns from the wooden mockup. This is one of the first 20 Invaders produced, and after those first 20 came off the line, the default nose armament was changed to machine guns. Although the wooden mockup and illustrations suggest 2x .50 caliber machine guns installed alongside the 75mm cannon, there are no known photographs of this configuration actually being produced. The small hole in the center of the nose in the image below was for gunsight to allow the cannon to be aimed.

Here is another production model invader with the 75mm cannon. Note that this plane is a different plane than the one posted above. And, like that one, this one is also lacking the 2x .50 caliber machine guns shown in the wooden mockup.

75MM & 37MM

Douglas experimented with several different cannon combinations. One of the variants that they produced in very limited quantities was a 75MM cannon paired with a 37MM cannon.

Here is that same plane from the side.

37MM & 37MM

One of the nose configurations that was available was twin 37MM cannons. This configuration was tested on at least 1 production model variant.

This photo shows a production model Invader equipped with twin 37MM cannons.

Machine Guns

6-Gun

By production block 15 the "general purpose" nose was put into place. It could, as the mission required, but swapped out for a different nose in the field. The standard configuration for the general purpose nose was a 6x .50 caliber machine gun arrangement. This gun configuration was the most prolific version produced.

One of the more common variants of the B model was the battery of 6 x .50 caliber (12.7mm) heavy machine guns. Later block B-26Bs featured a total of 8 x .50 caliber nose-mounted machine guns. This assembly allowed the Invader to make devastating strafing sweeps on enemy ground targets with usually destructive results, combining the concentrated power of the heavy caliber machine guns into one focal burst. In addition to the nose armament, two .50 caliber machine guns were held in a dorsal turret, and two more .50 caliber guns in the ventral turret. The ventral turret was sometimes removed in favor of an additional fuel cell. Certain invader models Invaders could also be equipped with underwing gun pods. Later models also had 3 x .50 caliber machine guns mounted in each wing leading edge (for a total of six), along with blister mounts on the fuselage sides - all concentrated in a forward-firing position. With a single burst of the all machine guns, the entire aircraft would buffet violently rearward, a consideration for the crew to keep in mind in terms of their own safety. In total, a given A-26 could be equipped with as many as 22x .50 caliber machine guns with up to 6,000 rounds of ammunition.

The Douglas Invader's lethality was further accented by the option of carrying between 4,000 and 8,000lbs of internal and external ordnance in the form of drop bombs or 8 to 14 x 5" rockets (the latter held externally on eight or fourteen underwing pylons - the full 16 rocket deployment was achievable in lieu of the drop tanks and wing mounted bombs). In fact, Invaders were known to be able to carry greater bomb-loads than the larger Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses. Endurance could be extended with the addition of 165-gallon underwing drop tanks, increasing the aircraft's range by up to 300 miles.

C-model Invaders with the glassed-in nose were fitted with 2x .50 caliber machine guns in the nose along with the 2x .50 caliber gun systems in each turret but forward firepower was augmented with the addition of the 6x wing-mounted machine guns.