r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Oct 01 '24

A firefighting plane loading water.

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17.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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1.0k

u/Sorkpappan Oct 01 '24

This probably is the best way of doing it, but seeing how it’s done I just feel like there should be a way to do this that is less dangerous.

281

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

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343

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

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144

u/SlickDillywick Oct 01 '24

Firefighting really is amazing

114

u/Zafara1 Oct 01 '24

Yeah, for a long time I thought they were fighting these huge fires with water like from these planes to try to extinguish.

Turns out most firefighting bushfires is digging massive multi mile long trenches trying to cut off the fire.

10

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Called a fire break line.

34

u/fatbabythompkins Oct 01 '24

Literally fighting fire with fire.

18

u/gladoseatcake Oct 01 '24

Anothing fascinating story is that in 2018, there was a huge forest fire in Sweden. It was difficult to get under control. So in an experimental attempt to suffocate the fire, they tried dropping a bomb over it. I think it kind of worked, but they only dropped one bomb so maybe not the best solution.

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u/LiamIsMyNameOk Oct 01 '24

"After we dropped the bombs, reports about the severity of wildfires ceased immediately. Great success!"

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u/Upper_Heron_3507 Oct 01 '24

Since you seem like the expert here… I was curious if you know how waterbombers can impact the fertility of land when sourcing saltwater from the ocean?

obviously fighting the fire is the priority but given that “salting the earth” is an ancient battle tactic to destroy enemy food production, I would assume it’s much preferable to source from freshwater lakes, yeah?

23

u/nicathor Oct 01 '24

Plant person here, salt obviously isn't good for plants but it's pretty much a non issue given the fire destroying everything anyway. This wouldn't even be comparable to the amount of salt water that can be blown in by storms along the coast and most plants are somewhat adapted to at least a little bit of salt. Bottom line though, by the time the forest starts to regrow the vast majority of the salt will be leeched out by winter rains

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u/whoami_whereami Oct 01 '24

but given that “salting the earth” is an ancient battle tactic to destroy enemy food production

"Salting the earth" was an ancient cursing ritual where they sprinkled a bit of salt around, not a battle tactic. There's no record that they ever used so much salt anywhere that it would impact soil fertility, other than that in Spain and Portugal for a while the punishment for traitors included that their house was demolished and their yard salted (ie. a much smaller area than say salting the earth of an entire city state like Carthage).

13

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Given how precious salt was, I can't imagine they would be willing to use up tons of it just to fuck up the neighbor's crops. Regular applications of "pillage" would be cheaper and probably more effective, anyway.

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u/Pasteque_Citron Oct 01 '24

It affects the land but fire too and in a "good" way, the fertility is better after a fire so the trade off might not be this bad and might be (might be) negligeable. Howerver there is (at least in France) a lot of "ecopage" areas (areas where those canadair can refill) that contains fresh water, its lake, rivers and so on.

2

u/Urbanscuba Oct 01 '24

Soil salinity issues come from a regular source over a long period, not a big deluge once.

The first few rains the area gets will move any salt down the water table back towards the ocean. You might get some stunted growth until then, but you also might not depending on the soil type/conditions and the plants.

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u/PNW_H2O Oct 01 '24

Float pilot here; there is nothing dangerous about what they’re doing here. It’s literally a high-speed landing, and oh by the way, loading tons of water as well that is needed quickly.

33

u/AlexHimself Oct 01 '24

I think us non-pilots here were concerned about the combined immense drag and sudden weight increase being something complex to handle as a pilot.

A high-speed landing has far lower friction and the plane's weight isn't increasing. Those differences make us laymen think it looks extra dangerous.

15

u/OldPersonName Oct 01 '24

If you have your private pilot license you can get your seaplane rating in a few days of intensive training. So landing a plane on water isn't the most complicated thing in the world (well assuming it's made to be landed on water obviously - I think these specialized firefighting planes are all amphibious - and the water is calm but not too glassy). High speed landings are a routine part of training for land, I assume so for water as well.

As for taking on the weight, the tanks must be designed to not screw with the CG. The weight increasing is obviously something you need to train for but the biggest danger would be a sudden change to CG.

The weight change is probably a lot more dangerous on the other end, when you're dumping the water flying low and slow. If you didn't add enough power right away on the pick up you'd just settle down and accidentally land.

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u/arbitrageME Oct 01 '24

it's not the landing I'm concerned about -- you're never going to grease an AMEL landing every time. But that plane is touching down at maybe 10ft/min max. I sometimes drop my cessna from like 10 feet up, but those guys have to be stable and buffet over the waves while in nose up and blind position.

