Heavy Aircraft Presence Will Continue (7/17/06)
California Interagency Incident Management Team has been assigned to the Millard Complex to protect the Big Bear Valley, and their incident base is at Bear Mountain Ski Resort. All highways remain open, but local residents are encouraged to be careful when traveling on roadways due to increased traffic and large fire apparatus. Incident command says that the excellent work done over the past few days has established a substantial amount of line around the fire, but some line remains open. This area is in very steep and rugged terrain inaccessible by firefighters on the ground. Expect to see fire crews, air support, and smoke for the next several days. A DC10 is using the Sawtooth Complex as its first water-dropping assignment. It didn’t fly today but was used twice yesterday, after four years of being converted to a firefighting machine capable of holding 12,000 gallons of fire retardant. It was previously a commercial passenger plane flown by American Airlines. It’s now based out of Victorville.
So the DC-10 beat the 747 fire bomber into action yesterday in the big bomber fire fighting competition.
By: Bmused55 - 18th July 2006 at 09:42
From what I know, the system, albeit certified, is still likely to get modifications.
And, it can of course be very useful, but can’t dive into canyons, and costs a lot to operate …
I don’t think anyone would claim otherwise.
However a lot of the armchair experts here and on fora all over have claimed that firebombers the size of the Dc10 and 747 are more or less unusable, saying things like:
Unable to fly low enough
Unable to fly slow enough
Not maneuverable enough
Take too long to load
Too far away to make a timely sortie possible.
Stuff like that. Mostly ignorant rubbish which this DC-10 is now showing to be just that.
By: frankvw - 18th July 2006 at 08:45
From what I know, the system, albeit certified, is still likely to get modifications.
And, it can of course be very useful, but can’t dive into canyons, and costs a lot to operate …
By: Bmused55 - 18th July 2006 at 07:51
Wasn’t the DC-10 firebomber program started before the 747?
So much for these heavies being too big to be used or not nimble enough for firebombing.
Now they are proving their worth.
By: frankvw - 18th July 2006 at 07:33
… Victorville where the plane has been modified, too.
Here it is on the ground.
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July 18, 2006 at 6:33 am