5 io 



Yearboo^ of Agriculture 1949 



additional equipment; without it, they 

 would lose the fire, and great tracts of 

 valuable timber lay ahead. There was 

 no possibility of getting pumps and 

 other tools through by pack mule; all 

 trails were shut off by fire. To man- 

 pack the heavy equipment over the 

 many miles of rough, log-strewn coun- 

 try would have taken too many hours. 

 The fire would not wait. The fire boss, 

 more interested in saving the forest 

 than in his own personal safety, sug- 

 gested dropping the equipment from 

 an airplane. That was done. Axes, 

 shovels, and hand pumps, bundled in 

 excelsior and blankets, were tossed out, 

 as the little plane bounced through the 

 churning air at treetop level. Many 

 handles were splintered, pumps were 

 smashed against boulders, and much 

 of the equipment was damaged. But 

 enough was salvaged to do the job at 

 hand. The fire was held. That was the 

 beginning of aerial delivery of supplies 

 direct to fire-fighting forces. 



Since then, air transportation has 

 developed rapidly. As aircraft was im- 

 proved in performance, so were tech- 

 niques for dropping cargo. Pilots, the 

 so-called bush variety, learned to 

 maneuver planes into almost impossi- 

 ble spots amid spikelike peaks, into 

 narrow rock- walled canyons, and in the 

 difficult air currents that prevail in 

 such country during the turbulent 

 weather of the fire season. 



In the early years of cargo dropping, 

 bundles were released at treetop level, 

 to fall free at the target site. Extreme 

 accuracy was essential because an over- 

 shot of a few feet might carry the pack- 

 age far down into a canyon beyond the 

 target. Breakage was severe in the free 

 falls, and packaging to lessen that 

 damage was costly and bulky there 

 was more insulation material than 

 actual pay load. Parachutes, first used 

 for dropping supplies in 1936, elimi- 

 nated the need for bulky packaging. 



The principle of the static line, or 

 mechanical tripping of the ripcord, 

 was discovered by a forest pilot and fire 

 fighter in 1937. It permitted abandon- 

 ment of free-fall methods and made the 



job more efficient and safer. By 1938 

 much of the initial supply of food, 

 equipment, and material necessary in 

 the attack upon inaccessible fires was 

 delivered by cargo chute. 



A specialized use of the freight chute, 

 one that greatly simplifies fire fighting 

 and lowers costs, is the delivery right 

 on the fire line of prepared hot meals 

 for the fire fighters. The practice is 

 favored when the fire is in country so 

 far from trails that the use of pack 

 mules would be costly and in instances 

 when reliance on K-rations is imprac- 

 ticable and the nature of the job does 

 not warrant a field kitchen. 



Air-delivered meals are prepared by 

 restaurateurs according to a standard 

 menu. Hot meat, vegetables, gravy, 

 and other foods are packaged in tin 

 buckets. Each 5-gallon bucket is insu- 

 lated by a kapok-stuffed canvas cover, 

 which retains the heat for several 

 hours. Paper plates, forks, spoons, and 

 cups are included. Cold water in milk 

 cans and hot coffee in insulated 5- 

 gallon cans go along with the meal. 

 This method of feeding the crews elim- 

 inates their need for leaving the fire 

 line for meals. Breakfast, dinner, or 

 supper is dropped at the edge of the 

 fire and there is no mess gear to be 

 packed back to base after the fire. 



THEN GAME an exciting experi- 

 ment parachuting men directly to the 

 fire. The idea had come and gone 

 many times, but before 1939 nobody 

 had been willing to advocate such 

 seeming fantasy of sending a live man 

 crashing down among spearlike snags, 

 sheer precipices, ragged peaks, foam- 

 ing streams, rough underbrush, and 

 dense stands of trees. Airmen had 

 smiled and walked away when the sub- 

 ject was mentioned; they thought of 

 the vicious currents, the rarified air at 

 high elevations, and the unpredictable 

 winds over the rough mountains. But 

 a handful of Forest Service smoke- 

 chasers did it in the summer of 1939. 

 They had no precedent, no informa- 

 tion about that type of parachuting. 

 Their equipment was crude according 



