Bombardier (Canadair) CL 415 Water Bomber

One sponson on display in Labrador City

I have some pictures of a whole one that I will post as soon as I get back from my hols!

in the meantime here is a painting on display at the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa

Canadair CL-215 (F-ZBAR) - 21 October 2016 at Speyer, Germany




Canadair CL-215 (F-ZBBH) - 21 October 2016 at Sinsheim, Germany

if you look really hard you can see 2 cl415's in between the buildings....honest. Taken at Goose Bay 29 June. sorry was the closest I could get

Quebec Government 415

Not quite related, but worth telling. In the early 70's when working in the Middle East I reluctantly attended a demonstration of 'water bombing' by a Chinook look-a-like Kawasaki helicopter that could be configured in a structure fire fighting role. The 'target' for the demo was a newly constructed hi-rise apartment block of over thirty storeys. In the first demo the chopper was fitted with a water delivery nozzle hydraulically extended outside of the rotor downwash. It lifted a water hose from the ground and climbed and hovered directing a water jet supplied by a motorised pump on the ground. This was successful and showed that fires on high level floors could be fought in this manner whereas ground based fire fighting appliances would be defeated.

A second helo was then called in but this carried an underslung water tank being a very large cylindrical polypropylene bag with a skeleton frame holding IIRC around 3000 litres (3 tonnes) of water. There was an electrically operated dump valve in the base of the tank and four electrically operated dump valves around the tank half-way up. This could allow half a tank or a full tank of water to be dumped dependent on selection.

A smoke generator was placed on the roof of the block amongst the air condition units and lit up. Once the smoke was billowing the chopper eased into position over the 'flames' and.....the entire tank jettisoned from the suspension unit and dramatically plunged downward onto the top of the building with a tremendous thud and spectacular explosion of a water cloud. The crowd of civic dignitaries applauded enthusiastically already convinced that it was part of the show.

Later, I found that the 'water bomb' being a near solid 3 ton slug had collapsed the centre portion of the reinforced concrete roof and the floor below.

I was 'involved' because I had been caught up with inspecting the Kawasaki (owned and operated by the National Civil Defence} to decide if flexible machine guns could be mounted for COIN operations.

Demonstration at Gatineau today