2007/06 BC trip - Waterbombers |
|||
Saturday July 7th
Some of these paragraphs and photographs are only available via the family's userids and passwords |
Sunday July 8th
We were lucky enough be in Port Alberni for the Waterbombers’ Open Day. The famous waterbombers were going to be retired and scrapped, but a local millionaire, the owner of a helicopter logging company, had bought them and incorporated them into his company. To celebrate, he was opening his toy box to the public.
The waterbombers were built as Martin Mars cargo planes for the US Navy 60 years ago, but a few were converted to fight fires in the 1960s. Out of the six that were built, three have crashed and one was destroyed by a typhoon. They are gigantic float planes, and they can pick up thousands of gallons of water by skimming the surface, and then dump it all on a fire. They are based on Port Alberni’s Sproat Lake, but are used in many places. Back in the 90s, we saw one in action at Port Hardy, bombing a fire that had just started along the road we were driving. It loaded up with seawater and soon put the fire out..
The Hawaii Mars was out on Sproat Lake. It took off in front of us, circled over town, scooped up a load of water from one of the quieter arms of Sproat Lake, and dumped it on the lake between us and the watching boats. It then did a few swoops over us all before landing where it had started.
Next.