The Elephant Butte Fire burned about 50 acres on steep terrain southwest of Denver two miles northwest of Evergreen Lake, Colorado. It was reported around 3 p.m. on Monday July 13 and the spread was stopped at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday July 14 by good work from firefighters in the air and on the ground, with a big assist from rain.
Skippyscage.com got some great photos of the aircraft battling the blaze, both while they were over the fire and at the air tanker base at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (JEFFCO) northwest of Denver. With his permission, we will showing you some of his shots in five installments.
Today we are featuring Tanker 02, a BAe-146 operated by Neptune Aviation, N474NA.
Click here to see the series of five installments of photos of aircraft on the Elephant Butte Fire. They will be posted daily from July 17 through July 21, 2020.
Here are more photos of Tanker 02 from the archives.
This next one was taken when the U.S. Forest Service was experimenting with using an F-15 as a lead plane. (kidding!)
It might interest people to know that these BAe-146 aircraft, converted to bring fire retardant to Colorado forests, have flown the Colorado skies before.
They were part of a fleet of Bae-146’s operated by Air Wisconsin under contract for United Airlines, in the livery of United. They carried thousands of passengers into Colorado ski destinations like Aspen, Eagle/Vail, and Steamboat Springs/Yampa Valley. Many of them carried 100 passengers at a time into Colorado’s favorite destinations throughout the year, and in nearly any weather.