Remembering the two June 3, 2012 air tanker crashes

Tankers 11 and 55. Two fatalities.

T-55 after landing with malfunctioning landing gear
T-55 after landing with malfunctioning landing gear, June 3, 2012. Still image from video.

I can still hear it. I picked up the phone nine years ago and a voice said:

“Have you heard”?

It was Walt Darran June 3, 2012. Knowing that he had been a long-time air tanker pilot and advocate for aerial firefighting safety, my mind raced through any recent news I might have heard about firefighting aircraft.

I said, “What’s going on?”

“Two crashes.”

Walt went on to tell me that two P2V air tankers had crashed that day.

Tanker 11 operated by Neptune Aviation, was working on the White Rock fire which started in Nevada northeast of Caliente, but the fire burned across the state line into Iron County in Utah, which is where the aircraft went down. We learned later that the two pilots on board were killed, Capt. Todd Neal Topkins and First Officer Ronnie Edwin Chambless, both from Boise.

May they rest in peace.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s probable cause report on Tanker 11 concluded that while preparing to drop retardant the flight crewmembers “did not properly compensate for the wind conditions while maneuvering”. The aircraft impacted the ground before it reached the location for the intended drop.

The second crash that day involved Minden’s Tanker 55 which had a problem with the landing gear. Only one main landing gear and the nose gear were able to be lowered and locked, leaving one main landing gear up or not locked. The pilots made a great landing at Minden, Nevada, considering the condition of the aircraft, on just two of the three landing gears as an Air-Crane orbited nearby ready to drop water if it caught fire. There were no reports of injuries to the flight crew. As far as I know Tanker 55 never flew again.

Two years later on June 15, 2014 Minden’s last remaining flyable air tanker, T-48, was involved in an incident at Fresno, California. While working on the Shirley Fire near Lake Isabella, the 53-year old P2V experienced a problem with the hydraulic system and diverted to the long runway at Fresno. According to Mike Ferris, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, the nose wheel collapsed upon landing. There were no injuries to the crew.

By the end of the day there were only nine large air tankers left on US Forest Service exclusive use contracts. They were all grounded temporarily in consideration of the crews flying and maintaining the remaining aircraft.

A few days later the Associated Press quoted Tom Harbour, the USFS National Director of Fire and Aviation Management, about the deteriorating fleet of air tankers:

They are aging, and we know we need to replace them,” said Tom Harbour, the U.S. Forest Service’s fire and aviation operations director. “That’s why the chief (of the Forest Service) sent Congress an air tanker strategy a couple months ago that said we needed to modernize the fleet.”

Harbour said the agency has concluded that the nation needs up to 28 of the next generation of air tankers, those that can fly faster and carry more retardant.

This year there are 18 large air tankers on exclusive use USFS contracts, as each decade, the fires become larger.Average-size-of-US-wildfires-by-decade-A few weeks before the two June 3, 2012 crashes, Tanker 11 was featured on the cover of Wildfire magazine. Here is what we wrote June 6, 2012:


Wildfire cover, May-June, 2012The May/June issue of Wildfire magazine that arrived in mailboxes several weeks ago featured a cover photo of Tanker 11 dropping on a fire in Texas last year. This is the same air tanker that crashed on Sunday, killing the two-person crew.

I don’t believe in curses, fate, or jinxes, but this reminds me of the Sports Illustrated “cover jinx”, in which a person who appears on the cover of the magazine is supposed to be jinxed or will experience bad luck.

That issue of the magazine features an excellent article by Walt Darran, in which Mr. Darran, who has a great deal of experience in the aviation and air tanker industry, writes about the future of the air tanker program. You should read the article which is online at the IAWF website, but here are some of the points he makes.

  • In spite of what you may hear from the U.S. Forest Service and the still unreleased RAND Corporation report, we need a mix of various types of air tankers in our tool box, not just C-130Js.
  • Having enough air tankers for fast, effective initial attack while fires are small is important. Taking into account the increased fire activity, Mr. Darran says we should have “40 to 50 or more Type 1, 2, and 3 air tankers”.
  • The state of California’s air tanker program could be a model, with Government-Owned, Contractor-Operated air tankers working side by side with a fleet of helicopters that are Government-Owned, Government-Operated.
  • Since it is unrealistic to expect operators of expensive aircraft to maintain the availability of air tankers and crews on a Call When Needed contract, a retainer should be supplied to cover costs of maintaining the aircraft airworthiness and crew currency so it is available when we need it. “Imagine SEAL Team 6 on a CWN contract” Mr. Darran wrote.

