Warbird Information Exchange

These two pictures were taken from the Tanker Base Tower at Fox Field in Lancaster, California at the end of a fire bust in October 2003 by Dave Kelly, jr.

T62 was the DC-7 that I was flying for Butler Aircraft on a Moses Lake contract. I don’t remember offhand who was flying the other tankers or their home bases, but,

T68 was TBM’s DC-6

Tanker 21 and Tanker 22 were Aero Union P-3s

T14 was Aero Union’s DC-4

T06 was a Neptune Aviation P2V-5

A P2V-7 of Neptune Aviation is nose on in a loading pit in the foreground

One of ARDCO’s DC-4s is nose on in the middle row along with another Neptune Aviation P2V-5

Another ARDCO DC-4 and a Hawkins & Powers P2V-7s are in the background with a Minden Air P2V-7 next to it. I’d say that Minden’s P2V is T48 from the yellow paint

The Argosy, Boxcar and C-97 in the far background were part of a museum.

This is the Last Hurrah because for reasons that were claimed to be for “safety” all of the Federal Tanker Contracts were cancelled in June of the following year. This was a few days before I was to report for duty at Moses Lake with Tanker 62.

We tanker pilots went from being considered more or less heroes to being reckless maniacs overnight as far as the official press releases went because we had a “Can Do Attitude”, which apparently made us unsafe. The aircraft couldn’t be used as tankers unless the operators could provide a manufacturer’s airframe life limit. The only one that qualified was the P-3, although the paperwork was really for a P-3C rather than the P-3A. The rest of us were out of luck

I’d better not say any more. That was 18 years ago but the wounds are still fresh.

Here are the pictures

426CAB44-7A56-4593-B0ED-B81F57318A54 by tanker622001, on Flickr

83CE45B9-8949-4D1C-B49E-26D87AC0BAB8 by tanker622001, on Flickr

Thats a VERY busy ramp!

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A few flying shots of some of the tankers in the pictures above.
Sledge

01 P-3 "Tanker 22" N922AU at San Bernardino (SBD) 25 July 1999

02 DC-4 "Tanker 14" N62297 at San Bernardino (SBD) 25 July 1999

03 DC-6 "Tanker 68" N90739 at Hemet (HMT) 1 July 1996

04 DC-7 "Tanker 62" N401US...as "Tanker 14" at Ontario (ONT) Sept 1975

Different times - better ones in many ways!

I visited Fox Field briefly in September 1999 (enroute Reno - Palm Springs via several airfields of interest - eg Doc at Inyokern), think there were a couple of P2Vs there, plus the museum aircraft.

I think this is understandable. It takes a lot of stress and fatigue analysis to determine airframe life and much of that is dependent on how the aircraft was operated during its lifetime. Even that isn't perfect though. Luckily many of the WW2 vintage airframes were overbuilt, but even so there is still a big unknown and the risk remains. It's hard to get a bunch of operators together to have an airframe proactively analyzed and tested and split the cost, all this for an obsolete type that may not be supportable for long anyhow. In fact, after the analysis it could have been determined that the aircraft were all timed out already. McDonnell Douglas/Boeing sure wouldn't want the expense and liability of doing that analysis. And AD notes are too reactive- they typically come after a catastrophic failure has occurred.

Neptune Aviation outsmarted the new regime by having deep enough pockets to convince Lockheed to provide the airframe life paperwork for the P-2 that was now required. This was ironic because the P-2 was the one airplane that the new leaders wanted to eliminate. I can think of at least 6 fatal P-2 accidents that occurred during fire fighting missions. I don’t believe that any of them involved structural failure. Flying low and slow in the mountains in smokey conditions is inherently dangerous. I managed to survive 40 Fire seasons in B-17s and DC-7s even with the dreaded “Can Do Attitude”.

Most of the rest of the tanker operators either went out of business after 2004 or used their airplanes for operations other than air tanker work. A few of the operators, including TBM Inc. and Butler Aircraft found contracts with various state agencies. I continued to fly T62 on a State of Oregon contract until I had to retire with prostate cancer in 2015. Our last active DC-7B Tanker 60 finally retired following the 2020 Fire Season.,

Butler and TBM worked with Boeing to get original manufacturer’s specifications for various high stress parts and spent a small fortune getting replacement parts manufactured including heat treatment if necessary when replacement was required due to stress and corrosion. As bdk mentioned, these Douglas aircraft were over designed and Douglas always maintained that there was no way to issue a blanket airframe life limit as it depended on how the aircraft were flown and maintained.

Yeah, I don't think the Douglas engineers quite had this in mind back in the 1940s. These airplanes had quite a half century. I miss them...

