Douglas A-26 and B-26 Invader
Overview
This book is a great addition to any Invader enthusiast's Library. This book is thorough and thoughtful and covers the Invader from its inception up through the last American use in Vietnam. It briefly covers some uses by foreign powers, civil aviation, and test bed projects. It does not dive as deeply into any one area as some other books, but instead covers the basics and highlights of most areas of use. As with any book, there are some errors which may hinder researchers, I have outlined those below.
Versions & Editions
I am only aware of one edition of this book, published in 2002 by Crowood Press. It comes in hardback and is 200 pages with some full color photos. The cover usually appears online with a purple top section, as shown below, but the physical book has a blue top.
Corrections
I will be going through the book in order by page. Many of the corrections are with the photo captions, and I will try to point these out specifically.
For ease of use, I have used the same section headers that the book uses.
Development & Production
Pg 29 - Bottom Photo - "Production got under way at Long Beach in the fall of 1943, though only seven aircraft were actually delivered that year. By mid-1944, however, the assembly line output had increased significantly. This view in August 1944 shows early A-26Bs being built on the line alongside Douglas-built B-17s. The early-style canopy hatch was not replaced on the Long Beach line until October 1944."
This is more of a clarification than an outright error. The Oct 1944 date was when the Gen 2 flip-up style replaced the Gen-1 flip up style. Many people don't realize that there were actually 3 variants of the canopy, so some readers assume that this date is the introduction of the Clamshell canopy, which is incorrect.
Pg 34 - Table - This book gives a total production count of 2,526 Invaders being built. However, https://www.boeing.com/history/products/a26-b26-invader-light-bomber.page lists 2,503 Invaders built as part of their own historical snapshot. There is a discrepancy of 23 planes here. Going by USAF serial numbers, there are 2,487. However, Douglas built more planes than the Air Force accepted into Inventory, many of which were sold off to the civil market or scrapped. The overall official count is somewhat murky and confusing and depends on how you are counting the Invaders. Do you count them only by the number that the Air Force accepted? Or do you count them by the number of completed airframes? I would vote the latter, but since the contract was cancelled mid-production many of those planes have very spotty records. Douglas took it upon themselves to just go ahead and finish a number of planes on their own that were already close to being done as they had the option to sell them. The only way to know for sure what the true number is will be to conduct a thorough cross reference of the FAA records.