While going through so old negatives, I ran across some from an interesting day in Fresno in September 1980. I was based in West Yellowstone, Montana in B-17 Tanker 68. The base was getting ready to close for the winter (in September?) and there were plenty of fires in California, so I was dispatched to Porterville. Of course, by the time we put on extra fuel for the 4-5 hour flight, it was too late to get to PTV before my 14 hour duty day would have been exceeded. In their infinite wisdom, the dispatcher decided that I could get my 8 hours of "beauty sleep" (his words) and still take-off at 0300 the next morning. I did so (shaking my head at the stupidity) and took off into the literal black hole that is the West Yellwstone Airport at 0300 on a moonless night.
We got to Porterville before 0800 local time and the tanker base was completely deserted. So my co-pilot and I found a coulpe of bunks in the standby trailer and waited for developments. We eventually were sent to a fire near the Friant VOR which is a bit northeast of Fresno Air Teminal. By the time I landed at Fresno for a reload, my duty day was coming up on 14 hours again. So I parked the airplane. Don Ornbaum was flying Tanker 61 (ex-Eastern Airlines DC-7B N838D). We both worked for TBM Inc. and Don invited me to go along for a load to the fire and to read the analyzer for him. I had flown the previous fire season as co-pilot to Laddie Lash on DC-7 Tanker 67 out of Redmond. Oregon, so I knew the airplane.
Don Ornbaum and Chuck Sheridan are taxi-ing out from the Fresno Tanker Base in T61
Don is in the left seat setting up max power on the runway at Fresno
Here's a shot enroute to the fire
A few shots of the fire which was not in a very convenient location
This one is a bit shakey because of low loight among other things, but shows the drop run. It looks dangerous, but the rate of climb indicator is pegged down, so we had a lot of energy for a somewhat uphill run.
This is a better quality picture of a second run. The rate of climb instrument is just to the right of Don's right hand. After this run, I decided that I had better things to do with my spare time than to ride around in an air tanker.
I spend a couple of hours taking pictures at the Fresno Tanker Base following that trip. Here's Don going out again behing Bob Forbes in B-17 Tanker 65.
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