Wildfire air tanker crashes, 1993-2013

Since 1994, in­cid­ents in­volving aging U.S. Forest Ser­vice fire­fight­ing planes have killed 36 crew­men. Many of the air­craft the Forest Ser­vice uses to drop wa­ter and re­tard­ant on wild­fires were built dur­ing the Eis­en­hower ad­min­is­tra­tion. Wings have broken off mid-flight. En­gines have caught fire. Pi­lots have made mis­takes, crash­ing in­to oth­er planes or fly­ing in­to in­clem­ent weath­er.

In ad­di­tion to the chal­lenges of keep­ing half-cen­tury-old air­craft flight-ready, these planes and their crews take an ex­tra beat­ing from the tur­bu­lence, up­drafts and hot ash they en­counter on fire­fight­ing mis­sions. Crit­ics say the out­dated air fleet is dan­ger­ous, in­ad­equate and no longer cap­able of help­ing to con­tain fires when they burn out of con­trol.

The map be­low shows 14 deadly in­cid­ents, which res­ul­ted in 36 deaths, dat­ing to 1994. Click on the planes to see lar­ger im­ages of the U.S. Forest Ser­vice fleet.

Full story: Fight­ing fires with aging tankers from an­oth­er era