Warbird Information Exchange

Saw where the 10 Tanker guys, flying the moded DC-10 tanker are gounded indefinately. Seems that in making a drop on the Tahoe fire yesterday, they clipped a bunch of trees with the aircraft. Reading the article on it and the Feds give the impression that the aircraft is going to be grounded for a significant portion of this fire season for a massive structural inspection.

From what I've seen,the incident occurred while the DC-10 was working on the White Fire near Tehachapi.That's close to Edwards AFB and Mojave.They made it back to their home base at Victorville (ex-George AFB) east of Edwards.The word is that they encountered some severe turbulence on the drop run and settled into the trees before powering their way out.Nobody ever said that flying tankers was easy or particiularly safe.

I bet they were pucker factor ten for a moment there

_________________
"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

I read or heard the other day, that Evergreen pulled the plug on the 747 tanker concept. This DC-10 tanker news is really unfortunate. This is a risky business right from the start so I sure hope the concept of an airliner/tanker fleet is not gone for good. I'll bet this concept will work well but they need to give it more time to prove itself.

_________________
Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

I say we make it a warbird thing and use B-52s for tankers.

I wonder why the 747 tanker was canceled. Look like a viable concept.

I would imagine that they put the project on hold until things get resolved with the DC-10 guys and they get the USFS certification for the -10. As it is, only CDF has signed off on the conversion so, only CDF fires can call on the -10. With all the age and stress induced problems the tanker fleet has had over the last few years, the USFS has gotten pretty anal over certifing any new conversions and really given the current tankers a lot of problems over maintenance and structural inspections.

There is also the problem in that bigger is not always better. The -10 and the 747 are of the size that terrain around the fire becomes a significant factor in making usable drops that don't require flying the aircraft into situations that would require severly stressing it to get in or out of the drop zone.