Bombing the Yukon

by CHUCK TOBIN  Star Reporter

Flying water bombers for a living is a rewarding lifestyle,
but it comes with a price

Laundry is hanging innocuously from the ridge pole that runs down the ceiling of 267’s fuselage.

One of four CL-215 water bombers leased from Ontario to help fight Haines Junction #5, its interior at the moment this Thursday morning resembles a small apartment – of the bachelor type.

Open luggage sits here and there. A ball glove lays half-hidden by magazines, and a couple of plastic grocery bags half-filled with snacks.

"Peter (Nelson, his co-pilot) is famous for hanging his laundry here," says CL-215 Capt. Bob Graham.

An ordinary-looking, three-quarter-inch piece of tubing, the ridge pole is essential equipment.

On each mission, just before the bombing starts, either Graham or Nelson leave the cockpit and walk through the belly to make a visual check of the Pratt and Whitney R2800s that sit on each wing.

When you’re in turbulent winds, either spawned by a forest fire or not, it can be a hairy walk, says Graham using both hands to clutch the air and shaking his body to illustrate his point.

"Literally, your feet are off the ground at times."

But when you have to scoop the 12,000-pound payload on the fly, in just 10 seconds, you want to make sure everything is working properly.

There’s no problem with power. The Second World War-vintage engines deliver 2,100 horsepower each, while consuming anywhere from a total of 150 to 210 gallons of fuel per hour, depending on if the plane is cruising or working.

By design, the engines will burn off five gallons of oil in three to four hours of flying.

But they’re workhorses, explains Graham, almost in defense of the two powerhouses he and Nelson depend on hour after hour, day after day, in Ontario or wherever in Canada they’re called to.

The Pratt and Whitneys were designed for the cruising pace of wartime bombers, not the irregular beat of fighting wildfires.

It’s a landing-speed approach to the water, says Graham. The moment the belly splashes, and the two rectangular probes begin taking in water, it’s full throttle.

Graham says power isn’t the problem; the work is keeping the nose up.

In 10 seconds, the two side-by-side, 600-gallon tanks are full, and overflow is pouring out the outlets on both sides. If there were no overflow outlets, the onrush of water would blow the roof off the aircraft.

"As soon as you touch, you go to max, full power, takeoff power," he says. "The probes grab pretty good once you hit. It is a fair good pull to keep the nose up… It takes me all I got to keep the nose out of the water. If not, you start to do the old porpoise down the lake."

Graham and Nelson take turns. Every one or two loads, one does the flying, the other watches the instruments.

Flying at a drop speed if 190 kilometres an hour, somewhere around 150 feet above tree-top, you want to know if there’s a problem. The pilot watching the instruments makes sure engine temperatures are in the money, and so forth.

"Being in a low-altitude environment, as soon as you have any glitch, your immediate response is to get rid of the load and climb up."

The pilot flying the aircraft does the communicating with the scout plane that lays out the approach.

The forest that Haines Junction #5 is burning in isn’t as dense as the Ontario bush they usually work in. Consequently, they’re not having to fly as low because they don’t need the extra force to push through the canopy.

And the lower you are, the more likely trees will be snapping off under the pressure of the drop, creating a nightmare for ground crews to maneuver through, says Graham.

Flying the CL-215 water bomber is fun, Nelson and Graham agree. It’s not a rush. They don’t dawn their snoopy glasses and scarves before they takeoff. They’re not over Berlin when they drop their loads.

They’re focused on what they’re doing – they have to be. Focus is the utmost of prerequisites.

A duty-day is typically 15 hours long.

"After 3 ½ hours (an average mission), and you go out three times, you’re pretty much done," says Nelson.

"If you have done 10 hours of bombing, you are ready for bed," Graham adds.

Both pilots are full-time Ontario government employees who compress their work year into seven months.

From one day to the next, they don’t know where they’re going. When they headed west from Ontario, after that province’s extreme spring fire hazard was flushed away by rain and snow, the destination was Alberta. Now, they’re here.

It’s a lifestyle, and it beats flying scheduled flights in a suit and tie, says Nelson.

It’s not, however, without a price.

The 42-year-old Graham has nine and 15-year-old children.

