Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



Beside him in the seat is a small box, 

 much like the one a doctor uses to 

 check palpitation. It is actually a small 

 laboratory. Its top is covered with 

 black cloth in which are attached two 

 sleeves, which are closed with elastic 

 bands and through which the photog- 

 rapher-scout works with his hands in- 

 side the dark box. Within 15 minutes 

 from the moment he made his last 

 exposure, he has completed the de- 

 veloping and printing job. His pictures 

 are ready to be dropped to the fire boss 

 on the ground. The prints, still wet, 

 are placed in a paper tube to which 

 is attached an orange-colored ribbon 

 10 feet long. The tube is weighted with 

 sand to make it fall vertically. 



The orange streamer permits those 

 on the ground to keep the falling tube 

 in view and to find it should the land- 

 ing be in dense brush or a thicket. 

 From those photographs, the planners 

 of the fire-fighting job obtain far more 

 detailed information than could pos- 

 sibly be included in the maps and re- 

 ports originally provided by ground 

 scouts. The conditions shown by the 

 pictures are up to date within 20 min- 

 utes. This intelligence service speeds 

 up the action on the fire line. 



ANOTHER PHASE of air transporta- 

 tion is the movement of fire-control 

 specialists quickly to the scene of action. 

 Sometimes several thousand men and 

 tons of equipment and supplies are 

 needed to control a fire. Many ma- 

 chines, pack trains, and fleets of motor- 

 trucks are essential in mobilizing and 

 operating these forces under certain 

 conditions. A small army like that re- 

 quires trained organizers, planners of 

 strategy, and crew bosses experienced 

 in handling large numbers of men un- 

 der the emergency conditions prevail- 

 ing on large fires. Such specialists are 

 few, and often must travel hundreds 

 of miles to the fire; the airplane re- 

 duces their travel time to a few hours. 



Each summer, hundreds of fire 

 fighters are flown from work projects 

 and employment centers across miles 

 of mountainous country to a forest 



landing strip nearest the fire that has 

 become too large for the first attack 

 force. A few hours of walking and they 

 arrive at the fire a vast difference 

 from the day 15 years ago when they 

 would have walked 5 days to the spot. 



NOW WE ARE WORKING ON PROCE- 

 DURES to fight fires with bombs con- 

 taining water or chemicals. The first 

 attempts to do so were made in 1930 

 by a bush pilot and an old-time fire 

 fighter, who used a trimotored air- 

 plane. They had no bomb sights, 

 ballistics table, or the other scientific 

 aids that enabled the war bombardiers 

 of 1945 to pin-point their targets; the 

 first experiments were with a half- 

 dozen wooden barrels filled with water 

 and plugged tightly. The forester 

 marked a white circle on the ground as 

 a target and climbed in the plane. 

 When he was over the target, he rolled 

 a barrel out the door. Catapulted by 

 the plane at 90 miles an hour, and 

 falling free for only 100 feet, the bar- 

 rels smashed around the target. None 

 made direct hits, and the water, driven 

 straight down by the force of the fall, 

 wetted a spot little larger than the 

 barrel itself. The result was hardly en- 

 couraging small fires could not be hit 

 directly, and the water covered too 

 small an area. 



Next, the same men attempted to 

 spray fires with a hose attached to a 

 tank of water in the plane. Water 

 streamed out the end of the hose as it 

 was flown back and forth over the 

 blotters that had been laid out to check 

 the moisture that reached the ground. 

 Another failure. The water vaporized 

 immediately as it left the end of the 

 fast-moving hose, and practically none 

 reached the ground. 



Seventeen years later, more produc- 

 tive experiments in fire bombing be- 

 came possible. Bombing techniques 

 were improved during the Second 

 World War, and precision instruments 

 were developed for accurately drop- 

 ping missiles of large volume and 

 weight. The Forest Service and the 

 Army Air Forces cooperated in com- 



