Interview

That includes air tankers, helicopters, smoke jumper aircraft . . . just about every phase of it. Plus we operate three aircraft of our own that are infra-red, scanner-equipped, for road-mapping and detecting fires.

The MAFS (the modular airborne firefighting systems) program in the United States falls under my responsibility.

We have eight of them and they fall under my jurisdiction from an operational aspect and, of course, they just sort of let me have the administrative end as well as the operational. I have handled the whole program ever since it was started in the Forest Service.

We work well with the military units. We started off with the regular Air Force and they had some problems somewhat similar to what Bill’s running into now in that people move around, they’re transferred, they are only with you for a short period of time.

Our agreement with our regular air force is that they will provide two training crews for every MAFS unit we have. This required keeping about 16 crews trained and it became quite a problem.

We would train some fellows in April or May and then by June or July they had transferred and were gone, so we would have to retrain. It really became a training chore throughout the year.

That is why, when we could, we moved into using the National Guard quite a bit because they are sort of permanent. So that is where we ended up and we feel very happy and very comfortable about it now.

JS: How does MAFS fit into the overall aerial firefighting operation as you have it in North America?

RC: Well, we contract for 44 air tankers and our sister agencies (Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs) contract for another 16 air tankers. So we have a total of about 60 air tankers in the fleet.

Our agreement is that we will help one another in any kind of fire situation.

JS: These air tankers are specifically for fire fighting or for other operations as well?

RC: They are specifically for firefighting in the USA. The aircraft are old, they are ex-military primarily and have been converted with exterior and interior tanks.

They are all in a restricted category which means they are not available for hire other than for a government contract or whatever or by the person that owns the machine.

JS: What sort of types do you use?

RC: Well, we’re using P-2Vs, B-17s, the old private PB-4Y2s. We’re also into the Douglas world now with the DC-4s, DC-6s the DC-7s. Those are probably our primary aircraft, the DC-4, 6 and 7s, plus the Neptune, the P-2Bs.

But they are all modified, with this external tank depth and restricted categories, so they have very little use for anything else other than air tanker work.

So, we are sort of obligated to those people to use that equipment.

JS: They’re operated by various agencies . . . do they actually operate them themselves or do they contract?

RC: These are all contracted for from private business, and commercial operators.

JS: What is the MAFS system, what has it been designed to do, and how does it attempt to accomplish it?

RC: The system is a retardant system that works on compressed air and fluid and is designed to disperse the fluid via compressed air we can drop the entire load in one shot or we can drop two increments or three increments.

I talk in US gallons always, that is 3000 US gallons which I believe is 11,000 litres and we can vary our drop for the one 3000-gallon drop two 1500-gallon drops or three 1000-gallon drops.

It consists of five tanks, 500 gallons each and two tubes running down each side of the system that hold 500 gallons. So that’s where you get 3000 gallons – the tubes are filled also.

We can vary the pressure on the system to force the fluid out at different rates. At low pressure, the fluid comes out slower. We turn the pressure up and the fluid comes out faster, so we can vary the coverage on the ground. We can also do that by varying the speed of the aircraft. The system itself weighs 10,500 lbs. The way it operates is you put the fluid in the tank, and then we have a sphere which we charge with compressed air and before we discharge the system, we direct the air that is in the sphere on top of the fluid. Then we just open the valve at the end of the nozzle and everything is pushed out.

So we have different switches so that we can select different tanks. That’s how we can vary the different capacities.

The actual drop is done by someone in the cockpit, but there is a person in the aft compartment of the aircraft that sits at the control panel and he sets up whatever kind of a drop you want set. He will select the tanks and select the pressure. The pressure ranges from 10 psi to 40 psi.

That is determined by looking at the fire, the type of fuel, and determining how long a line you want to lay on the fire.

If you have light fuels, you may want to lay a nice long line. If you have heavy, dense fuels, you want everything out at once. Try to get it on at a short distance to have better coverage.

JS: What is the command and control procedure in the US? Who calls the aircraft out, who directs its operations and how does the pilot decide how he will play it?

RC: We have a distinct fire organisation set up for various sizes of fires.

The very small fire can be pulled by one of the district rangers who would be the fire boss. Whatever he said on that fire happened. If it gets beyond the district into the forest level then the forest supervisor will run in a different fire organisation with perhaps a different fire boss. But there is always a fire boss.