"Pretty much everybody in the program has kids," he says. "And you pay for it big-time in the summer. Everybody is at camp, and you are at Timbuktu. That goes with this, and they understand, but is still does not mean they miss you any less."

Next year, with Ontario retiring its fleet of nine CL-215s, Graham and Nelson will be climbing into the province’s next generation of water bombers – the CL-415s.

They carry 1,350 gallons, or 150 more than the 215’s. But, more importantly, says Nelson, is that the new bombers are equipped with the newest technology. And even better yet, they’re fitted with modern turbo-prop engines – the same that are mounted in the Dash-8 commuter aircraft.

The turbo-props are more powerful, says Nelson.

Not that the CL-215 is a slouch.

"Au contraire," remarks Graham.

The CL-215, he has you know, was built in the 1960’s as the first aircraft in the world designed specifically for water bombing.

Its makeup is rugged. The entire wing span, for instance, is one solid piece unlike typical aircraft construction that sees each wing attached to each side of the plane.

And for now, it’s where they hang out waiting for a call checking oil levels, washing windshields and the like.

Says Graham, "We call it the big flying Winnebago."

It’s 10:15 a.m., and Graham is contacted on his cellular.

They want 267 over Haines Junction #5 by 11:30

They work for different companies and they fly different aircraft.

In common is their trade – flying initial attack fire retardant bombers in the Yukon.

Grahame Wilson pilots a 1950’s vintage Firecat. It’s been converted from its primary function of flying off an aircraft carrier to hunt for submarines.

The A-26 bomber flown by Carl Waymann is a `40’s aircraft that continued to serve through the Korean and Vietnam Wars as a medium-sized bomber.

It could carry a 1,000-pound bomb, two 500-pounders or up to eight 250-pound bombs.

Today, it carries 800 gallons of slippery, red mix made from a fertilizer compound intended to provide a non-combustible blanket over forest fuels.

Unlike water bombers that load off lakes on the fly and work a forest fire on a continuous circuit between the lake and hot spots, the retardant bombers get one shot before they have to return to a tanker base for reloading.

It doesn’t mean they have to be better bombers than their colleagues flying the amphibious aircraft, it’s not a contest.

Wilson and Waymann have their roles, and the water bombers have theirs.

At several hundred dollars a load, however, you don’t want to miss. Wilson said in an interview Thursday morning, before the day heated up and it was time to go to work.

Because it was built to fly from carriers, his Firecat is a sturdy aircraft that still has the folding wing feature built in to allow for storage below the flight deck.

Aircraft engineer Mike Barnes, who’s somewhat of a bomber buff, explains the Firecat was designed specifically to carry a nuclear depth charge. The purpose was to obliterate nuclear submarines before they could launch their missiles. It was also fitted with a myriad of large-calibre machine guns, along with the ability to drop submarine detection buoys.

The A-26 was outfitted with three guns in each wing. Some had six additional gun barrels in the nose. Some had a turret where a bomb aimer would be.

Both Wilson of Conair Aviation Ltd. and Waymann of Air Spray Ltd. find the work exciting. They like the idea of flying aircraft with history to them.

"You get a real sense of accomplishment for what you are doing,’ says Waymann. "But yeah, it gets the adrenaline going."

"As Carl said," adds Wilson, "when you are doing well on a fire, it is satisfying. When you come home at the end of a day and say, ‘Well, this is what I did today.’ That is another appeal."

While Wilson and Waymann don’t have to dodge flak, they do deal regularly at low levels with the turbulence of summer afternoon winds that are often blended with a pinch of spiraling winds coming off the fire.

"Sometimes, it’s not possible to work the head of the fire, because of those problems with turbulence and smoke," says Wilson. "But yeah, we all get knocked around sometimes. You go against your straps, your seat-belt…"

Waymann emphasizes that safety is paramount.

Bombing runs, for instance, are always made going downhill or perpendicular to the slope, if there is one.

Bombing on an uphill climb reduces your options if something was to go wrong, says Waymann, whose aircraft cruises at 250 miles an hour and drops at 135 mph.

The A-26, he says, will red-line at 350 to 380 m.p.h. on a dive.

Yep, flying a bomber is pretty fun, Waymann says.

As he puts it, he gets to fly aggressively, but safely, and all for a purpose.

"A lot of people pay money to go ride in one of those and we make a living out of it – so."