DC4/C54 Firebombers

[Mick G]

With all of the wildfire concerns over the last few years, you have to wonder why the FAA doesn't allow the DC4/C54 Bombers back in the air. There is a good quantity remaining that could be made serviceable in relatively short order. Buffalo Airways, and Former Central Air, between them, I think ~20 air frames, all for sale at the moment. Probably half a dozen could be set up for firefighting. Was there ever a fatigue problem with this model? Seems such a shame to see them sit.

[junkman9096]

Caveat: I'm not privy to ANY special information and am not more knowledgeable than Joe Smuck on the street but when was the last reciprocating engine powered aircraft of that size built? Mid 1950's? The last DC-6 or DC-7? (1958). Its been the policy of the USFS to not offer contracts to companies with those type of planes for years. What with the seeming surplus of jet powered airliners, greater safety margins of power and loads, lower operating costs and newer airframes I think the decision was made to focus on those. To bring out a DC-6/7 would be a great leap backwards.

[junkman9096]

(Double post)

[menards]

Caveat: I'm not privy to ANY special information and am not more knowledgeable than Joe Smuck on the street but when was the last reciprocating engine powered aircraft of that size built? Mid 1950's? The last DC-6 or DC-7? (1958). Its been the policy of the USFS to not offer contracts to companies with those type of planes for years. What with the seeming surplus of jet powered airliners, greater safety margins of power and loads, lower operating costs and newer airframes I think the decision was made to focus on those. To bring out a DC-6/7 would be a great leap backwards.

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrN_ga07DdQ

[StangStung]

Caveat: I'm not privy to ANY special information and am not more knowledgeable than Joe Smuck on the street but when was the last reciprocating engine powered aircraft of that size built? Mid 1950's? The last DC-6 or DC-7? (1958). Its been the policy of the USFS to not offer contracts to companies with those type of planes for years. What with the seeming surplus of jet powered airliners, greater safety margins of power and loads, lower operating costs and newer airframes I think the decision was made to focus on those. To bring out a DC-6/7 would be a great leap backwards.

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrN_ga07DdQ

Given I see so many C-130s sitting out at DM, one wonders why they aren't in the game more. Yes, I recall the wing failure, but that was a very old time machine. Could the ones at DM be that old?

Seems like they were built for the low and slow.

[sandiego89]

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

Likely only a few Anti-submarine, tactical lift and the very few clean sheet design water bombers were designed for low and slow drops, but a larger number are quite capable of controlled low and slow maneuvering (within limits).

Given I see so many C-130s sitting out at DM, one wonders why they aren't in the game more. Yes, I recall the wing failure, but that was a very old time machine. Could the ones at DM be that old?

Seems like they were built for the low and slow.

A whole array of C-130's (including some not that old as the mishap aircraft) have been impacted by wings cracks, especially cracking in the center wing box. Liability for ex-military aircraft has been a major concern.

[Mick G]

Caveat: I'm not privy to ANY special information and am not more knowledgeable than Joe Smuck on the street but when was the last reciprocating engine powered aircraft of that size built? Mid 1950's? The last DC-6 or DC-7? (1958). Its been the policy of the USFS to not offer contracts to companies with those type of planes for years. What with the seeming surplus of jet powered airliners, greater safety margins of power and loads, lower operating costs and newer airframes I think the decision was made to focus on those. To bring out a DC-6/7 would be a great leap backwards.

Radials are still in use. CL215 as an example. There is a S2 with radial that was just returned to service in Kansas a couple of months back as another example

[exhaustgases]

Caveat: I'm not privy to ANY special information and am not more knowledgeable than Joe Smuck on the street but when was the last reciprocating engine powered aircraft of that size built? Mid 1950's? The last DC-6 or DC-7? (1958). Its been the policy of the USFS to not offer contracts to companies with those type of planes for years. What with the seeming surplus of jet powered airliners, greater safety margins of power and loads, lower operating costs and newer airframes I think the decision was made to focus on those. To bring out a DC-6/7 would be a great leap backwards.

First off the main plane that caused all the attack against the piston planes was a TURBO prop plane that is a turbine powered aircraft, you know that C-130 that Hawkins and Powers had the wings fold up on ! It was a plane with a design problem.
Secondly it does not matter what the age of the plane is, just study what Basler is doing with the old DC-3, they take a plane that is much older than a DC-7 and zero time the airframe, that means
the aircraft is essentially a brand new plane. So any airframe can be re-manufactured with brand spanking new better metal alloys.
Most important in the discussion of fire fighting planes is, turbines, jet engines are not made to fly slow, and when throttled back they have a long delay in recovering power, they flat are not a good choice for flying in valleys and around mountains, also think swept wings and stalling, then there is the huge problem of debris ingestion the cost of jet or turbine engine overhauls that run into the $2 million plus range per engine and that is on a small business type plane. Jet planes especially need a huge long landing strip as well and the cost to operate is likely on the order of 10 times what a piston plane would be, especially when multi million dollar overhauls are factored in. That seems to always be the goal for government to spend as much as possible, so yeah I can understand why they banned the piston planes. I suppose the war on Leaded avgas plays into it as well. What a person can get from all this is they really aren't that concerned about the fires.