(end of the 2012 article)


When you have time, read through the series of articles on Wildfire Today tagged Tanker 11. When we created FireAviation.com in November, 2012, we picked it there under the tag T-11.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Darren.

The demise of the Minden Air BAe-146 program

Minden Air Corp aircraft BAe-146 T-46 T-55
Left to right: Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google Street View, April, 2015. Tanker 55 was damaged in 2012 when it landed with only partially lowered landing gear possibly due to a hydraulic system failure.

For more than 15 years Minden Air Corp has been working on the concept of transitioning from their Korean War vintage P2V air tankers to a jet, the BAe-146. They acquired two or three of them and had nearly completed their work on what was going to be Air Tanker 46 when they ran out of money. Problems with hydraulic systems led to landing gear failures on two P2Vs, T-48 and T-55, taking out Minden’s last two operational air tankers, which no doubt affected their incoming revenue stream. Thankfully there were no serious injuries reported in those two accidents, unlike the crash of the company’s T-99 on October 3, 2003 that killed the two pilots, Carl Dolbeare , 54 and John Attardo, 51. A lookout staffing a fire tower saw that P2V fly into a cloud bank as it was preparing to land at San Bernardino. It did not emerge and shortly thereafter they saw what appeared to be smoke at the top of the cloud. The NTSB described it as “controlled flight into mountainous terrain”. The two pilots had a combined total of more than 15,000 flight hours.

In October AvGeek filmed a report about Minden Air Corp at the Minden Airport 45 miles south of Reno, Nevada.

Tim Cristy, Flight Operations for Minden, said in the video when explaining why the conversion of T-46 came to a stop, “We ran out of money. Well, the engineering got expensive as all get-out”.

We attempted to call Mr. Christy and Minden’s CEO, Len Parker, to get more information but the number we had used before no longer works.

The T-46 project had progressed to conducting a grid test, which involves dropping retardant over a grid of more than 3,000 cups on the ground. In the video Mr. Cristy said the test went well. We are not sure if the aircraft ever received a Supplemental Type Certificate from the FAA which is a major hurdle to overcome in addition to approval from the Interagency Airtanker Board. After that they would have had to deal with the bewildering and unpredictable Forest Service contracting system before they ever received a dime from their large monetary investment.

retardant tank inside Minden's T-46 air tanker
The retardant tank inside Minden’s T-46. Screenshot from the AvGeek video.

The video below, published June 17, 2014, shows T-46 making its first test drops of water and retardant.

minden air corp bae-146 p2v air tanker 46
Tanker 46, a second BAe-146, and Tanker 55 (a P2V) at the Minden Air Corp facility at the Minden, NV airport. Photo: Google, June, 2018.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Brian.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.

CV-580s and CL-415s at Medford

Above: Air tanker 52, a CV-580, departs Medford, Oregon for the Bybee Creek Fire in Crater Lake National Park. Photo by Tim Crippin.

Tim Crippin took these photos of CL-415s and CV-580s at the Medford, Oregon Airport August 1 and 2. Some of them were working on the Bybee Creek Fire in Crater Lake National Park which has burned 720 acres since it started on July 28.

Air Tankers 261 and 262
Air Tankers 261 and 262 At Medford, Oregon this week. Photo by Tim Crippin. He said they were on the Million Air ramp waiting to go to the Bybee Creek Fire in Crater Lake National Park.
Air tanker 55
Air tanker 55, a CV-580, arrives at Medford, Oregon to reload. Photo by Tim Crippin.
Air tanker 261
Air tanker 261, a CL-415, at Medford, Oregon departs for the Bybee Creek Fire. Photo by Tim Crippin.

U.S. air tankers in Alaska

palmer alaska air tankers
A photo of six air tankers at Palmer, Alaska on June 18, 2015, showing T-260, T-160, T-55, T-52, T-47 and T-43 (photo courtesy of John Bell). Click to enlarge.

In addition to the Canadian air tankers being assigned to Alaska (seven recently that we know of) there are three air tankers under contract with the U.S. Forest Service in the state, according to information we received from today from Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the agency:

  1. T-160 Aero-Flite RJ85
  2. T-10 Neptune BAe-146
  3. T-101 Aero Air MD87
BAe-146 and RJ85
A BAe-146, T-10, and an RJ85, T-160, on the BLM-Alaska Fire Service Tanker Base tarmac, May 23, 2015, on Ladd Air Field at Fort Wainwright.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Mike and John.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.