Once the fire is large enough he has what they call a line boss. He is the guy who really gets out there and does the hard work. The fire boss plans it with various people while the line boss carries out the various suppression activities.

If a fire got to a size where they needed help and they could not handle it with their resources and their neighbours, in a region they have what they call a co-ordinators office. They will go to that office and say they need help – an extra 300 men, three or four air tankers, two large helicopters and this type of business.

Then it is up to the coordinator to know where the resources are within his regional boundary. If that fire keeps going to the point where they exhaust the available regional resources, then they are directed to go to BIFC – Boise Interagency Fire Centre.

JS: That is you?

RC: Yes, that is where we are at.

Say that this region has come in and Said: “We’ve got a helluva problem here and we need seven air tankers of 3000-gallon capacity”. The first BIFC does is put out the feelers for seven 3000-gallon air tankers. If they only come up with five 3000 gallons and two 2000 gallons, they will call that region back and ask if they will accept that. If they accept that they will ship it. If they will not accept it and still want 3000-gallon tankers, it is our job at that time to say: “Do you want us to activate MAFS?”

If they think the situation over and decide they cannot accept the 2000-gallon tankers we, knowing that there are no other 3000-gallon air tankers around, will honour that and call the sixth army and ask them to activate two MAFS ships and go to the region that needs help.

When MAFS or any of the air tanker programs get on a fire we have what we call a lead plane pilot. He is actually the air tanker boss. He bosses all the air tankers in the air. He is also in the air and most of those guys are ex-tanker pilots and we also try to make them very aware of the MAFS program.

We are always bringing these lead plane pilots into the training program year after year to give them the experience.

The MAFS crew will report to that lead plane pilot who will direct them in, show them the target he wants drops on, what pressures to set up, the whole thing – usually in a ground briefing – then they will go in and make their run.

Our liaison will bring in someone to show them the fire problem, where they plan to be worked, what some of the problems are, what communications frequencies, those types of things.

We also like to debrief if we can after the day’s work to see if there are any problems.

We take pretty firm control of that whole situation.

JS: The lead pilot decides where he is going to make his drop – or works with the line boss.

RC: Because the lead pilot is down in a canyon most of the time, or somewhere he does not always have communication with everybody in the world.

We will often put an aircraft up above these fires with a position we call air attack boss. He has direct communication with the line boss and works for him. If the line boss says he needs three air tankers in one spot and two in another or whatever, the air attack boss communicates with the lead pilot on the tankers then they lay the line with retardant.

JS: What does the lead pilot, or any pilot, do when he is making a drop? What is the actual flight operation – a particular approach, level, speed, what happens with terrain, smoke obscuring terrain, exit from the area and that type of thing?

RC: That is one of the jobs of the lead plane pilot or the air attack boss. They are often the same person. He has to take a look at the area where they want the retardant and determine what the best routes in and out are. He also has to feel out the air, check the visibility and all those things so that we do not lead somebody in there and get him in trouble. All the time through that area he is communicating with the air tankers going into that area, letting them know what altitude is through a saddle, what the visibilities are, the turbulence, what the proper turns are for exit routing out of the areas so he does not turn up a blind canyon. We have had air tankers turn up blind canyons.

JS: And being able to climb out?

RC: And not been able to climb out. We a definite responsibility for that man driving that aeroplane and especially the C-130 aircraft because these guys are not as familiar with the fire game as some of our old contract air tanker pilots.

We have been operating for eight years now and have flown a few thousand hours with the 130 guys and not had any problems.

We have not had any accidents. We have had a guy brush a wingtip in the trees once or so.

The one thing that shuts an air tanker program off for us is winds. We have a 35-mile-an-hour wind condition and when it reaches that level, we usually shut the program off Of course visibility is another very restrictive thing. If you set low visibility due to smoke in the area and you just cannot fly and cannot see, well we will shut an operation down due to that.

JS: In still conditions, can the area still become obscured by the smoke?

RC: Yes. That is why we have infrared aircraft to go in and find out where the fire is at when it gets so darned smokey and you cannot see anything. But we are not operating air tankers then. We are usually operating heli-tankers where they can operate in a lesser visibility area. So that is one thing that we do have. We have the capability of using different resources and getting a job done.

