In Reply

(In reply to a comment made in the Central Idaho Post (2005), regarding the lack of large aerial tanker aircraft used in fighting wildland fires.)

I fully agree with your "Question" in the August 19th issue, concerning most of the large air tankers being retired. And while I'm personally sorry to see 'em go, there is a very good reason to take many of them out of service. They've done a great job for the nation, in many roles, for a great many years, but much as do people, they eventually get old and tired.

A large number of those aircraft were designed and built clear back during World War II. Aircraft, like people, sometimes age gracefully, and sometimes not so gracefully. Where I worry about arthritis and heart problems, the operators of those elderly air tankers have to worry about things like corrosion, structural stress, metal fatigue, and a steadily decreasing supply of spare parts. These are wartime aircraft, built to have an expected lifespan of only a year or so, and they were certainly not intended to be flying sixty years later!

Then we have a major design flaw (for aerial firefighting purposes at least) to consider. Nearly all of those birds were designed as cargo planes, bombers, or patrol planes. In non-aviation terms, that means they were designed and built to carry reasonably heavy loads quite some distance, preferably in a nice sedate manner. But air tankers on the other hand, are expected to drag a maximum permissible load off the ground, usually from rather short runways, and haul it to the area of a fire at a high rate of speed. Then they essentially dive on the drop zone, release their load, point their nose at the stars, and make like the space shuttle in "Getting Out of Dodge", all of which are “high G maneuvers” that place enormous stress on the wings. They're workhorses well enough, but they were most definitely not intended, designed, or built, to perform the aerial hi-jinks we would expect of a dive bomber! Operating over flatlands or the rolling hills of the mid-west and eastern forests isn’t all that hazardous (hazardous enough I think), but flying a large aircraft close to the ground in our steep canyons, with their turbulent winds, is an entirely different story!

The old PB4Y "Privateer" that used to grace our airport and our skies is essentially a navy modified late model B-24 Liberator bomber. Like its B-17 stable mate, the B-24 was a mainstay of the Army Air Force during WWII, first flying in March 1939. A total of 18,188 Liberators and Liberator variants were built before the closing down of the last assembly line in May 1945, and today a handful of them still soldier on as aerial firefighters. That C-47 the Forest Service had over here a couple of years ago dropped paratroopers at Normandy in 1944, long before it joined the Forest Service. The C-54's and C-118's often used as air tankers are only slightly newer. That P2V "Neptune" we would often see in the area is a Korean War era veteran. Even the C-130 tankers, the mighty “Hercules”, were built in the mid 1950’s, and they to are getting a bit elderly as several recent crashes have demonstrated.

I spent a number of years working on and flying those old propeller driven airplanes with the round engines, and in many ways they are the "love of my life". But now, they really should be restored to their wartime configuration, and placed in an air museum. Better a museum I think, where they can inspire awe and wonderment in some future generation of fledgling airmen, than to die, smeared all over one of our mountainsides, with a dead crew aboard.

I dread the day that those thundering engines will no longer be heard in our skies, bellowing their distain of mere mortals bound to the earth. But I'd also hope that some day my grandkids could stand in front of one of those beautiful old airplanes, and proudly proclaim to their children that "Your Great-grandfather once flew that kind of airplane".

We all well know that aircraft are a quite expensive investment, and the owner/operator naturally tends to keep his aircraft going well past its preferable retirement age. Today we’re paying the price for that. Our older aircraft are literally falling out of the sky, and we really don’t have anything to replace them with.

In a recent TV documentary I noticed that Evergreen Aviation (in Arizona) has converted a Boeing 747 into an aerial tanker that apparently carries 24,000 gallons of retardant. That’s a tremendous load, and I don’t think I’d even want to be on the same mountainside when that monster lets go! I also rather question if a pilot could even fit an airplane that size into very many of our local canyons. But here again we have a conversion of an older aircraft, probably with many thousands of flying hours already on it, and that’s previously been retired from its intended role of a comparatively mild mannered airliner.

Canadair is the only company I know of that builds a dedicated aerial firefighter, the CL-215 and –415 “SuperScoopers”. Used extensively by the Los Angles County Fire Department, even these purpose built medium sized aircraft have serious troubles with steep terrain and high winds. Pity the old timer that was never intended to fly in such conditions.

Perhaps our plight will eventually come to the attention of our congressmen. Perhaps some federal incentives for the nations aircraft manufacturers to design and build a dedicated aerial firefighting tanker suitable in our western forests, at a cost the operators can afford? Perhaps. (Sen. Craig, please take note.)

In many ways continuing to use these older aircraft as aerial firefighters is somewhat like taking a forty or fifty-year-old farm truck, and entering it in the Indianapolis 500 auto race!