[bdk]

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrN_ga07DdQ

Would the FAA cite the aircraft choice or pilot error if this had resulted in an accident? Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) is the term for this. This is probably the cause of most of the fire bomber crashes, piston or turbine, based upon my observation.

[K5DH]

Here's an interesting thought. We have some very intelligent, talented, and experienced people here on WIX, including engineers, pilots, and maintainers. Just for fun, let's dream up the ultimate heavy airtanker for today's market. Assume we have a big budget. Would we base our craft on an existing airframe or would we go "clean sheet"? Would we use piston engines or turbines? It might be hard to get Avgas in remote areas, but turbine engines often don't react quickly to throttle changes. We would want to be able to operate from short and/or primitive airstrips. The ship would have to handle well in turbulent air and be maneuverable in tight spaces. Do we want advanced synthetic vision avionics to be able to see the terrain through the smoke? How big a load do we want to carry? Would this be a land plane or an amphibian? Quick turnaround time is important, as is ease of maintenance.

Keep it serious, as if we were going to pitch our design to the US Government for consideration.

What do you suggest, and why?

[sandiego89]

Here's an interesting thought. We have some very intelligent, talented, and experienced people here on WIX, including engineers, pilots, and maintainers. Just for fun, let's dream up the ultimate heavy airtanker for today's market. Assume we have a big budget. Would we base our craft on an existing airframe or would we go "clean sheet"? Would we use piston engines or turbines? It might be hard to get Avgas in remote areas, but turbine engines often don't react quickly to throttle changes. We would want to be able to operate from short and/or primitive airstrips. The ship would have to handle well in turbulent air and be maneuverable in tight spaces. Do we want advanced synthetic vision avionics to be able to see the terrain through the smoke? How big a load do we want to carry? Would this be a land plane or an amphibian? Quick turnaround time is important, as is ease of maintenance.

Keep it serious, as if we were going to pitch our design to the US Government for consideration.

What do you suggest, and why?

I'll play. My entry would be a 4 engine turboprop in the 4,000 gallon range. The reasons:
- Straight wing for drop operations, shortish fields. Acceptable cross country transit speed. STOL not worth the tradeoffs.
- Conventional fuselage landplane, not an amphibian. Amphibian not worth the tradeoffs.
- Engines. 4 modern turboprops with modern (~6 blade) props. Good redundancy, acceptable fuel burn, good throttle/pitch response, good transit speed, good loiter, good parts and repair chain, good fuel availability. Pistons are getting to rare and expensive. 2 engines not enough redundancy.
- 4,000 gallon capacity. 3,000 gallon capacity seems to be the sweet spot, or at least what we have been accustomed to, so a slight increase but not getting into the supertaker category which comes with a massive increase in purchase and operating costs.
- Clean sheet would be best from a design perspective, but in reality would never make it certification and profit wise. Maybe a lean scaled composites type approach? Imagine our federal regulators and contract issuers would want a certified aircraft- but that comes at huge expense.
- I think this would end up looking like a modern P-3/Electra- perhaps the stillborn P-7.

[menards]

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrN_ga07DdQ

Would the FAA cite the aircraft choice or pilot error if this had resulted in an accident? Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) is the term for this. This is probably the cause of most of the fire bomber crashes, piston or turbine, based upon my observation.

In this instance, had the jet crashed into the hillside, it would be a result of pilot error. That said, there have been many instances where "pilot error" has not stopped bureaucrats from imposing new rules and regs...or grounding operations all together.

[StangStung]

All it will take is one accident for everyone to rethink the jet-powered fire bomber. Jets were not designed for low and slow drops...

Likely only a few Anti-submarine, tactical lift and the very few clean sheet design water bombers were designed for low and slow drops, but a larger number are quite capable of controlled low and slow maneuvering (within limits).

Given I see so many C-130s sitting out at DM, one wonders why they aren't in the game more. Yes, I recall the wing failure, but that was a very old time machine. Could the ones at DM be that old?

Seems like they were built for the low and slow.

A whole array of C-130's (including some not that old as the mishap aircraft) have been impacted by wings cracks, especially cracking in the center wing box. Liability for ex-military aircraft has been a major concern.

Yes, I recall reading about that now. Thanks for the reminder.

[Dan Jones]

I think the liability issue with ex-military aircraft is more politics than anything else. Most military airplanes I've ever been around have tended to be in pretty good shape, inside and out. There's a lot more civilian junk flying around out there than freshly surplussed ex-military stuff.

I'm admittedly prejudiced but I'd be pretty uncomfortable bombing with a Herc, it's just not what that airplane is for, and the cockpit of a Herc was home for me for almost twenty years. For my money I'd just put a three-thousand US gallon tank on an overhauled, stripped out P-3. You could operate it out of any 5000' strip, paved or gravel, it's got four turboprops that answer their throttles faster than any piston engine, crews are available, parts are available, and it handles like a fighter. Exiting a drop with the Electra I fly now you just open the taps and point it in the direction you want to go (up, down, or "that way") and she just leaves and hopefully you get the flaps up before you overspeed them.

In Allisons we trust - especially four of them.

[menards]

A cool old Nat Geo program on firebombers....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99kuoGDOAWw