Scott,I have a few pictures that I took from the CDF tower at Hemet when I was there in 1982.I was flying Tanker 65 that season out of Porterville on a CDF contract.I also ended up in Ramona and have some Boxcar pictures at the tanker base there.I didn't like flying out of Ramona because it had a short runway and is in a bit of a bowl.Also,it's usually hot there,which the airplane doesn't like.Every time that I'd get a dispatch south of Fox Field,the guys at Porterville would tell me that I had to reload Ramona.I'd grumble and be irritated all the way to the fire.Then,more often than not,it would turn out that the fire would actually be closer to Fox or Hemet and I'd be told to reload at one of those places instead.I always felt tremendously relieved,but I knew that the guys at PTV were getting a good laugh over it.
The last time that I had to fly out of Ramona,the wind was blowing down the runway at 20 kts.We always downloaded on retardant from 1800 to 1600 gallons at Ramona and often carried a lower than normal fuel load to reduce the take off weight.I'd just loaded and had a dispatch to a fire as we were fuelling,With the wind conditions,I brought the fuel up to our normal load.As we taxied out,Larry Hill overflew us with a load of mud from Hemet in his Boxcar and my flight was cancelled.
The next day,I was released back to Porterville at the hottest part of the day.It was 105 degrees with no wind when we taxied out.Normally,we'd rotate on a loaded take off at 115 mph.I got my B-17 Type Rating from Don Ornbaum.He really made me earn it.He also told me that there were a few things that he wasn't going to tell me about flying B-17's until he was through flying them.He didn't want some whippersnapper flying a B-17 as well as he did and trying to take his job (As if that could ever happen).One thing that he did tell me,however,was that,if you REALLY needed to,you could coax a loaded B-17 into the air at 105 mph.You just needed to immediately lower the nose and retract the gear and stay in ground effect until you were actually flying.
We got to the end of the runway and stuck the tail in the dirt at the very end and locked the tailwheel.Then we dailed the tubos to #8 and went to full power (46"/2500 rpm) and released the brakes.Tanker 65 sedately waddled down the runway and as we passed the CDF tower,which was maybe 1/4 of the way down the runway,I looked down at the airspeed indicator.It read 45 mph.That's when I flipped up the guard on the drop button in case we needed to jettison the load at the end of the runway.
We continued accelerating (if you could call it that),but were still firmly planted on the runway when we passed the numbers near the end of the runway.Off to the side of the runway and a few hundred feet out,I could see the remains of Tanker 122,which was a PB4Y that was destroyed (without injuries) a couple of months before when it "Failed to become airborne". Just as we came to the end of the pavement,the airspeed hit 105 mph.I horsed the airplane off the runway,called for gear up and lowered the nose.As we staggered around the valley,I watched the airplane shadow trying to touch the airplane until we finally got aimed back toward the airport from a left 270 degree turn and came back to climb power.It looked to me like we'd just cleared the tanker base flagpole as we crossed over and turned toward Porterville.
A couple of weeks later,we ended up back at Fox Field and one of the Boxcars from Ramona was there.The pilot (who's name escapes me for the moment) said that he wanted to buy us (my c/p Gerry Glenn and me) a beer.I asked why and he said that all year,he'd been hearing about how bad the Boxcar looked staggering out of Ramona with a load and compared to us,they now thought that the box climbed out like a Boeing 727.
Pictures 1-4 are at Hemet
Pictures 5-7 are at Ramona
Pictures 8&9 are at Porterville all are from the 1982 Fire Season
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