Every guy flies an aeroplane a little bit differently and some of them have it really under control, and some of them will slip off at 10 or 15 miles an hour, and sometimes that 10 or 15 knots will mean an awful lot.

And not all these guys are as good as Bill Mattes. Bill knows where the ground is . . . that is the big secret. There are a lot of guys that would like to fly a MAFS mission, but I will be very honest, we have trained a lot of people. . . some guys know where the ground is, some people know how to take that aircraft and manoeuvre that close to the ground and do a job and still be safe. Then there are other people who do not and the people that do not you have to eliminate. Bill has selected some good people to do the job.

JS: So what is the command or organisation structure in Australia?

RC: Well, we will start with the call-out procedures. Basically, the Victorian Forestry Commission will determine where and why it is required.

JS: At the moment it’s purely a Victorian Operation?

RC: Basically, the whole operation is a joint Commonwealth-Victorian evaluation of the system with the Victorian Forestry Commission. The CSIRO is involved in its evaluation of it also.

But the VFC decide when they’re going to call us out. They then go through our operational command, at Glenbrook, who then contact us through the base HQ to call out.

Prior to this, however, we have three stages of standby which are given to us each day according to the weather reports received.

The first one is a 3-hour standby, so the crews can be on a 3-hour standby to go down to the fire area.

The second one is an hour standby.

They roughly equate a high fire danger day, up to an extreme fire danger day.

And the last one is when they do actually call us out to standby to base in Victoria and that is a critical day or a day deemed by the Forestry Commission to be fire ban day.

We’d be in Victoria on one of three bases. We’ve got one in the west at Hamilton, one at Mangalore in the centre, and one in the east at East Sale. So they are the 3 bases we’re operating from.

From there, once we’ve been deployed, we’ll be taking a couple of ground crew with us, plus one crew which will be on standby for a week period at a time.

Depending on the severity of the fire that may eventuate, if we need to work from first light till last light, we’ll be calling on two crews, because of the nature of the flying. We’ve cut our crew duty day to a maximum of 7 hours flying a day in a 12-hour day so to cover for a full day you need 2 crews.

There is only one set of equipment. They go down with the aircraft. Normally we’d only use one crew for a normal fire.

Once at the base, we would be briefed by the Forestry Commission and the aircraft captain, who in this case would be the sort of liaison, he’d be briefed by the FC where the fire was and this is where we would be differing from the American system, in that we believe there is not the experience here in ex-tanker pilots to be able to direct us into a fire.

So we’re going to what we call fire control aircraft. He will have a qualified forester on board who will be orbiting above the fire area.

So five minutes out from the fire area, after we’ve called the aircraft, we’d call him, and he would then give us details of where he wanted the retardant dropped.

He will be in contact with the fire boss on the ground.

We will also have some contact with the fire boss. However, we will not be using him unless, for some reason, the fire control aircraft is not available.

So we’re working, as a rule, with the fire control aircraft.

He will, in consultation with the fire boss, decide where he wants the drop to be made. What sort of pressure the drop will be, and how many increments the drop will be?

We will then ask him to stay a minimum of 500 feet above us from our circuit height.

Normally we would operate at about roughly 1000 feet above the terrain.

This has of course got to be fairly flexible because of the terrain you’re flying in.

We would then make a dummy run, or a dry run, onto the fire, maintaining a higher altitude than we would in the actual running.

At this stage, we’d be looking for the same things the leader aircraft would be doing for us. That is a safe run in direction, turbulence, visibility and probably, the most important thing, an escape route out of the area . . . obstacles in the area. . . snags, tree snags, which are probably our biggest danger.

If the directions that have been given to us by the fire control aircraft don’t line up with what we believe is safe, we will, on the decision of the captain, using his initiative, either decide on another drop, another direction or just cancel the drop.

Because, as I said, the experience of these people is not the same as the leader aircraft, they don’t know the area.

On the dry run, we would also tell the fire control aircraft when we believe we’re over the target.

He will say yeah that’s right on, that’s right where I want it. He’d be above us. So he’d be looking down on us, as we went down on it. He’d be looking down on us and we’d say we’re going to drop now. He’ll either direct us past or 100 yards left right or further ahead.

