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Firefighting in Canada.
Smokejumpers were used to fight this fire in the Modoc National Forest, August 2001.
California, summer of 1994. Using a DC-7 for fire-fighting.
II-76 Air Tanker participates in NATO-Russia disaster exercise.
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Aerial Firefighting
After the close of World War II, advances made in military aircraft technology during the war were quickly pressed into peacetime service to fight one of the oldest and most feared natural phenomena—wildfires. Until the 1950s, once a wildfire had spread across bone-dry forests or parched grasslands, there wasn't much that firefighters could do except watch it burn and try to rein in its swath of destruction. That unbalanced playing field was somewhat leveled with the introduction of the air tanker.
Ingenious (but ultimately impractical) early experiments in California focused on dumping water or fire-retardants onto forest fires from wooden beer kegs mounted in single engine airplanes, or even using a common garden hose to spray water from above into the inferno. In the early 1950s, public safety officials in California recognized the potential for aerial firefighting and teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service to develop a practical air tanker to combat forest fires.
By the mid-1950s, surplus World War II Stearman PT-17 and N3N military biplanes had been modified for use as air tankers and the development effort was shifted to larger military aircraft that could carry greater loads of fire retardant chemicals or water. The decision to retrofit existing military aircraft was a wise one based on several factors: surplus aircraft were readily available and relatively inexpensive; originally constructed to transport bombs or cargo over long distances, they were ideally suited to haul the heavy loads of fire retardant chemicals or water required for efficient aerial firefighting; designed for maneuverability and speed, they could withstand extreme stresses on their airframes; and they were sturdily built, which allowed for the installation of heavy water or retardant storage tanks.
Soon, a wide variety of World War II-era aircraft could be spotted in aerial firefighting efforts over the forests of the western United States—Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, Grumman PBY Supercats and Privateers, F7F Tigercats, and Fairchild C-119 Boxcars were some of the early recruits in the aerial firefighting ranks. Later in the century, more modern military aircraft, such as Lockheed P-3 Orions and C-130 Hercules, formed the backbone of the air tanker fleet.
Large commercial aircraft, such as the Douglas DC-6 and DC-7, Martin Mars and Ilyushin IL-76, have also been transformed into air tankers. Modified helicopters, including the Sikorsky Black Hawk, are widely used in aerial firefighting to extract firefighters and victims from dangerous fire zones, and also to precisely apply water and fire-retardant chemicals to smaller fires in “mop-up” operations.
The most unique aircraft engaged in aerial firefighting—and the only aircraft in the world specifically built for that purpose—is the Canadair CL-215. (Canadair was one of the companies that had become General Dynamics.) This plane was designed to meet the requirement for a firefighting amphibian that could replace the assortment of planes used as “water bombers” in the 1960s. The plane's basic configuration emerged from a December 1963 meeting on forest fire protection held in Ottawa, Canada, and the decision to produce the plane was made in early 1966. The plane's first customers were the Province of Quebec in Canada and the French Protection Civile, ordering 20 and 10 CL-215s respectively to take the lead in forest fire detection and suppression. The plane also had a secondary role for search and rescue and utility work.
The first CL-215 flew in October 1967, and it was produced until April 1990. During those 33 years, 125 planes were delivered to Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.
Flying just 100 feet (30 meters) above a fire, the CL-215's belly-doors—much like the bomb bay doors on a military aircraft—open to drop 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) of water or chemicals onto a fire. (This Canadair aircraft will be generically referred to as the CL-215, which is powered by piston engines; a jet-engine version is designated the CL-415). An amphibian by design, the CL-215 can take off (and land) from both airfields and open water using its retractable landing gear, with floats fitted to the end of its wings for greater stability on the water. When operating from an airfield, the CL-215's storage tanks can be quickly pressure-filled with water or fire-retardants in just about two minutes.
The CL-215's unique capabilities become apparent when the twin-engine water bomber swoops down onto a lake and scoops up more than 1,400 gallons of water in just over ten seconds, then smoothly climbs back up to drop the water onto the wildfire. Twin scoops incorporated into a narrow hull allow the CL-215 to scoop up water from shallow lakes or rivers just 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) deep.
Equipped with two 705-gallon (2,669-liter) main water tanks, positioned in the left and right center of the fuselage, the CL-215 is a very ruggedly constructed aircraft, designed not only to withstand its “dive bomber” tactics but also to endure corrosion from the water and retardant chemicals as well as the heat and pollutants from the fire itself. Durability and reliability were the driving requirements in the CL-215's design since the demands of a raging forest or wildfire may require dozens of fire bombing runs in a single day; in fact, a single CL-215 in Yugoslavia once flew an amazing 225 water bombing runs in a 24-hour period.
Once over the fire, the water bomber pilot tries to attack his target with a dispersal pattern that suits the particular circumstances of the wildfire. Dumping water (or flame retardants) concurrently from both wing tanks focuses the water on a concentrated area in a deluge, while dumping the four tanks in sequence soaks a longer, slender swath of earth. On certain CL-215 models, water spray pipes and nozzles have been affixed to the bottom of the wings, allowing a fine mist to be sprayed over a much larger area.
The Beriev Be-200 is an amphibious multirole turbofan aircraft designed by the Berieva Aviatsionnyi Kompaniya (Beriev Aviation Company), with the Russian Irkutsk Aircraft Production Association (IAPO) responsible for the production engineering development phase of the program. The first flight took place in 1998 and the aircraft was first seen in the west at the 1999 Paris Air Show.
The Be-200 was first developed for fire-fighting missions. It can start, take-off and land on water. The first prototype aircraft was delivered in June 2003 and has successfully completed 650 flight hours and carries Russian certification as a fire fighting aircraft. In a fire-fighting mission, the fully fuelled aircraft can fly 200km from the airfield to a water reservoir, make successive trips between the site of the fire and the reservoir (over a range of 10km from the fire zone to the reservoir), to drop a total of 310,000kg of water on the fire and make the 200km return flight to the airfield for refuelling. The aircraft is capable of scooping 12t of water in 14 seconds from seas with waves up to 1.2m. The aircraft flies at speeds above a minimum drop speed of 220km/h to empty the water tanks over the site of the fire in 0.8 to 1.0 seconds.
The wildfires that spread across the grasslands and forests of the United States and Canada every summer pose an incredible danger to firefighters as they bravely struggle to protect people, property and wildlife. The mighty roar of an air tanker or water bomber flying low over the front lines of the firestorm is a most welcome sound to those battling the flames on the ground.
—Roger Guillemette
Sources: Aircraft of the World. Pittsburgh: International Masters Publishers, 1998 Anderson, Mabry I. Low and Slow: An Insider's History of Agricultural Aviation. San Francisco: California Farmer Publishing Company, 1986 Donald, David, general editor. The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999. Jackson, Robert. Civil Aircraft. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2001
Online sources: Associated Airtanker Pilots. http://www.airtanker.com/aap/aap2.htm Backgrounder, Aerial Firefighting Industry Association. http://www.afia.com/backgrnd.html Durden, Rick, Of Ag-planes, Fire Bombers and Inventions, Avweb.com. http://www.avweb.com/articles/lounge/tpl0034.html International Helicopter Firefighters Association. http://www.ihogman.com/ihfa/ National Agricultural Aviation Museum. http://www.msaaa.com/naam.htm U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fire & Aviation Management. http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/fire_new/links/links_aviation
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