September 1983 n of Reno 29 218 by Neal Nurmi, on Flickr


September 1983 n of Reno 30 191 by Neal Nurmi, on Flickr


September 1983 n of Reno 31 192 by Neal Nurmi, on Flickr


September 1983 n of Reno 32 193 by Neal Nurmi, on Flickr

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Neal Nurmi

---Wingman Photo---

Great stuff Larry! Great memories.

Anything related to Chino Airport?

Keep 'Em Flying!

By the time I got started flying tankers Chino Tanker Base had closed. I did get to Chino a couple of times to visit Planes of Fame, but never in tankers. I did get to Burbank Tanker Base during my very brief first experience in a B-17 as co-pilot.

That was in September 1972 when I was getting my ratings through the G.I. Bill. I learned to fly in a BC-12D Taylorcraft and got my private license just before reporting to Fort Ord for Army Basic Training around the 1st of January 1968. I bought a T-Craft after I got home from Vietnam and had built up maybe 300 hours total time when I started the G.I. Bill flight training.

I had just finished with my commercial license at Santa Barbara Aviation and had maybe two hours of herding a Beech Baron around at the beginning my multi-engine rating when Denny Conner showed up at the Goleta Tanker Base in Aero Union’s B-17 Tanker 17C.

Denny was on a contract extension from his base in Coolidge, Arizona. Nobody figured that anything was going to happen and the co-pilot had to go back to school at Cochise College. Since tanker c/p’s only needed a commercial pilot license at that time I was able to fill in with everybody believing that we would just do a water drop and then ferry the airplane to Aero Union’s maintenance base at Chico.

We did a water drop and the two F7Fs based in Goleta did pursuit passes at us while we were struggling to get to the drop area. It gave me a good idea of what it would be like to be under fighter attack in a B-17. If nothing else, I proved that a competent pilot can fly a B-17 with an idiot trying to kill him in the right seat.

In my defense, other than the Baron the hottest airplane that I’d flown was a Cessna 172 and Tanker 17 wasn’t exactly in pristine condition as they had deferred some maintenance items figuring on going straight to Chico from Coolidge at the normal end of contract. For instance, only one tachometer actually worked. Another fluctuated plus or minus 500 rpm and the other pair of tachs were dead.

So, on the first power change I set the prop control for the engine with the working tach at 2300 rpm and just lined up the rest of the prop control handles. We sounded like a squadron of T-6s. Denny quickly moved the prop controls all over the place to synch the props as he knew about where they belonged in relation to each other and it certainly wasn’t a straight line across. I got better as I gained a little experience, but I didn’t yet know the tricks of the trade. Also, the turbo controls needed work and the throttles were all over the place during cruise when we dialed the turbos back.

Then we got a dispatch to work on a fire at the Inyokern Mill in the log decks. We reloaded at Porterville a few times and ended up being sent to Burbank for the night and returned to Goleta the next day. Shortly after that the contract extension ended, but Aero Union wanted to keep T17 at Goleta for another week or two to see if it would be called back on duty, thus ended my initial tanker flying experience.

I can honestly say that out of my first 15 hours of multi-engine flying, 10 of those hours were in a B-17. I got my multi-engine and instrument ratings and was almost immediately hired to fly as co-pilot by a friend at Mission Airlines flying explosives around the country in Beech 18s. By the time I was hired to fly as co-pilot with Bob Forbes for TBM Inc in B-17 Tanker 65 out of Porterville on a CDF contract in June 1975 I had about 4500 hours of mostly pilot in command time flying Twin Beeches all over the country in all sorts of weather and was much better qualified for the job.

I’ve also been paid back on numerous occasions with having to keep an eye on co-pilots doing their best to kill us. So, I know how Denny felt on the first couple of flights with me as his c/p. I guess that it’s Karma.

A couple of other observations from that first flight in the B-17 and the water drops. When we dropped down to the target area I’d been setting the power and looked up to see nothing but canyon walls in all directions and it wasn’t all that wide of a canyon. I remember thinking You know, this is a lot more fun to watch than it is to do. I had the same thought on occasions during my tanker flying career, although most of the time there was an element of fun involved.

The other observation was on the first landing. We were using the shorter runway at Goleta and I thought Man, we’re going to overshoot the whole airport. About then there was an Erk as the tires touched the runway. My little airplane sight picture was about 15 feet lower than from the c/p seat of a B-17.

thanks, now i know how Stu Kunkee felt when i was his C/P in Catch 22.

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Probably one of two ARDCO DC-4s in pic #2...

N9015Q "Tanker 152" at San Bernardino (SBD), 17 June 2001

The other ARDCO DC-4 may be N406WA "Tanker 119"... the one with R-2600 engines replacing the R-2000s ...

Sledge