Fire Bomber

We got to go visit the Forest Service base at the local airport on a home school field trip.

As part of the trip, we got to tour one of the "Fire Bomber" airplanes that drop the slurry on the fires. Very cool.
The airplane is a P-3 Orion, previously used by the Navy to hunt submarines, then converted to a slurry bomber. It is huge! Fully loaded it weighs 100,000 lbs!


The inside is pretty much stripped bare.


Prescott is one of various bases around the country where these things can fly in, load up and fly out again. They can re-load the slurry in 11 minutes.