We would then come in and do a weather up which is, depending on the number of increments we’ll need, do a run on the fire.

Go back and reload. Basic flying altitude is about 150 feet which is, depending on the trees, about 100 feet above the trees. That’s the optimum sort of height we’re looking at.

The speed is around 130 to 140 knots.

This is very slow when you consider our power-off stall speed, and a 45-degree bank turn, which is the maximum turn we can do with every• thing hanging out, is around 123 knots with the heavyweights we’re operating at. So we’re going down normally at about 130 to 140 knots. But of course, there is a little bit of fat built in there because you normally strike metal when you come in for your drop.

The big thing is, one of the safety things when you are dropping on the side of a hill, for example, you’re always doing an ascending turn, or paralleling the wings with ground so that you don’t snag the wing tip.

You are doing, in some cases turning, and some of the examples they gave us in the States, up to 45 degrees angle of bank. In fact you are operating the aircraft to its maximum.

But you are operating fairly close to the limits of the aircraft.

JS: If you are going to be dropping the stuff ahead of the pilot, presumably you are going to be flying into the smoke.

BM: Well as I said, this is what we do in our dry run. We check for visibility. The best thing to do actually is to fly above the fire, because you can see down better than you can see through. You’re slant range through a fire is a lot less than it is looking down. So you have a perusal above it then go down, do the dry run, and at a reasonably safe altitude, check all visibility. If it is no good, then it is a matter of saying, sorry, you’re going to have to find somewhere else. We can’t do it in that area.

From there on, the fire boss on the ground will then direct the fire control aircraft to direct us to do another drop, if he wants one. If not, then we go home and pack up.

We then have contact with the mixing base and we tell them if we are coming In, what sort of drop, if we are going to do another drop, they are prepared for us to do another refuel.

JS: What is the refuel, or refill sequence and timing on the ground?

BM: Well the system is designed basically to around about 9 minutes.

RC: Well, we like to see about 8 minutes turnaround time, but the pumping capacity of the pumps here in Victoria are a little slower than what we have. It is at the experimental stage, the evaluation stage. I did time one, and from the time they shut the engines down, to the time they started back up again, it was 12 minutes. So that is pretty darned good timing.

JS: So you do actually shut down.

BM: We do actually shut down. We have actually talked about not shutting down, however, we are working with people who are not used to working around aircraft and the dangers involved. And the time saved by closing down the engines compared with closing down is not worth it. The risks of having people working around a hot aircraft.

JS: The refuelling is done by RAAF or FC people?

BM: FC handle the mixing up to the aircraft. We have a ground crew working with FC on the ground to refill aircraft, but our loadmasters are responsible for the loading within the aircraft. We have one loadmaster operating the control panel and the other one checking on refilling heights and that sort of thing.

RC: Each time they reload, they reload both retardant and air (compressed).

JS: Where does the CSIRO come into this, what relationship do they have?

BM: Well, I’m at the operating level of it, so I don’t know much about it, and John Nichols would be the man to see about it. He is in Canberra. But Australia is, I think, just a different project altogether. I’m not aware of the full implications of it. However, they are interested in the MAFS aircraft and what it will do. But it is not actually Aquarius where their interest lies in this particular one. It’s the actual MAFS operation. I think they are, from the way I’m looking at it, looking after the Commonwealth’s interests in the evaluation of it.

JS: The impetus for this particular MAFS operation has come out of the VFC, I think the premier was on a tour of the States and he pushed the ideas and it developed from there. How did it develop from your side, how it first come through, how the decision was made up? I gather the system is being provided free of charge on a loan basis. Can you fill me in as to how that came about?

RC: Well I do not know what official channels it followed here in Australia but I was contacted by the Victorian Forestry Commission and they had a preliminary interest in MAFS. They wanted to know what the responsibilities would be of them borrowing a unit or two during the fire season and how this possibly might take place. This was the initial contact.

When we got talking about dollars, that seemed to curtail the possibility of a couple of units. Also, I extended an invitation to them to come to America to participate in the MAFS training program last May. If they could come up with an Australian aircraft and two crews, we felt that possibly at that time maybe they could be trained well and take a MAFS unit back home with them.

