USFS cancels Aero Union contract

I just got back in town after being away for a couple of weeks in northern New England with limited internet access through wireless hotspots. So, while I was able to access my e-mail and do some blog posting, I was unable to keep up with most current events affecting the tanker and helo biz. While I was checking my e-mail a couple of hours ago, I saw a note from a friend telling me that the USFS had canceled its contract with Aero Union. He referred me to this press release from the US Forest Service, saying in part

The U.S. Forest Service announced today that it has terminated its contract with Aero Union of Sacramento, Calif., because the company failed to meet its contractual obligations. The company was providing six airtankers under exclusive-use contracts to the Forest Service.

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Aero Union had six P-3 Orion's under contract which are now grounded, leaving 11 P-2's under exclusive use contract and two very large airtankers under a call when needed contract.

You might also want to read the article that Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today reported on the cancellation of the Aero Union contract in an article he wrote yesterday. Some of you may have already read Bill's article or heard the news elsewhere.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still absorbing the news. I'm in shock. And hot and dirty from a 450 mile drive.

I will continue with my series on the B-17's service as an airtanker on Monday. And, of course, I will report back if there is further news on the termination of the Aero Union contract.

B-17G Flying Fortress - "Sentimental Journey", Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force Bureau # 44-83514 (note 1)

The "Sentimental Journey", owned by the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force (AWCAF) is on my list of three because Aero Union (who currently flies the P-3 Orion tanker on national contract) operated her as an air tanker. That is, I wanted to included a B-17 who saw service as an air tanker under a name you might recognize. So, I contacted my aviation historian friend, Tom Janney, who told me about the B-17 air tanker, "T-17'". Thanks Tom!

Her military service including photo mapping, rescue operations and nuclear testing. After completing her military service she was put in storage before being purchased by Aero Union (or a predecessor?) and converted to service as an airtanker some time around 1960. She flew as an air tanker through the 1977 fire season (or there about) before being donated to the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. For a more complete history of this aircraft please see the the AWCAF page on Sentimental Journey. (link no longer available as of September 4, 2017). I did find a nice wikipedia page on the Sentimental Journey that you might be interested in.

Note 1: The Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force lists the Bureau (serial) number of "Sentimental Journey" as 44-85314 on their information page for Sentimental Journey (this is a dead link when I checked on September 4, 2017). However, checking a couple of other sources of warbirds information including Joe Baugher's page on US Army-Airforce Aircraft Serial Numbers listed the Bureau (serial) number as 44-83514. On December 29, 2021 I went to the FAA Aircraft Inquiry main search page and after entering the serial number (Bureau (serial) number of 44-83514) I was able to see her registration. Unfortunately I can not provide a direct link to my results, so you will have to trust me.

B-17G Flying Fortress - "Nine O Nine", Collings Foundation Bureau # 44-43575

In writing about three B-17s that served as air tankers or firebombers, I am starting with the B-17 that is now known as "Nine O Nine" owned by the Collings Foundation because I saw her late last summer when she was here in NJ on tour along with Collings B-24 ("Witchcraft") and the Collings P-51.

In 1965 she was purchased by Aircraft Specialty Company in 1965, and was modified to serve as an tanker, flying until sometime in the early to mid1980s. She saved a lot of lives on the ground as you flew fires in support of the wildland firefighters on the ground.

The Collings Foundation purchased her in 1986 and restored her to a configuration similar to that of B-17 bombers that flew during World War II.


Revised October 7, 2019

On the morning of Wednesday, October 2nd, the Collings Foundation B-17, "909" crashed at Bradley International Airport, Windsor Locks, Connecticut while on a stop on the 2019 Wings of Freedom Tour. Seven died, seven injured including one on the ground.


Direct link to video on Youtube from Savannah66

I wrote about a an article honor 909 and those who died and were injured on October 7, 2019

B-17 service as an air tanker

I first got interested in the B-17 about a year ago when in the course of my reading, wonderings on the internet and discussions with tanker pilot friends that the B-17 was used as an air tanker for many years up until the early to mid-1980s. I understand from my good friend and aviation historian, Tom Janney, that there were upwards of 20+ B-17s in service as air tankers at various times. I then purchased a videobook called Fire Bombers in Action, by Frederick A. Johnsen last year (a great addition to my library!) who writes of historical and current airtankers, including the B-17, including a listing of tanker call signs and registrations in his Appendices. Johnsen lists 22 B-17s in his listing of tanker call signs and registrations (p.123).

