I have blogged about aerial wildland firefighting since 2009. I am not a firefighter and am not a pilot, just an interested bystander who wants to learn more and share what I learn here. Join me here as I blog on the aircraft and the pilots who fight wildland fires from the air in support of crews on the ground. I also blog on concerns affecting fire crews on the ground as well as other aviation and meteorology issues. Learn what it takes to do jobs that are staffed by the best of the best.
CAL FIRE (CDF) S2T Tanker 71 working Sawtooth Complex Fire (2006)
Sawtooth Complex Fire (Sept. 2006), San Bernardino County CA. Photo Credit: U.S. Forest Service
A friend who is an aviation historian tells me the aircraft that you see in this video clip:
First off the deck is a TBM; next, you are looking down at a Curtis SB2C "Helldiver". The next two off after the Helldiver are TBMs. After the two TBMs there is a quickflash of something launching, possibly a Hellcat. The aerial shot is of, (1) a SB2C Helldiver, and (2) Hellcats in formation.
The Air & Space Magazine (Smithsonian, Nov 1, 2001) has a nice article, available online on the history of the TBM Avenger, it may be found here. The article is by Marshall Lumsden. You will read about the military history of the TBM as well as Forest Protection Limited.
An article from wikipedia on the Avenger, including a listing all the variants, may be found here. The wikipedia article includes specifications (citation needed) for what they refer to as a TBF Avenger.
Go here for a short military history of the Avenger including specs for the TBM-3. For specs on the TBF-1 Avenger (an early model), read this military factory article.
This series of articles on the TBM Avenger is perhaps long over due. Pretty early on in my writing about aerial wildland firefighting, I learned that TBM Avenger's (most were TBM 3's) were widely used in aerial firefighting beginning in the mid to late 1950s and into the 1960s by the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and the US Forest Service. According to my aviation historian friend:
"CDF used the TBM until the early 1970s. In other parts of the country, the flew into the late 1970's. California was the first state to quit using them (citing safety concerns of single engine aircraft). When the S2 came online in 1974-75, the TBM's were grounded in California."
Hearing good reports from the U.S. about their use of TBM Avenger's for firefighting, Canadian aerial operators began to use TBM's in 1957 for aerial spray operations targeting pests, notably spruce budworms. I'm not quite sure when Canadian aerial operators began to use TBM's for firefighting, but Forest Products Limited (FPL), the last operator of firefighting TBM's in Canada, started to use TBMs for firefighting in the late 1970s. For more information on the history of TBM Avenger's use and acquisition in Canada go here. FPL's company webpage may be found here.
In late 1999, Forest Product Limited began to sell off their remaining TBM fleet as they began to purchase AT-802s and 802F's for use in firefighting. For a list of FPL's purchases, losses, and sales (loss and sales data through 2004) see this web page.
By early 2010, one of the remaining unsold FPL TBM's had crashed, two are listed in their aircraft chart (accessed on July 16, 2010), and one may be sold but still on the FPL site (see "A few facts" near the top of the FPL purchase, loss, and sale page. The two TBMs that I saw listed on the FPL aircraft chart (cited above) are C-FIMR (#23) and C-GLEL (#13)).
But the story of the Avenger began long before the plane was converted to fly as an air tanker or for pest control. Her history goes back to the early days of WW II. So, I begin this series of articles on the TBM Avenger by looking at military uses of this noble aircraft.
The series:
Wed. July 28: Part 1 history and specs
Fri. July 30: Part 2 more on history
Mon. Aug 2: Part 3 Firefighting 1
Wed. Aug 4: Part 4 Firefighting 2 Hemet-Ryan 1964 to 1971
Fri Aug 6: Part 5 Firefighting Avengers up close and personal
Mon. Aug 9: Part 6 Former firefighting TBM 3E at Naval Air Station Museum in Wildwood NJ
Some information, in the form of a weblink, about the NJ Incident Management Teams, found its way into my e-mail the other day. I was interested in the information on the site, and what this team does, so I am passing it on to you. The NJ Forest Fire has two incident management teams used for wildland fires within NJ, and are also available to other NJ agencies. The website has some good photos on the incidents -- wildland fires -- that they have been assigned to, as well as maps. Go here to check out the site. Perhaps you will want stay awhile to check it out.
Another friend sent told me about scalefirebombers, a website serving as a reference for those who build air tanker models. Among other things, they have a good collection of photographs of many aircraft that served as air tankers, including but not limited to the B-25 Mitchell with lots of photos of taken in both the U.S.A and Canada.
KNDU has a couple of nice short videos showing the Cowiche fire, Flying over the Cowiche Fire and Aerial Footage of the Cowiche Fire, go here, and you should find a story and a video gallery with the two videos. Each is about one minute. I am unable to get the scripts that KNDU supplies to work in this post, so I have given up. Sorry.
Local media in WA are reporting here and here that the Cowiche fire in WA (west of Yakima) has been downgraded to 6,200 acres. I don't know acreage from official reports.
KNDU has a webpage devoted to the fire with links to photos, video clips, and reports.
