Issue 335: Fire Bird

Flying above the Australian aerial firefighting landscape this season was a civilian Boeing Chinook, packing a punch with one of the largest operational Bambi buckets underslung its fuselage on a 200ft long line.

Camden Airport-based United Aero Helicopters has brought a non-contracted ex-US Army National Guard CH-47D to Australia to demonstrate to fire authorities just what this ‘Chook’ can do.

Registered N947CH, and callsigned ‘Helitack 279’, the Chinook is currently one of three owned by Michigan-based Helimax. It arrived in Melbourne by ship from Long Beach, California on December 23, and days later was dropping its 7,600 litre loads of water on the devastating Wye River and Separation Creek fire that claimed 116 homes along the Great Ocean Road, south-west of Melbourne.