Category: Fixed wing

A group of foresters, district rangers, and air operators assembled in Atlanta during the summer of 1962. There they laid the groundwork for the Appalachian Airtanker Project, which helped pave the way for the service to be the most frequent user of airtankers in the country.

The history of airtanker wildland firefighting in the Eastern United States has largely been lost to time, with most documents focusing on Western wildland fires. The first time an airtanker was used to fight wildfires is attributed to California’s Willows Flying Service at the request of the Mendocino National Forest’s FCO in 1955. Four years later, the California Division of Forestry would produce the first in-depth study on the efficacy of airtankers on forest fires. The study found airtanker effectiveness depended on fast dispatching action, reaching the fire while it was small, and good communication between ground and air forces.

Apart from a single-sentence mention of the Appalachian Airtanker Project on the NPS Wildland Fire Timeline, there is no mention of the project online. The only related documents that remain are newspaper clippings and letters found in the Cherokee National Forest and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park’s archives.

“This year, the Park Service and the Forest Service have a weapon new to this area — a firefighting airplane,” a 1962 archived clipping from the Knoxville News-Sentinel said. “The value of air attack on forest fires has been proved in the West. This spring, the U.S. Forest Service is conducting tests in this area.”

The project was the first use of airtankers for fire suppression in the nation’s Eastern states, according to USFS documents.

The project was created to lay the groundwork and study the feasibility of using a converted Navy TBM in fighting wildfires in the Appalachian mountain area.

The plane was based out of the McGhee-Tyson Air Force Base in Knoxville and cost $159 per flying hour, a pilot’s salary of $4.07 per hour, and around $50 per load of retardant. The project was managed by a fire control aide and regional air officer, and was staffed by a pilot and two laborers who were tasked with mixing and loading the retardants.

Specific guidelines were required to be met for every retardant drop. The TBM could not be used on the head of a hot, rolling brush or timber fire, or when winds exceeded 30 mph, or when visibility was less than one mile. Initial attack was authorized for fires that would cost over $700 to suppress or mop up without airtanker usage or in heavy-fuel fires with a medium to high rate of spread.

The project began on January 25, 1962 and continued through May 17 of the same year. Within that window, the Chestnut Ridge Fire ignited and burned in an extremely inaccessible area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Airtanker usage was credited for stopping the fire at only a third of its potential burned acreage. Park Superintendent Fred Overly would use the fire as a specific example for the project’s continuation and future airtanker usage in the Eastern U.S.

“Having seen what the airtanker can do in reducing burned areas to a minimum, we consider the continuation of this project amply justified,” Overly said in a letter to USFS Southern Region Fire Control Chief John Spring. “Without the three extremely effective drops made by Pilot Art Murray, this fire which finally burned 71.5 acres would most likely have burned 200 or more acres. The fire was contained very well by the air drops, and the use of the tanker was well justified.”

A number of related documents on the Appalachian Airtanker Project are posted on our DOCUMENTS page, and for a look at related studies in California, check out the 1959 Fighting Forest Fires with Airtankers report by H.P.Reinecker and C.B.Phillips  Heads up — that one is a 154-page 109MB PDF file.

NOTE: for a serious treasure trove of TBM and other aircraft of this vintage, check out Geoff Goodall’s aviation site.