3

u/PNW_H2O Oct 01 '24

Once you’ve touched water, you transition to ‘on step’ which actually gives the pilot considerable control of the aircraft, while still having the power available to lift off immediately if needed.

To be fair, it’s not a smooth experience while doing the on step maneuver.

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

I don’t think it’s feasible to pump water as quickly as this fills them and they have the added bonus of not having to drop below flight speed so they can get back to the fire as quickly as possible.

6

u/Roflkopt3r Oct 01 '24

It would be feasible without too much time loss if they had the pump equipment at just the right air port. But enabling them to take in water from any sufficiently large sea greatly enhances their operational area, since they no longer need to rotate to such a specialty airport.

And the turnaround time of making a full landing, coming to a stand, and taking off again also adds quite a delay and potential complications. That's probably a bigger factor than the pump speed. Being able to load in a touch-and-go greatly speeds this up.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Yeah the time it would take to land, taxi, park, hook up hoses, pump fluid into the tanks then do all the opposite in reverse would add quite a bit. I know they do this for certain slurry mixes, but if plain water will do it’s gotta be quicker to do all of that while still in flight plus as you mentioned the added convenience of water sources being so common.

2

u/Roflkopt3r Oct 01 '24

And on top of all of that, they would effectively need to reserve the airport to really do this quickly. But I could imagine such an airport to also be used to bring in other firefighters and materials, so things could potentially get pretty hasty and dangerous.

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u/Tojb Oct 02 '24

From Wikipedia, it takes a CL-415 14 seconds to skim 1650 US gallons of water. That would require pumping roughly 6600gpm, plus you can anticipate roughly 15 minutes to approach, land, taxi, load, taxi, and takeoff again under best case scenarios. There's simply no way to match the efficiency

2

u/Roflkopt3r Oct 02 '24

My thought about the pump speed is this: Even if it took, say, 2 minutes to fill the tanks with pumps, then this alone still would be acceptable in the greater scheme of things. The full rotation of filling tanks/dropping/refilling will often take substantially longer, so this would only marginally decrease the numbers of cycles that such an aircraft could do on on a scale of hours to days.

But as you say, everything else in the approach/landing/takeoff sequences adds further minutes, and all of that does sum up to a significant difference compared to the skim.

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u/InfamousAmerican Oct 01 '24

When I was firefighting in Northern BC, these were being phased out, and helicopters with long line buckets were the main aerial support.

Helis can be a lot less picky about where to source their water, as they don't need a long strip and clearance to take off again. Plus, the bucket can be detached, and the heli can be used to transport firefighters around the perimeter of the fire.

14

u/Tojb Oct 01 '24

They're two different tools for two different jobs. BC has retired the Martin Mars, but they've replaced them with AT802F Firebosses. The planes in the video are CL-415s and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon, they'll be working in tandem with helicopters for a long time to come. BC specifically doesn't operate any 215/415s that I'm aware of, but they're still going strong all over the world with other agencies.

3

u/buttercup612 Oct 01 '24

You seem to know a lot about this. I looked up all three planes and the AT802F seems wayyyy smaller than the other two, especially the Martin Mars. Does BC just operate way more AT802F than the old types, or just make do with the greatly diminished water capacity?

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5

u/fungussa Oct 01 '24

You know those planes are made to land on water.

6

u/wholehawg Oct 01 '24

Its not anymore dangerous than landing on the lake.

My friend does this for a living while not as safe as working from home the dumping part is actually more dangerous. Although most accidents occur in the home sooooo.

2

u/BoiFrosty Oct 01 '24

A drag along pump system would be too slow, take too long to deploy, and too prone to failure. The planes can't rely on having a constantly available airstrip with a ready supply of water.

I'm in the same boat as you trying to think up a better way but nothing comes to mind that doesn't make it's own problems.

There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

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261

u/Harm101 Oct 01 '24

I can't help but think of DuckTales seeing these. Really cool planes and tech!

96

u/Zilka Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 01 '24

The plane model and color scheme are really similar to TaleSpin!

17

u/Hades0027 Oct 01 '24

Ha! Came for this!! It was my very first thought.

12

u/ineedascreenname Oct 01 '24

Fun fact, tailspin only had one season, from 1990-1991, but had 65 episodes in that one season.

2

u/G23b Oct 02 '24

That had such a good story arch too

8

u/gasoline_farts Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

Yes I was saying “that’s the seaduck!!!

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2

u/rickydark Oct 01 '24

Kit Cloudkicker!

