Anybody else catch the show on Discovery HD last night about the forest fire fighters in B.C. Good show and they had a lot of great footage of the fire bombers doing their thing. Was curious though what types of planes they were especially the yellow and red amphib for anybody who saw it.

Is this the plane.???
http://www.wildlandfire.com/pics/air23/scooper264.jpg

Scooper 264: Photos of Scooper 264 (red n yellow).

Yeah "pif" i'm pretty sure that's it. They had some awsome video of it refilling on a lake. Thanks "mike" but i think it only had two engines

BC has a martin mars (biggest flyingboat in service) it is red and white but it has 4 engines if it had 2 engines its likely a bombidere CL215 they use lots of those up here and are installing turbines on them now.

Hey ccurrie what part of saskatchewan are you from? I got in laws in Togo. Have some in Winnipeg Manitoba as well

I grew up by Northbattleford but now live west of there by the alberta border.
I bought my 170 in manitoba but it was far north of winipeg. only time ive been east but have been west everywere from oregon to the yucon.

Canadair CL-215 air tanker. Canadair also made a turbine version, called the CL 415.

Since the demise of most of the heavy air tanker fleet in the US, the Canadairs have become one of the major fire fighting assets. THey are all fairly old airplanes, though. I don't think any have been built for over 20 years.

There are far more of these in Europe than in North America.

Two man crew, they land and scoop 1400 gallons at a scoop of water, and are capable of injecting fire fighting foam into the water as they scoop. The foam acts as a wetting agent.

The Martin Mars, of which there are two, have been privately operated by timber companies in BC for years. THey have recently been operating in southern CA on the fires around San Diego. Unlike the CL 215, the Mars are true flying boats--no wheels. The Mars are for sale, last I heard--HUGE airplane.

MTV

The Mars boats were purchased from FIFT by Coulson Aircrane of Port Alberni. One of them was working out of lake Elsinore during the Socal fires. May still be there.

ccurrie, winipegs the farthest into eastern canada i've ever been, and togo is the farthest west, otherwise i've hardly left the U.S.

MTV: thanks for the info, Flying one of them down to fill up has got to be a rush.

P.S. MTV I imagine you like the character from "shooter" sitting in a little room with an overhead projector surrounded by countless volumes of aviation related books .

I've got an old friend that flew the Martin Mars in WWII between Ca. and Hawaii. He has some great stories about those old birds. When fully loaded, they used JATO's for takeoff. One story he tells is about a first officer jettisoning the JATO's a bit prematurely after a departure from Honolulu. Bottle wound up going through a civilians deck and was in all the papers. Whoops ! Result was departures were done over water only after that... We actually had a Martin Mars land on Melones Lake here a few years ago when they were being demo'd for CDF. If your into flying boats, as I am, they are the ultimate.