Aerial firefighting employs aeroplanes and helicopters to combat wildfires from above. Originally developed from WWII bombers, air tankers are built in a variety of capacities; from the single-seat 3000-litre Air Tractor AT-802F to the gargantuan Evergreen Super Tanker – a converted Boeing 747 that holds over 75,700 litres. Firefighting helicopters, based on the S-64 Skycrane and Bell UH-1 Iroquois designs, have also been in service since the early 1990s.
The two largest air tankers currently operating in the US are the Evergreen Super Tanker and a converted McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with the call-sign, Tanker 910. Both are stationed at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California, about 32km north of San Bernardino. Tanker 910 can drop 45,000 litres of water from its three underbelly-mounted storage tanks in as little as eight seconds. It can also spread that same load over an area 90m wide and 1.6km long from as low as 90-150m.
[Evergreen 747 Wiki - Tanker 910 Wiki - Air Tanker Wiki - 10 Tanker Airlines - Evergreen Airlines]
Top image: Getty Images; second image: AP Images
Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.
Shane
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:43 AMI love the fact that they’ve converted a 747 into an arial bomber…only in the US…I want one!
Cameron
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:53 AMGiven the level of bushfires we get here in Australia I’m surprised we haven’t invested in a few of these. Surely this would be much better than having to spend millions rebuilding after each summer.
Painkiller
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:10 AMDo you think the government really cares that much to invest in awesome technology like this?
Pauly7
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:49 AMThe federal government does invest in a number of large firefighting aircraft, and most years they go under-utilised.
The cost of having the aircraft in the country and maintained is quite high, and there is a gamble that the cost will work out less than the cost of not having them.
I’m sure if enough people made a noise, and were willing to cop a tax increase to cover it, we would be able to get these larger aircraft to Australia… but most of the cost would be wasted since it is rare to have a fire that is large enough to require firefighting equipment of that size.
Logistics also causes a problem, there are only a handful of runways in Aus large enough to accommodate such aircraft, meaning the turnaround from drop to drop becomes much longer than the aircraft currently used (helicopters can be filled almost anywhere, and refueling can be done at any location if needed).
These are cool, but not as useful in this country as firefighting helicopters and ground-crews are.
Christian
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 12:45 PMWe had one of those in Victoria or were going to get one from Russia at some stage.
I think the problem was that when the plane did it’s thing no other air craft could go in the flying space for 30mins afterwards due to the turbulence or something like that.
Pointless if you need constant bombing from the Elvis bomber etc.
John Anderson
Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 2:16 PMFirst, they said the 747 was going to show in Israel for the Mt. Carmel fire (Dec 2010).
Not sure it ever did.
(The Russian Il-76 waterbomber was said to have
‘spearheaded’ the fire attack there in Israel.)
Then, they said the 747 was to have shown for the
current Wallow fire in AZ.
It hasn’t.
Is there really such a thing as a 747 air tanker
and what is its actual firefighting record?
I know Alberta, Canada, said ‘thanks but no thanks’ to the 747 promoters.
GIZMODO is not up to the important job of fact-checking.