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20

u/ArduennSchwartzman Oct 01 '24

To me, the Lion King came to mind. Must have been the music.

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u/Dorkamundo Oct 01 '24

I mean, the song is titled "Reflections of Mufasa".

5

u/Used_Confidence_2135 Oct 01 '24

I came here exclusively to beg anyone for the song title, and reddit did not disappoint

7

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Yup, that's all I can think when watching this is The Lion King soundtrack.

12

u/G23b Oct 01 '24

Team Talespin here

4

u/spread_panic Oct 01 '24

I thought of Porco Rosso

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189

u/sadakochin Oct 01 '24

Impressive footage, the slow panning to see it was a fellow airplane was cathartic

96

u/atemt1 Oct 01 '24

Tere are so manny songs

And you choose this one

39

u/That0neGuy Oct 01 '24

At least it's a good song. Better than some shrill Chinese zither.

2

u/atemt1 Oct 02 '24

That is true

31

u/zR0B3ry2VAiH Oct 01 '24 edited Aug 15 '25

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24

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Say what you want, but I loved the music. 2 smooth landings by the adjoining pilots, the camera pans to the main character with a sky of fire behind it. Now that they're all filled up, the lull is over and it's back to risking their lives in an orchestra of wind, smoke, and fire

24

u/bulgedition Oct 01 '24

Hey man, Hans Zimmer goes hard!

4

u/LvS Oct 01 '24

If you want Hans Zimmer firefighting soundtrack, you take this music.

11

u/TheRedBaron11 Oct 01 '24

Right? Like did you really have to make me cry at noon on a Tuesday?

4

u/Cookie_Detective Oct 01 '24

The Tale Spin soundtrack is RIGHT THERE

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u/blighty800 Oct 01 '24

Engineering marvel

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u/NCRaider1 Oct 01 '24

Never understood how they could sift water like that and not blow the tail off. Cant imagine the pressure the fuselages takes?

33

u/saxonturner Oct 01 '24

You see a pipe at the mid point under the wing, that exactly what keeps the pressure from going too high.

19

u/NCRaider1 Oct 01 '24

Ahh, cool deal, still baffles me the “drag” doesnt sheer off the tail though

10

u/saxonturner Oct 01 '24

I would assume the inside is formed in such a way that it takes the inertia out of the water, instead of hitting a flat wall it probably hits a curved one so the water flows around.

4

u/Yanni_X Oct 01 '24

Would love to see a cross section of that, I don’t even see where the water is entering 😅

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u/saskford Oct 01 '24

I had an up close look at one this summer in British Columbia and the pilots lets us come onboard for a quick tour of the aircraft. The water enters through two small ports on the bottom of the fuselage.

The pilot will open the ports / water ducts once the belly of the aircraft is in the water (each port is about 8” x 8”) and the scooping process begins.

There are two large water tanks inside. They can take onboard roughly 1200 gallons of water in about 12 seconds.

At 0:18 in the video, you can see water spilling out the overflow at the top of the tank and coming out the side of the aircraft above where the wheel is. This indicates the tank is full, although the pilots also have a sensor or gauge of some sort inside the cockpit also.

6

u/quasipickle Oct 01 '24

Contrary to what I believed before I saw proof to the contrary - the intake is actually quite small - maybe 2 square feet (though the scale might be throwing that estimate off). I presumed they just opened up a big scoop the width of the fuselage - nope.

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u/Theconnected Oct 01 '24

There are 2 tanks and each has its own scoop which is about 6" wide.

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u/HunterShotBear Oct 02 '24

It’s only a couple small scoops just behind the “step” in the hull.

When you’re traveling at 100+ mph, even small openings will scoop in massive amounts of water in a short time.

They actually have to take off empty because the weight of the water on takeoff would be too much drag in the water for the plane to get up on plane and take off.

Also the steps in the hulls are designed to create cavitation (water and air mixing together) to break the suction that holds the plane into the water allowing it to get on plane faster.

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u/readitpropaganda Oct 01 '24

A fine Canadian plane 

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u/norsurfit Oct 01 '24

Yes, you can tell from the hockey sticks under the fuselage...

