douglasa26b

Flew around the world twice in 1947.

This is serial number 44-34759. Milton Reynolds, entrepreneur and owner of Reynolds International Pen Company, bought a used A-26 bomber. He had the armor removed and retrofitted the plane with commercial engines, christening it the “Reynolds Bombshell.” He hired war-hero Bill Odom as pilot, Tex Sallee as copilot, and in 1947 the three of them flew around the world in 78 hours, 55.5 minutes, making four stops for refueling, to set the world record for twin-engine propeller aircraft. (The previous record, set by Howard Hughes, was 91 hours, 14 minutes. Both records were surpassed in 1957.) Reynolds had timed the flight to coincide with the international introduction of the Reynolds Rocket, a pen that wrote in two colors. Reynolds and crew made one more newsworthy intercontinental flight, an expedition to the Amne Machin mountain range in Tibet and K2, the second highest mountain in the world, between China and Pakistan. He renamed his retrofitted bomber the “China Explorer.” He believed (wrongly) that K2 was taller than Mount Everest in the Himalayas and hoped to leverage the publicity he’d get from establishing that fact. Among many challenges, the expedition was beset by obstacles imposed by the communist Chinese government, which detained the flight near Nanking and then sent fighter planes to escort it across the Sea of Japan. In the intervening period, Reynolds and the China Explorer had diverted their guards, taken off from Lunghwa Field, and completed a quick flyover of K2. Reynolds family lore has it that Milton had made a secret deal from the outset with the US government to look for evidence of Chinese nuclear tests. If this were indeed his secret mission, it would certainly explain the resistance he encountered.[22] No one involved with the expedition admitted knowledge of such a plan. For many years thereafter, the clandestine payments passed through the Reynolds Construction Company by US intelligence were part of an operation code-named “KK Mountain”. Reynolds sold the "Reynolds Bombshell" in 1948. After passing through several owners, it ended up in Iran, used by Bell Helicopter as a transport. It was abandoned there at the time of the Iran Revolution of 1979 and remains on display there in the Aerospace Exhibition Centre, in Tehran.

This is very decidedly NOT a Martin Marauder. This is a fairly early Douglas A-26 Invader.

Aircraft appears to be Douglas A-26B-40-DL serial 41-39543.