I am starting this series on the B-17's service as an airtanker with three posts on three different B-17 tankers (7/27, 7/29, and 8/1).

I will conclude the series with a post or two where I will write about what I have learned about the B-17's service as a tanker through researching this series. I hope to be able to provide some more specific information from tanker pilots who flew the B-17, but that may have to wait for some time in the future. At the time of this writing, I am still working on this specific article(s).

I'd like to offer the following acknowledgements and thanks to the people, book, and websites that have made this series possible:

*Tom Janney (aviation historian),

* Philip Wallick, Photographer, see his website, aircraft military dot com.  At the time I wrote this article in August 2011, I accessed his aforementioned website which is no longer when I last checked on September 4, 2017. He did a great 1 hour video "Fire Bomber" on historic tankers (1985?) that includes awesome footage of many historic firebombers including but not limited to the F7f, A-26, B-17, TBM Avenger. As I understand it, it is only available on VHS tape, and I purchased a copy on or about June 2011 (edited on September 4, 2017).

• Fire Bombers in Action, by Frederick A. Johnsen (copyright 2010), published by Specialty Press.
• Warbird Registry, a wonderful site with information on many, many different types of warbirds including the B-17. You could spend hours on this site, I know I have, mostly on various warbirds that later saw service as air tankers.
• Collings Foundation (Owner of the B-17 now known as "Nine O Nine") I have had the privilege of chatting with a couple of their volunteers, all of whom were very helpful. 
• Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force (AWCAF) (owner of the B-17 now known as "Sentimental Journey")
• "The Movie" Memphis Belle B-17, This was a great site when I accessed it in 2011, sadly the site is no longer available so I removed the link.

From the Monument Fire in AZ

Some great footage from the Monument Fire, including tankers and helos, in AZ. Enjoy!

Flying Single Engine Air Tankers

I've had a couple of conversations with some pilot friends of mine here in the mid-Atlantic who have asked me about what is involved in flying a Single Engine Air Tanker (SEAT). Well, here is great video that a friend of mind told me about. Brought to you by the folk at the Colorado Fire Camp -Wildland Firefighting Training. For other videos they have posted see their youtube channel, which may be found here.

P-3 drop at Wallow Fire (AZ)

Updated on August 3, 2015: The US Forest Service terminated its contract with Aero-Union for their Lockheed P-3's, going out of business a month later. (see my articles of July 30, 2011, August 17, 2011, and January 18, 2012). 

A look at Honey Prairie Fire Ops

Helo operations





dozer



tractor and plow

Some wildfires in the southeastern US

I thought I'd post some information about some recent wildfire activity in the southeastern U.S.

North Carolina

Siimmons Road, 5,632 acres, 70% contained as of July 13.

Juniper Road, 31,310 acres, 85% contained as of July 13.

Georgia

Sweat Farm Again-Satilla Summer Fires, 19,169 acres, 82% contained as of July 13.

Race Pond_Satilla Summer Fires, 20,934 acres, 82% contained as of July 13.

And for an update on the Honey Prairie Fire that has been burning since April 31. As of July 13, it has burned 297,952 acres and is 70% contained.

Florida

There has been some progress in the wildfire situation in Florida (asides from the Honey Prairie Fire, that I wrote about here and here. Inciweb's listing for Florida (current and inactive listings for the last couple months) may be found here. You might want to check out the webpage for the Florida Dept. of Forestry -Wildfire info.

CAL FIre budget cuts

I'm a little late with this, but late last week Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today wrote here about budget cuts by CAL FIRE. You will want to read the entire article yourself, but to summarize he reports on reduction in seasonal firefighters, decrease engine crews from four person to three persons, and the cancellation of the contract for the DC-10 airtanker.

I am always saddened to read of any cuts involving the loss the jobs.