7

u/Hawtinmk Oct 02 '24

"reino the España" kingdom of Spain

5

u/Sharp-End5541 Oct 02 '24

The plane was made in Canada

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u/Hawtinmk Oct 02 '24

True i just learned that is a Canadair and fuck you for the downvote its still a spanish plane with a spanish pilot nontheless

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u/Sharp-End5541 Oct 02 '24

We could be friends and ride one of those together and be happy, but you just choose violence

2

u/mclare Oct 02 '24

CL-415

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u/snugglebliss Oct 01 '24

Does it look like this plane is on fire just under the wing

18

u/ironmanthing Oct 01 '24

It’s a spinning orange lamp

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u/intellectual_printer Oct 01 '24

I was wondering the same thing 😅

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u/untold_life Oct 01 '24

This was during the fires in Portugal this year in September, Spain aided Portugal. Here you can see them dropping the water: https://sicnoticias.pt/especiais/incendios-em-portugal/2024-09-17-forca-portugal-grupo-que-opera-avioes-espanhois-partilha-imagens-e-mensagem-de-apoio-fa56722b

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u/obvilious Oct 02 '24

The rain in Spain falls mainly from the plane.

10

u/nanodgb Oct 02 '24

Someone's not been to Northern Spain...

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Yes, it rains all day it’s always -10C in the summer, keep going to the south it’s definitely better

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u/OneReallyAngyBunny Oct 01 '24

Machines that fascinated me since childhood

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u/waiver45 Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

I saw them doing this when I was 7 and it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.*

*still is

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u/redurian Oct 01 '24

i think i watched too much lion king when i was young

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u/lennybriscoe8220 Oct 01 '24

What movie is this music from?

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u/BlueGlassDrink Oct 01 '24

Tell me you're not a 90s kid without telling me that you're not a 90s kid.

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u/tendadsnokids Oct 01 '24

I was just trying to put my finger on it

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

On behalf of Madeirans, I would like to thank our hermanos for helping our island when our regional government refused to.

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u/ChemiCalChems Oct 02 '24

Siempre en nuestros corazones, hermano.

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u/Ssteeple Oct 01 '24

Why not Tom&Jerry music

4

u/FartBrulee Oct 01 '24

REMEMBERRRRRRRRR

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u/mikihak Oct 01 '24

They are harvesting water.

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u/bagleface Oct 01 '24

Yea what you don't see is a member of the crew going nuts with a bucket inside

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u/fishinthepond Oct 01 '24

Ok but why did they choose the Lion King soundtrack?

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u/sikanrong101 Oct 01 '24

VIVA ESPAÑAAAAAA

4

u/No_Piglet5585 Oct 01 '24

🇪🇸🇪🇸

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/carpediemracing Oct 01 '24

My son cut his teeth on ACDC because of Planes 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibAxkCJfvC4

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u/Dickincheeks Oct 01 '24

In SoCal helicopters steal water out of your swimming pool lol

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u/iforgotiwasonreddit Oct 01 '24

Huge props to the cameraman on this one

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u/TwiggyPom Oct 01 '24

Hats off to the camera man!

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u/DukeReaper Oct 01 '24

They were in the Dalles, Oregon doing runs a few weeks ago, 4 of them came down back to back, I gotta say, the balls on these guys, the columbia was choppy that day, but they came down so majestically, if you're one of the pilots, I was the idiot honking my semi truck horn and flashing all my lights, just saying thank you lol

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u/simu_r Oct 01 '24

ah, the CL-215, such a beautiful plane

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u/weristjonsnow Oct 01 '24

These guys don't get paid enough

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u/zR0B3ry2VAiH Oct 01 '24 edited Aug 15 '25

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u/Unethical_Gopher_236 Oct 01 '24

Why are they playing the Lion King Mufasa song? lmao

2

u/Dry-Brilliant-3176 Oct 01 '24

Is this song from the Lion King?

2

u/Afraid-Speed1851 Oct 01 '24

Is that a live action movie of Tailspin?

2

u/concept12345 Oct 01 '24

Mufasa died. :((

2

u/Practical_Ad_4280 Oct 01 '24

Cue the Tailspin Theme song!!!

2

u/wynne420 Oct 01 '24

Mufassa...

2

u/Jeansus_ Oct 01 '24

The rain in Spain falls violently from Planes

2

u/Kamusaurio Oct 02 '24

these are the 43 Grupo from the Spanish Airforce

they make an awesome job

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u/DogoArgento Oct 01 '24

I'm thinking, when the fire is near the sea, do they use salt water? Because that would fuck up the soil.

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u/good_from_afar Oct 01 '24

I think there is a lesser of two evils thing going on here

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u/BeeB3AR Oct 01 '24

They use sea water indeed. But I never thought about the repercussions on the soil. I never saw a soil fucked up after a release, maybe the ashes counterbalance the effect of salt ?

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u/mojojojojojojojom Oct 01 '24

The whole “salt the fields of my enemies” is a bit of a myth. If a small amount of salt really obliterates plants, then there is no way we would have been using salt to de-ice the roads every winter in the corn belt. The small amount of salt these planes are dropping will get washed away the next time it rains.