A fire near Cowiche WA, reported on Sunday afternoon July 18 around 2:30 PM (PDT), is now burning in the order of 10,000 acres. References to reports on the fire from the wildland fire hotlist have been removed because the link is no longer working.
In the first clip (KNDU) shown here, from this morning, you will see footage of a heavy tanker(s) working the fire. I believe that the heavy tanker(s) are an Aero Union P-3. The you tube video was taken on Sunday, July 18. Note - you must enable javascript to see both the KNDU clip and the youtube video.
Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today reports on this fire here. He has a good map of the fire.
This has been a busy week for wildfires in Washington. The fire near Cowiche follows on the heals of the 19,291 acre Swakane Wildfire that was first reported around noon on July 10, 2010, it is 75% contained at the time I wrote this (3PM EDT on July 19, 2010). Note the link to the Swakane Wildfire on Inciweb has expired.
Note, I made a revision Monday evening, changing the embedded video to one from KNDU's morning news report. Dan't ask, it is complicated. :-) Edited and revised on November 30, 2015 to remove expired links.
When I came home on Thursday night at what was around 6:30 PM PDT, a friend had sent me link to an online scanner out of Hemet CA (courtesy of Radio Reference), so I was listening to the scanner while several fires caused by lightening strikes in southern CA were burning. This included listening to communications between air attack and tankers. It was interesting and I listened some more yesterday.
The fires that I heard mentioned by name were the Cactus, Skinner, and Saddle Fires.
For those who are interested, the Riverside County Fire Department incident page also has a link to a page showing a map and any photos (only the cactus incident had a photo, of a helo): Cactus map and photo, Skinner map, Saddle map.
Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today writes that the MAFFS II were used for the first time at the Skinner Fire, go here to his article.
Note: The Riverside County Fire Department works in cooperation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. As I understand it, Ryan Air Attack Base (aka Hemet), is within the organizational structure of the Riverside County Fire Department.
You may want to go here and read what the person who posted this video to youtube has to say about the history of this video clip, along with a few words about the planes. To do this, click the arrow to the right of the description about the video to read the full text. The comments are also interesting.
I believe that the planes that you will see in the beginning of the vieoe, in order are:
Here is video shot in 1984 of B-25 Mitchell Airtankers fighting a fire in the Canadian North West Territories. Enjoy! I believe that the last of the B-25 tankers retired from fire service in the early 1990s.
In my lead in to this series of articles on the B-25, I mentioned that my inspiration this series was reading a book by Rudy Billberg, In the Shadow of Eagles: From Barnstormer to Alaska Bush Pilot, A Flyer's Story. Rudy, born in 1916, grew up and learned to fly in northern Minnesota. If you read his book than you will know how true it is when he writes of his journey as an aviator from barnstorming to being a bush pilot in Alaska. Among other things he spent a few summers in the 1960s flying B-25's fire tankers for the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.
I got to know the B-25 through Rudy's writing of summers flying B-25 tankers. By the time he flew the B-25 air tanker, I think that he had been flying for almost thirty years. He also spent at least one summer flying Smokejumpers in a DC-3. Rudy has this way of making many of the planes he flew "come alive." And his writing about the B-25 was no exception:
It was a thrill to fly the B-25. When empty, that airplane performed like no other (Billberg, 248).
He goes on to talk about the process of dumping borate (the retardant that he used). Borate was heavy, about 11 pounds per gallon. The tank capacity on the B-25 was 1,000 gallons for a total load of 11,000 pounds. Speaking of borate, he says:
This is much heavier than the 3,000 pound bomb load the airplane was designed to carry. ... Flying this overload would have been extremely dangerous except for one thing: if an engine failed, even during takeoff, the borate could be dumped in six seconds. (Billberg, 249).
He goes on to talk about drops on a fire:
When dumping borate on a forest fire, I had to really be on my toes, for I commonly had to fly as low as 200 feet. The fire was often on a hillside, in a hole, or in a mountain valley. Two possibilities that I always had to keep in mind were engine failure and gate failure. ... Sometimes I circled a fire for 20 minutes or more figuring out how to get out of a run if an engine or a gate failed. It was the kind of flying that took all the forethought and concentration I could muster. (Billberg, 249-50).
Note: The B-25 tankers flew for only a couple of seasons in the lower 48 before being permanently withdrawn from service for safety considerations. In addition to their service in Alaska, the Canadians used B-25 tankers until the early 1990s.
Billgerg, Rudy (as told to Jim Rearden). 1992 (third edition 1999). In the Shadow of Eagles: From Barnstormer to Alaska Bush Pilot, A Flyer's Story. Anchorage AK: Alaska Northway Books.
This is a very short video shot at the Cedar Bridge Fire (just north of Warren Grove in Ocean County, NJ) on June 26. From what I understand the NJ Forest Fire Service had one of the helos performing aerial back firing operations. I do not know, if at the time the video was shot, the helo was performing these aerial back firing operations or doing something else. The fire was contained at 890 acres early last week.
