Tag Archives: New Mexico

Stopping in at the Navajo Lodge, 80 years ago

In April 1940, Russell Lee, a 37-year-old prolific shutterbug who worked for the government’s Farm Security Administration, crisscrossing the country to document American life, stopped in at the Navajo Lodge along U.S. 60 in Datil, New Mexico.

Pretty cool looking place. A rustic relic of the Old West filled with Navajo rugs, trophies, furniture crafted long before the days of pressboard IKEA junk, and guns. Oh, the guns.

Speaking of guns…check out this gun rack.

How many can you name?

More details after the jump to my column at Guns.com.

Looking for an Invader?

This bad boy popped up on eBay, listed as an On Mark Marksman Douglas A-26, with On Mark being a post-war pressurized cabin “business transport” modification to the classic Invader attack plane/bomber.

She is in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, with the caveat that she “Needs control surfaces redone–Aleron & Elevators”

What’s the story behind her?

Well, while there is an Invader [RB-26C SN44-35493 (N576JB)] which belongs to the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, but she has a valid cert and looks to be very recently in great shape.

I think it is NA26B, listed by the Warbird Registry in “Open Storage, santa Teresa, NM” marked “Intimate Invader” and formerly flew for various small commercial carriers in the 1960s and 70s.

Serial #: 44-34526, she is a 1944 A-26B, and has been up for sale for a long time. And has been verified as a Marksman frame conversion (B#2).

Still, $150K…

Designed by Ed Heinemann, just over 2,400 Invaders were produced during WWII, and they remained in service with the USAF in Korea and he Air National Guard as late as the 1970s (being used at both the Bay of Pigs by the latter and in Southeast Asia by the former)