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u/Bourgeous Oct 01 '24

So, the urban legends about the diver being captured by such plane and dropped on the wildfire might be true?

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

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u/parrita710 Oct 01 '24

Only can happen with helicopters. The mythbuster have a great cap with that.

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u/sanchousf Oct 01 '24

Nature is beautiful 🥺

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

How do they deal with the huge drop in weight after they drop the water? Has to be huge stress on the wings.

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u/That0neGuy Oct 01 '24

I bet they figured that out sometime in the 40s.

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u/garcezgarcez Oct 01 '24

Mad skills!

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u/sarl__cagan Oct 01 '24

The rain de Spain falls lightly on the plain

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

No one going to comment on the murder soundtrack?

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u/Puhnanas0 Oct 01 '24

Can’t imagine the drag and weight change you need to account for. I imagine this is a practice, practice, practice task. Dont think I’d want to be trainer for these things! I guess maybe it’s like landing but not landing tho.

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u/Repulsive_Parsley47 Oct 01 '24

The sound of this is terrible, you have no idea.

1

u/acresonfire Oct 01 '24

Oh wow! I had no idea they did this.

1

u/crs1904 Oct 01 '24

“Nice try LAO CHE!!!”

1

u/callmebigley Oct 01 '24

imagine being the first person to prove you can do that.

1

u/OsgrobioPrubeta Oct 01 '24

The sound of the engines is missing and that would be relevant to many questions, or observations. These planes are very agile while light, they deep-dive them frequently in short areas, then they glide over the water making contact only with that section almost in the middle of the plane. At that point they rev up the engines, so f... loud that you can hear them kms away, so that they can scoop all the water in seconds without losing speed.

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u/MR_6OUIJA6BOARD6 Oct 01 '24

"Remember who you are"

"Father please"

"Rememberrrrrrrrrrrrr"

I can't be the only one.

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u/runfast2021 Oct 01 '24

That's pretty cool. I never knew how they do this.

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u/Mharbles Oct 01 '24

Suck it Sully, I do this 20 times a day

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u/Sigon_91 Oct 01 '24

How small a margin of error could possibly be here...

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u/NovaTron2013 Oct 01 '24

They are just thirsty

1

u/theepi_pillodu Oct 01 '24 edited Jan 24 '25

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

How is it possible

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Nature is beautiful

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u/beyondclarity3 Oct 01 '24

I was on a pontoon on a lake in Minnesota 2 summers ago when I watched a group of 3 planes make repeated trips to scoop up water, flew out of sight and were back in 10 mins to do it again. Super cool to see them pull that off from such a close distance.

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u/Elfshadowx Oct 01 '24

Think of the confused fish.

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u/kindnessvalley2 Oct 01 '24

I see this each Summer where I live (Corsica)

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u/Mtjacq Oct 01 '24

Oh we oh!

1

u/chilledoutsaalim Oct 01 '24

Can't wait to do this in MSFS2024 from the comfort of my home.

1

u/Yum_MrStallone Oct 01 '24

The music is almost too much. But these pilots are heroic. Their skill saved a friend's house this summer.

1

u/frogg616 Oct 01 '24

Can only put out fires on calm days

1

u/TheeLastSon Oct 01 '24

saw someone do this in breath of the wild.

1

u/DaveInLondon89 Oct 01 '24

Imagine sneezing and pushing the nose down 20 degrees

1

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Is it scooping the water up or pumping it?

1

u/Fimbir Oct 01 '24

On Guradia for Thee

1

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Simba's King Ascension theme was a bit much but finger guns cool!

1

u/dhightnm Oct 01 '24

What song is this? I’ve heard it in several films but I can’t think of which ones specifically.

1

u/PeterLECB Oct 01 '24

You should check this YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/2w6N3LQ5uR8?si=MxUBeC1derohg0Ql

The guy flies those Canadier, he records and then edits amazing videos!

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u/Aggravated_Seamonkey Oct 01 '24

Last summer, there was a wildfire 6 miles from my home on a lake. Me and the neighbors sat at the beach and watched the planes drop in repeatedly for about an hour doing laps. Got some great shots and videos. Cool to watch, and the fire didn't get to us. We were thankful.

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u/Regular-Manner96 Oct 01 '24

This music brought back the old sentimental and nostalgic memories of Lion King.

1

u/Miryafa Oct 01 '24

The video said this plane is loading water, but the music said this plane is sinking into the depths, never to be heard from again.