Although firefighting by aircraft had been considered since the 1920s, attention had generally fixated on delivering water ‘bombs’ which did not work very well. The Avenger was also used to systematically study the physics of freefall water-drops for firefighting in an effective and immensely influential 1954 study, imaginatively named ‘Operation Firestop’. Grumman TBF Avenger ‘The Roast Turkey’Īlthough the bigger aircraft like the B-17s and Catalinas garnered more fame, the portly Grumman Avenger was for a long time the most popular air tanker and formed the backbone of the US firefighting fleet throughout the 1960s and 70s. Pretty dangerous though – three crashed in 1973 alone, for example.”ġ1. ![]() I maintain that the sexiest of all the air tankers was the Tigercat. Anyway, the upside of that is historically they converted anything they could get their hands on and there were some pretty ‘unconventional’ choices. Nonetheless 38(!) aircrew were killed between 20 (which is after standards were tightened), or 5% of active crews. “Massive maintenance oversights meant fixed-wing firefighting was stopped for a while until proper standards were put in place and that’s when most of the WWII stuff got sidelined, which is sort-of-good because otherwise those wankers would have crashed them all, but sort of bad because it was kind of exciting. This led to possibly the only folk song I’m aware of about a civil plane crash: Incidentally, the Privateer’s wings apparently failed downwards due to metal fatigue causing the main spar to fail when the water was dropped. “Have you checked out the death rate of firefighting pilots in the US? Anyway it all went tits up when that Hercules crashed in 2002, followed within two months by a Privateer operated by the same outfit. Top marks for rarity: the F-15 (not that one) Reporter Essentially they just left the madly dangerous world of aerial firefighting to a bunch of cowboys who flew any old thing and gave the contract to the lowest bidder with inevitably fatal results.” Please note: donate in link in line above for fire cause, other donate button on this page is for the site itself.Īs Hush-Kit’s Ted Ward noted: “Whilst looking for fire-bomber stuff I have come to the conclusion that the US’s approach to fire control was insane. ![]() Donate generously hereto Australian Red Cross to help the fire cause in Australia Here are ten of the best aerial firefighting aircraft. Flying directly into these smouldering hell-scapes to extinguish the flames requires supreme flying skills and nerves of steel. Converted World War II fighter-bombers, helicopters, custom-made flying boats and even massive airliners have been sent into on the ‘War on Fire’. Facing these firestorms is a motley force of aircraft, crewed by heroic and exceptionally skilled pilots. Infernos rage across the globe, and Australia is still in the grip of fires of biblical proportions.
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