The Erickson Air Crane & Wildfires

With all the aerial firefighting activity going on in California this week, LightRock takes a look at that funny-looking helicopter, the Air-Crane:

Reuters

Among the many aircraft involved in the firefight in Southern California is a large ungainly looking helicopter that has quite an interesting history.

This helicopter started its life in 1958 when Sikorsky Helicopter began development of a specialized heavy lift helicopter for the U.S. Army. The CH-54 Tarhe (named after a Native American tribal chief nicknamed “The Crane”) made its maiden flight in 1962 and saw extensive service in Vietnam, making its mark recovering downed aircraft. The Army purchased about 150 CH-54’s and Sikorsky built a small number of civilian versions that were designated as the S-64 Skycrane. The CH-54 saw military service for 25-30 years, but that is just the beginning of the story.

Enter Erickson Air-Crane of Central Point, Oregon. This company, as its name implies, is in the heavy lift business and they have built their company around the CH-54/S-64. Erickson is currently, by far and away, the largest owner/operator of the S-64. Perhaps even more notable is that Erickson purchased the production rights to the S-64 from Sikorsky in 1992 and since that time has been remanufacturing older CH-54’s into Erickson S-64E Aircranes and building completely new S-64F Aircranes not only for their own use, but for customers in, among other places, Italy and South Korea. Since purchasing the rights to the S-64 from Sikorsky, Erickson has made over 1,300 changes and improvements to the original design.

Erickson uses the Aircrane to support a number of industries including logging, oil and gas, and construction. One rather well known mission was the removal and, after it was refurbished, subsequent replacement of the statute that sits atop the U.S. Capitol building. Without question, the most visible mission for Aircranes is in supporting firefighting operations and they have been involved in operations around the world. A few years ago, an Aircrane worked a large fire in Australia and, more recently, flew missions during the Greek wildfires this summer.

Reuters

Erickson has continued to evolve and enhance the Aircrane’s firefighting capability. It can carry a load of over 2,500 gallons of water and/or foam/retardant. It can draft water from sources like lakes and ponds. A microprocessor based system controls discharge, adjusting for wind, speed of the helicopter and fire conditions. Erickson has even developed a system that includes a forward mounted water cannon that is capable of discharging 300 GPM, allowing the Aircrane to hover over or near a fire discharging a stream for 8+ minutes.