But while I understand that the DC-10 tanker is not used for initial attack. Rather it is used for extended attack and I believe that the operator (10 Tanker Corp) require some lead time to get the DC-10 ready (24 hours), I am still saddened. I understand from Bill's article that the two DC-10s will be on a call when needed (CWN) contract with CAL FIRE but at a higher costs if the DC-10 is called up by CAL FIRE.

I hope that this is not a foreshadowing of more bad news to come in California.

More on Air France 447

When I posted about the May 27 note from the BEA in France on July 6, I neglected to say that the official reports from the BEA are in French. In most cases they have an english translation and often a translation in Portuguese. My high school French is many years ago, so I am not much of a help in reading the French versions of these reports. I understand from acquaintances who speak and read French (but are not translators), that there will be sometimes when French does not translate well into English. Is that the case in here, I don't know.

But I am going to provide you with a link to the BEA's May 27 notes in French. The earlier reports and press releases from the BEA, in French are found here. Those of you are comfortable reading French may find these documents useful.

Also, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article in the June 6 edition of Aviation Week on the latest updates in the crash of Air France 447, the article may be found here. The one thing missing from theversion of the June 6 Aviation Week found on their website is a text box with some of the data from the flight data recorders. I was able to get my hands a paper version of this article from my local library. Those of you who are interested, may be able to look at a copy at your local library (if they subscribe).

As I read the paper version of this article, I had the May 27 BEA report up on my computer, so I could see that flight recorder data presented in the text box in the June 6 article was based on the the data reported in the BEA report.

I found the article to be interesting and helpful as I again reread the latest report from the BEA after reading the Aviation Week article. Perhaps you will be interested in reading this article.  However, some of you might find the article (and I say "might) find the article to be a little technical. As for me, I found that between the knowledge that I have gained in passing the FAA private pilot exam, my own reading, and conversations with pilots that I was able to make sense of most of the technical aspects in the article. 

I'm not in a position to offer any educated comments on the June 6 Aviation Week article on the latest update in the investigation of the crash of Air France 447. However, I am thinking that at a later time I may write about what I have learned from following the investigation of the crash of Air France 447.

In the meantime, I continue to offer my prayers . . .

Last flight of Shuttle

I was busy with other things on Friday, and missed the shuttle launch. But I did find this video of the launch from NASA TV. Embedding is disabled, so you will have to watch this on youtube.

Enjoy.

Regular readers will know that I haven't posted since last Wednesday. Just having a couple of lazy summer days. I'll be back later today with a couple of posts that have been in my pipeline.

Air France 447 - update on investigation (5/27/11)

Some of you know that I have made a couple of posts about the investigation into the fatal crash of Air France flight # 447 off of the coast of Brazil on June 1, 2009. You may find a preview of a Nova (PBS) investigation and link to the Nova site for the full episode here. I wrote a brief article on May 16, 2011 about the recovery of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

On May 27, 2011, the BEA (France), who have been investigating the crash released a "note" with some early facts based on their analysis of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, the english version may be downloaded here (with a link to a pdf file). The BEA has a page indexing their press releases, briefings, reports, etc on the crash of AF 447 that may be found at this location.

I meant to mention this May 27th BEA note a month ago, and failed to do so. I do so now and refer you to the note that I linked to above without comment. I have certainly learned a lot in following this crash. I am not in a position to say more than that, at least at this time. Doing so could do more harm than good.

Perhaps all I can do is to continue to use this space to refer you to updates from the BEA in France as they become available.

My thoughts and prayers continue for the families, friends, colleagues of those who died in the crash. I also offer my thoughts and prayers for the people of Brazil and France as well as all those who participated in the recovery operations this past spring.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Las Conchas Update #3

Skyranger tracks fire and aerial attack: krqe.com

I found a link to the video embedded above, on this wildland fire hotlist thread devoted to the Las Conchas fire. Seems that KRQE has a Skyranger pilot/report up in the air reporting on the fire. There is some nice footage of both tankers and helos working the fire.

According to the latest update from inciweb (sometime last night), the fire has burned 93,678 acres and is at 3 percent containment.