As it turned out Bill Mattes and Geoff Kubank (another RAAF aircraft captain) came to America and went through the MAFS training program with us. We could not provide them with a unit at that time to take back with them, but it was agreed that they would like to borrow one during their fire season.

That was in May, so they were out of the fire season here, they did not have a need for it, but they wanted to use it during our winter months which coincides with us because our need is usually over by about mid-October.

JS: Does that mean there is a possibility in the longer term for hiring these North American units for our fire season here on a regular basis?

RC: I think, very definitely, that an agreement can be made between the Australian Government and the US that there could be a loan of one or two units or whatever if Australia felt they needed it during the fire season because there is not conflict with our need at this time.

JS: How would they transport it down here?

RC: Well, we will ship them over by our military MATS service. They were in a 141 and were shipped to go in various different units at different times, but they all got here within two weeks of each other, so we felt very good about it.

So that all worked out quite well, and I would say that if this test evaluation proves successful, and the Australian Government comes to the States and asked to borrow a couple of units annually until they wanted to buy their own, or whatever, if they thought it was feasible to pay that expense to ship and return every year, well I am sure we could work out an agreement to do just that.

JS: As you are no doubt well aware, there are a lot of foresters, be they reactionary or be they realistic is a question of course, who are not convinced that aerial operations are as good as they are claimed to be. Every time we have a bad bushfire season here, we have a swag of letters to the editor saying that we ought to have aerial fire bombers, as if that is the complete and total answer, and is the only way to contain bush fires. The main grips amongst our people here seems to be that the bush fire brigade is voluntary, highly trained but nevertheless voluntary, and its operations are run on a shoestring. They have got ground tankers there, trucks that are 20 and 30 years old, and their big thing is that if we are going to spend this amount of money with aerial operations, they should pump that money into our equipment and training on the ground where the money could be spent as well or better, What is your experience to that, and what is your reaction to that on the North American scene?

RC: Well, I will be very honest with you. I believe that you will find hard-nosed foresters that from the ground aspect will say just what you said – why don’t they buy me a new tanker or why don’t they buy me this, why don’t they buy me that, or let me train somebody and I’ll get the job done.

And they have a very good point. Aircraft and air tankers are not the answer to everything. They have a place in the fire suppression scheme, they are just a tool in the scheme to be used properly. We use aircraft for initial attack, primarily in the fire service in the US and in those areas where we cannot set men and equipment within a certain time range. And that time range is judged on the value of the resources involved.

If the timber has a high value, that is one value. If there are residents in there, that is another value and a need for immediate action. So various things will dictate to us what type of tool we want to use in this fire area.

Only you people in Australia can determine: “Yes, it is worth it, we have forestry resources that are worth the purchase of a MAFS unit for a fast initial attack in those high-value areas, or yes we need a MAFS unit for a fast initial attack in residential areas, or to save villages or in these fast-moving fires, and try and fireproof around the villages. ” I cannot say. I know that we have gone through all these trials and tribulations and we found a way to utilise aircraft as a tool to supplement the ground firefighting forces and we have found a way to do it successfully.

There is very little resentment when you dispatch an air tanker where there is a tank truck trapped by fire and the tanker just squelches that fire around it and gets them out of there, saves them, whatever. All of a sudden you have made an ally. It just seems like we have done this in our outfits. People really rely on the air tanker to get in there and pull down an area that is really hard or to help reinforce the fire line.

I think that is something that Australia is going to have to work at, learning how to utilise this tool, and the strategy and tactical use of this tool is very important. It is one thing to point out a target, but it is another thing to really know enough about the fire behaviour and what you can do with the aeroplane to really utilise that tool to its most effective results.

JS: The charge has been made against the use of aerial tankers, that in effect the forest service or the various bush fire fighting authorities in the US are now rather locked into this, and when things get bad as they did in Los Angeles in 1980, where I think a number of people were killed and a couple of hundred homes lost and that type of thing, where they are forced more or less for public relations to bring in aircraft, to be seen to be using aircraft, whether or not they truly believe they are effective in that situation or not?

RC: Well, when a person loses a home and all of their things of value, it is pretty hard for them not to form their opinions along those lines. As we spoke earlier, we do have our limitations. Aircraft are only effective under certain conditions and when those conditions are exceeded by whatever they may be, aircraft lose their effectiveness really fast.

