How far the air ops have come!
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First year the DC 10 flew, watched as a down draft caught it, they caught a tree and lost some plumbing at the White fire Tehachapi, now everybody needs one and they have been doing good
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First planes I remember were the C119 and the B17
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I can remember the Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon and also the Hudson. Both flew out of Ramona.
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Those could have been at Paso as well but not being a plane guy I wouldnāt know. I do remember Borate retardant.
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Tanker 03 at Paso: P-2H. But they did have P-2V and SP-2Hās come through offer ā¦ as well as tons of others.
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I remember the pilots and the things that they did with those old planes more than the planes. Blowing an engine on takeoff, change the engine and then back at it. Good planes and better pilots.
Thirteen impacted trees were identified by Cal Fire personnel. The first identified tree that sustained impact was 45 feet tall at a base elevation of 7,786 feet mean sea level (msl).
ref: McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10 crash in California (N450AX) | PlaneCrashMap.com
I have photos of that plane.
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I read an article some time ago about a tanker (I think it was an old S2) that took off from somewhere in the mid-Sierra bound for a fire up by Whiskeytown or something like that, something on the plane was broken and they fixed it enroute and dropped on the fire.
I was set up to take a picture of watching my first DC 10 drop when they hit, then didnāt get the picture knowing they had big problems
While the turboprops are certainly more efficient, I definitely miss the radials. My childhood home was right on the approach route for working tankers, and the windows always rattled. The last radials to work out of Chester were the P-2s about 10-12 years ago before Neptune Inc. folded, and they were just twins. Before that, it was the B-17s and P4Y2s, before the latter started falling apart.
Hereās one of the last trips of a Privateer to Chester, though I donāt remember the exact year ('99 or '00), Iām pretty sure it was during the Storrie Fire. After this specific (123) one broke up in flight a few years later, they grounded them.
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Agreed. I miss the sound of the old S2 tankers with the radial engines.
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I grew up in Westwood in the 1980s and it was on the flight path for tankers headed out of Chester for anything in the desert to the east. Old planes blasted over all the time. You could feel them coming and we always ran outside to see them come over. It was incredibly loud and powerful, made quite an impression on us as youngsters.
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So - while the history IS always interesting - I am curious as to the other part of my original post as while I am old - I am from the LE side - not Fire Service so didnāt pay as much attention until the early 2000s or so.
Was there as much debate about each new version of aerial firefighting fleet? Because - as I remember it there really was a deep divide as to whether to allow the VLATs to come into service. Not only from an effectiveness standpoint - but cost as well.
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The old radial engined S2ās had an unmistakable sound. The turbo props sneak up on us now!
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I love reading all the history, wish I had something to give but I just got a question. How many VLATās are in the state now? And how many LATās?
Currently 20 or so LATs on contract, half of which are in CA. And three VLATs, all
In CA, possibly four if the 4th is on a calfire contract.
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