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Fireboats and Search and Rescue Boats with a Small Firegigting

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Fireboats and Search and Rescue Boats with a Small Firegigting The United States has a long history of fire departments using surplus property from other government agencies , re purposing property within departments, and sometimes other agencies reusing obsolete fire apparatus. Fireboats and Search and Rescue Boats have been converted from military and other government agencies surplus since the end of World War I. It is unlikely there will be any future conversions of large high gallon per minute capacity, 5,000 gpm or more, fireboats from surplus craft . It is possible that some of the tractor tugs built for the U.S. Navy with substantial fire fighting features and capability included could be made available through the Federal Government surplus property transfer programs in a few decades. Large fireboats have since the 1970s been built using features from tugboats, but have many special design features to deal with hazardous materials etc. Search and Rescue and small fireboats of no more the 2,000 or so gallons per minute are still sometimes converted from surplus craft obtained from other government agencies. In 1921, the Baltimore City Fire Department received, by loan from the U.S. Navy, the 110 foot long anti-submarine warfare vessel SC 428 . Ship was built between 1917-and 1919 . Boat was loaned for the purpose of conversion into a fireboat. The ship, renamed Cascade in 1949, served the fire department until 1960. The city received titled to the ship in 1949 through legislation passed by the House and Senate and signed by President Truman. The U.S. Army built several 98 foot tugboat type workboats ,in the early 20th century, to assist with maintaining coastal defense minefields. One of these ships, General Harvey Brown, was purchased by the City of Norfolk, Virginia in 1922 from the U.S. Army at a negotiated and discounted price .It was converted into the fireboat Vulcan. Ship served as a fireboat for 20 years before being sold for merchant marine use during World War II. Use of surplus property allowed the 1909 built fireboat Duwamish of the City of Seattle, Washington Fire Department to remain in service until 1984. In 1949, the ship was converted from steam to diesel propulsion , had a general modernization of fittings, and had some additional firefighting equipment added using engines and equipment removed from ships being sold for scrap or never completed after the end of Word War II . The Duwamish is now a privately owned museum ship in Seattle The City of Boston, Massachusetts obtained the 97 foot long former minesweepers USS Bulwark and USS Marabout from the Federal Government in 1946 and converted them into fireboats. Boats was renamed the Joseph J. Luna and James F. McTighe . They served as fireboats for the city until replaced by the built as a fireboat ,the Firefighter , in 1972. Both of these ships were purchased by private firms for further commercial use. The City of Wilmington North Carolina had three different ,obtained from Federal agencies as surplus, boats and ships as the city fireboat between 1949 and 1999. The boats were Atlantic III to Atlantic V. The Atlantic III and V were military surplus small boats. The tugboat type workboat Atlantic IV had been the U.S. Public Health Service inspection vessel T.B. McClintic of Baltimore from 1932 until its sale to the Fire Department in the mid 1960s. The diesel powered 100 foot Woban class tugboat USS Hoga was built in 1940. It was one of the navy yard tugboats at Pearl Harbor on December 7 , 1941 attack by the Japanese Navy on the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Hoga was one of the main fireboats at the port and the crew saved much life and property there. In 1948 the boat was leased to the City of Oakland for $1.00 a year by the U.S. Navy to be Oakland’s first fireboat. The ship served as Oakland’s fireboat until 1996 when it was returned to the navy. The Hoga will become an exhibit at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum, North Little Rock, AR within the next few years. In March of 2000 the County of Henrico, Virginia received from the Federal Government a former U.S. Coast Guard 41 foot utility boat. Boat was obtained for use of the county’s joint police and fire department marine patrol unit. Boat was the first for the unit with an enclosed crew space. It was operated for a few years until purpose built boats for the police and fire departments could be designed and delivered. Late in 2007 or in early 2008 the state of Massachusetts obtained four 1990’s to early 21st century built 23 foot former Coast Guard Response Boats with enclosed wheelhouses. Each boat was sub-loaned, as a FEPP item, to a local fire department. The boats provide the fire departments access to areas along the shorelines as well as water rescue capability. They can carry more persons and larger pumps than most recreational boats of similar size typically used by fire departments. The former Chicago fireboat Fred Busse of 1937 was taken out of service by the Chicago, Illinois Fire Department in the early 1990’s . It was sold to a private firm and transformed into a tour boat that operated in Chicago area for many years and now operates out of Door County,Wisconsin as a tour boat . The former Honolulu Hawaii fireboat Abner T. Longley was in service from 1951 until replaced by a new fireboat in 1993. It was converted to a tour boat and served for many years as such but has been out of service awaiting a new owner for the past few years Using airplanes to fight forest fires began after World War I ended. War surplus aircraft were used by state and Federal agencies mostly in the western states to detect wildland fire and to direct efforts to contain them. Aircraft types were often replaced every three or 4 years by the Army and the Navy/Marine Corps as aviation design rapidly changed so aircraft were easily available for transfer to the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior , local and state fire departments . In 1923 the Glendale, California Fire Department purchased a Curtis JN4D Jenny aircraft from the Army Air Corps property disposal office and used it for many years for the detection of and observation of incidents. In 1954 the modern practice of dropping water and chemicals onto wildland fires began. Paul Mantz, who owned a firm that provided aircraft and pilots for film productions, developed a system to mount water tanks in an aircraft and have the water dropped onto a fire with precision. The aircraft used was a surplus TBM Avenger owned by Mr. Mantz. The TBM Avenger had been the main torpedo carrying carrier based aircraft of World War II and was being phased out of service in the 1950s.Once this test proved the concept, the development of the modern air tanker/ aircraft began. Several types of aircraft were certified by state forestry departments and the U.S. Forest Service and Dept. of Interior. Contractors and the U.S Forest Service and Dept of Interior agencies converted many of the World War II U.S. Navy carrier based non fighter aircraft to air tankers and many types of the World War II land based bombers were converted for testing. Some types were approved for use others were not. The primary aircraft used were B-17 , PB4Y (the land based Navy and Coast Guard version of the B-24 Liberator) TBM Avenger, A/B-26 Invader, F7 Tigercat , PV-2 Harpoon and PBY amphibian . As the air tanker concept became popular in the mid to late 1950s, the Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force were beginning to sell many of the aircraft that had been made for but not seen use in World War II. These were being replaced by newer types more suited for current military needs even though many had only seen a few years of service. After several years of air tanker use, the Federal Government made operation of them strictly a contractor provided operation and just owned and maintained the lead/spotter planes Planes to direct the tanker aircraft, spot the fires, and direct the fire fighting efforts were needed too. These are known as Lead Planes. The T-34, T-28, and C-45 aircraft were transferred to the Forest Service, state agencies, and the Dept of Interior for these roles. The World War II era aircraft used as tankers and lead planes began to show their age and also be sought by museums and movie production companies by the late 1960s. B-17 did continue as air tankers until 1984 and the PB4Y continued in use until 2002. PB4Y were used until one of the planes had a structural failure of a wing while fighting a fire in Colorado in 2002.The plane crashed and all crew members were killed. The caused was determined to be a design defect that did not reveal itself until the aircraft would reach several thousand flight hours. The piston and turbo prop engine aircraft of the U.S. military from the 1950s became available for fire fighting use in the late 1960s and 1970s. Common aircraft were the early C-130 Hercules A model transport planes , the P2V Neptune anti-submarine and maritime reconnaissance aircraft, the C-97 cargo plane and its aerial refueling variant the KC-97, C-119 and C-123 transport planes. The Navy S-2 Tracker anti -submarine warfare aircraft carrier based aircraft became available starting in the early 1970s and is in wide use today.
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