NTSB report on the crash of Tanker 11

Air Tanker 45
Air Tanker 45, similar to Tanker 11, on final to drop on the Whoopup Fire near the South Dakota/Wyoming state line in 2011. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

The National Transportation Safety Board probable cause report on the June 3, 2012 crash of Tanker 11 concluded that while preparing to drop retardant on the White Rock fire near the Utah/Nevada state line, the flight crewmembers “did not properly compensate for the wind conditions while maneuvering”. The aircraft impacted the ground before it reached the location for the intended drop, causing the death of pilots Todd Tompkins and Ron Chambless.

A photographer got some pictures of the tanker as it was attempting to make the drop (below). It is likely that the pilots jettisoned the retardant when it became obvious they were too low.

tanker 11 crash
Tanker 11 before the crash. Photo from NTSB.

The P2V, operated by Neptune Aviation, was about to make its second drop on the fire that day. Shortly before the crash it made a dry run over the target area, then when lining up for the drop on the next pass took a different path, which was lower, and made a wider right turn, according to the report.

T11 flight pathThe same day that Tanker 11 crashed, another P2V, Tanker 55 operated by Minden, had a mechanical failure and landed at Minden, Nevada with a main landing gear not fully extended. The aircraft was heavily damaged, but there were no serious injuries. The landing was recorded on video.

In June of this year Tanker 48, another Minden P2V, landed with a collapsed nose gear. Thankfully there were no reported injuries.

We covered the 2012 accidents on Wildfire Today (before Fire Aviation was created).

On June 26, 2010 air tanker 44, a P2V operated by Neptune Aviation also experienced a hydraulic failure upon landing, had no brakes, and went off the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (JeffCo) in Colorado (map). Both pilots self-evacuated and were walking around when the fire apparatus arrived to put out a fire in one of the engines. Neptune repaired the aircraft and put it back into service.

The NTSB released a nine-page Factual Report on the crash of Tanker 11. Below is the complete text of the one-page probable cause report, released September 24, 2014:

****

14 CFR Public Use
Accident occurred Sunday, June 03, 2012 in Modena, UT
Probable Cause Approval Date: 09/24/2014
Aircraft: LOCKHEED P2V-7, registration: N14447
Injuries: 2 Fatal.

NTSB investigators either traveled in support of this investigation or conducted a significant amount of investigative work without any travel, and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this public aircraft accident report.

Tanker 11 departed the tanker base to conduct its second fire retardant drop of the day in the same location. Upon arriving in the fire traffic area, Tanker 11 followed the lead airplane into the drop zone, which was located in a shallow valley 0.4 mile wide and 350 feet deep. The lead airplane flew a shallow right turn onto final and then dropped to an altitude of 150 feet above the valley floor while approaching the intended drop zone. While making the right turn onto final behind the lead airplane, Tanker 11’s right wing tip collided with terrain, which resulted in a rapid right yaw and subsequent impact with terrain. The wreckage created a 1,088-foot-long debris field, and a postimpact fire ensued.

Two witnesses took photographs of the accident sequence photos, and an examination of these photographs showed that the lead airplane was positioned ahead of the tanker throughout the flight; however, the orientation of the lead airplane compared to the orientation of Tanker 11 indicated that Tanker 11 did not directly follow the lead airplane’s path to the final drop course. Rather, it was about 700 feet left of the lead airplane’s path and made a wider right turn as it attempted to align with the final drop course. The accident flight crewmembers had previously flown nearly the same exact drop and the lead pilot cautioned them about tailwind conditions during the flight; however, the wider turn suggests that they did not properly compensate for the wind conditions while maneuvering. In addition, the previous flight was conducted at an altitude above the ridgeline. GPS evidence indicates that the accident flight was conducted below the ridgeline, which would have made it more difficult to detect the rising terrain during the wider turn. A review of the airplane’s cockpit voice recorder audio information revealed that the flight crew did not recognize or attempt to correct the reduced clearance between Tanker 11 and the rising terrain until about 2 seconds before impact.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

  • The flight crew’s misjudgment of terrain clearance while maneuvering for an aerial application run, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain. Contributing to the accident was the flight crew’s failure to follow the lead airplane’s track and to effectively compensate for the tailwind condition while maneuvering.