The one thing that seems to do it in our game faster than anything else is swift and fast winds, and this not only makes it harder for the air tanker or the aircraft crew to perform, but when you are trying to drop a retardant on a spot, with maybe a 35 or 40 mile an hour crosswind, it takes an awful lot of talent on behalf of the pilot to try and put that where it is going to be effective. If he· tries to do it from a higher altitude, and be a little safer, there is going to be so much drift that maybe 50 or 60 per cent of the retardant will not reach the ground . . . so you are not effective.

The thing that people have to understand is not to try to use aircraft under those circumstances. It’s really tough because you do not want to risk men on the ground trying to get in there because their lives are at stake, and here you are trying to use an aircraft to save something. Immediately the aircraft receives a bad name because, only 50 per cent reaches the ground, or some drops don’t even reach the ground. So it is the management of the tool.

MAFS in our country received a lot of criticism at first, a lot of people thought at first that they were just skyriding. But as the pilots learned a little bit more, as they got a little more familiar with the ground, a little more familiar with the system, they got in lower and slower, then they started doing a good job.

I think the same thing is going to happen with Bill Mattes and his people. Until they really get a feel for that, they are going to make high drops, because practice drops out there when there is not a fire is entirely different to when you do have a fire, and there is smoke and less visibility, and you cannot see a damn thing. The guys are going to drop higher, and they are also not going to be as effective as they will after they do it four or five times, All of a sudden they will be able to manoeuvre the aircraft.

JS: The question I ask, and I am quoting here from the Insurance Council of Australia (February 1981 bulletin) where they ask is whether aerial fire bombing is a panacea or placebo. They said on cost-effectiveness that in Canadian and US experience aerial attack is effective in about 15 per cent of fires, yet the costs total about 40 per cent of the fire fighting budget. If that is correct that would seem to be something of a comment on what you are saying.

RC: Well, we in the forest service have come to rely upon air tankers an awful lot, and in the last five years we have started to come back to our senses in this respect in that we have been using air tankers in almost every phase of the fire fighting game.

Now our fire bosses are being somewhat more critical in what the aircraft and that tool can do for them, and are starting to use it a lot better.

Now the primary purpose for any aviation tool is an initial attack on the forest service. That is either an initial attack to put retardant on the fire or it is an initial attack to put men on the fire. That is our most effective use of air tankers.

Now, if we can set out and catch fire while it is small with an air tanker, we have accomplished our goal.

If the lookout spots a fire, and it is going to take men 30 minutes to get there, well, if we can get there within 15 minutes with an air tanker, the first dispatch is the air tanker.

But if that air tanker, because of its tanking ability, can put a drop across the head and down his flank and hold that fire until the men get there, he has accomplished what he is supposed to do. The aircraft has accomplished that and he is very effective.

When an air tanker loses its effectiveness is after the fire has reached a huge size, and there is nothing the fire boss can do with his men and his equipment on the fire so he wants something, he wants some suppression full out working for him. So what is the easiest one to use . . . it is the air tanker.

So we go ahead. From his point of view, we are dropping retardants. Some days we get lucky, and we are holding the line so that men can get down there and get the job tied up.

Other days, we are not lucky and the line just goes on. If we have slowed that fire down, maybe just a half hour or an hour, we may have gained something.

But those things are not measurable to the average person. They can see them and hear them and look at the cost but they really do not know how many acres those aircraft have really saved or how much time they save that fire boss to maybe save the next ravine over which may be worth a million damned dollars.

Maybe the air tankers did not look like they were doing anything, but, by golly, they saved that guy time enough to get people in position and in the right location where they could save that next valley or ravine or whatever.

It is really a tough one. You really have to manage a tool and work it well and know how to get the most out of it, just like anything else, it takes good management.

RM: Air tankers do not really put out fires. It is the men who put out the fires. All the air tanker does it allow time for the ground forces to get there to put out the fire. . . keep it from spreading.

RC: That is right, you can go ahead and quote that any way you want, that is the way we use it. We do not use it as the tool that puts out fires, we use it as a tool to help the men. We slow it down, we reinforce their line if we have to or build some line for them, but they still have to mop it up, they still have to put the damn thing out. Build the line around it.