The firefighters

This chapter tells how the first operational air tanker was built at Willows in 1955, and how local pilots and the Forest Service grew the idea into the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad.

From a crop duster to a squadron

Spring 1955

Joe Ely, fire control officer for the Mendocino National Forest, gets permission from Forest Supervisor Bob Dasmann to try dropping water on fires from an airplane. As Ely later recalled, he takes the idea first to Lee Sherwood, the airport manager, and then to Floyd Nolta.

July 1955

Ely asks Floyd “Speed” Nolta of Willows Flying Service, who had flown agricultural work since the 1920s, whether he could drop water on a forest fire. Floyd asks for a week. A week later he has cut a hole in the belly of a Stearman biplane, fitted a hinged gate with a pull rope, and filled it with water.

July 23, 1955

Floyd and Al Edwards light the dry grass along the Nolta airstrip. Floyd’s brother Vance Nolta flies over low, pulls the rope, and puts the fire out.

August 12, 1955

Vance Nolta flies the airplane to the Mendenhall Fire on the Mendocino National Forest and makes the first free-fall drop on a wildfire. The aircraft is N75081, a Boeing Stearman Cadet with a 170-gallon tank. It becomes the first registered free-fall air tanker in the history of aviation. Some accounts, including Ely’s own, give the date as August 13. Rangers reported that the drops helped knock down hot spots. In Ely’s account, a crew building handline on the lower side of the fire, on the west side of Bald Mountain in Jack Weddle’s Covelo District, heard a plane coming in close and looked up just in time to see the water come down on them and the edge of the fire.

1956

Seven agricultural aircraft, the original Stearman and six Navy N3N biplanes, form the first operational air tanker squadron in the United States. Local pilots fly it from the Willows airport, and it goes out on twelve fires in its first month. The airport’s National Register nomination describes the squad as made up primarily of veterans and their biplanes.

October 1956

After the squad’s success on 25 wildfires, a series of drop tests is run at the Willows Airport. The aim was to find the best height and airspeed for the Stearmans and N3Ns to fly, and to see how wind and weather changed the pattern of water and sodium calcium borate laid down on a grid on the airport surface. It was an interagency effort, with CAL FIRE, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Forest Service, its Equipment Development Center at Arcadia and experiment station, and private industry.

1957

The squad is working fires all over California for the Forest Service and the state forestry department. More planes and pilots join. Because of the squad’s success, the state forestry department contracts its own squad too, although many pilots fly for both agencies, and larger World War II surplus bombers join the fleet.

1959

Heavy air tankers carrying 2,000 gallons of retardant are in service.

The first crew

Fire control officer

Joe Ely, Mendocino National Forest, who started the program and is honored on the plaque at the airport. His story is below.

Air attack pilot

Lee Sherwood, the Willows airport manager, flew the “bird dog,” a Piper Tri-Pacer that carried a Forest Service officer to direct the tankers and coordinate with crews on the ground. The plaque at the airport labels him Air Attack Pilot, and the National Wildfire Coordinating Group calls him the first Air Attack.

Air tanker pilots

The eight original pilots, listed below.

Forest Supervisor

Bob Dasmann, Mendocino National Forest, who gave Ely permission to go ahead with the project.

Observer

Al Edwards, Ely’s colleague, whom Ely asked to go out to Nolta’s airstrip and watch the July 1955 demonstration.

Dispatcher

Charlie Lafferty took fire orders at “Willows 80” and passed them to the pilots. In Ely’s account, he sent Vance Nolta to a fire that had just started.

Mixing machine

Wim Lely, an inventor in Orland, built a unit that could mix about a thousand gallons of retardant and pump it into an airplane in a couple of minutes. Harold Hendrickson was the one who suggested taking the problem to him.

State forestry

Charley Columbro of Santa Rosa headed the California Division of Forestry’s part of the program when the state formed its own squad.

The eight original pilots

These eight men formed the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad in 1956, flying the modified Stearman and the Navy N3N biplanes.

Floyd “Speed” Nolta
Willows

Agricultural aviation pioneer who modified the Stearman that launched the first operational air tanker program. Ely recalled that Floyd asked for a week, and that a week later the airplane was ready. In 1957 or 1958 he added a Twin Beech to the squad.

Vance Nolta
Willows

Flew the experimental Stearman in the 1955 demonstration. Ely wrote that “Vance came over low and pulled the rope and put out the fire.” On August 12, 1955, he made the first free-fall water drop on a wildfire, the Mendenhall Fire, in Stearman N75081, and Dispatcher Lafferty then sent him to a new fire at the John David Place. His widow, Irene Nolta, shared many of the family’s photographs.

Dale Nolta
Willows

Floyd and Vance’s brother and a fellow agricultural pilot in the original squad. His grandson Chris Nolta is a crop duster pilot today in the Corcoran area.

Harold Hendrickson
Willows

An early tanker pilot whose aircraft became part of the squad’s biplane fleet. When the group needed a way to mix retardant, he told Ely to “take your problem to Wim Lely.” His son Gary later flew as copilot on a B-17 air tanker for a 40-year career and painted nose art on his father’s plane, Mr. Mendocino.

Frank Prentice
Willows

One of the original local agricultural pilots who helped establish the program. He bought a Navy N3N in Florida and flew it as his own air tanker until 1963. He remembered the work as “orbiting down in the hole” through canyons, for about $60 an hour. He was the last surviving member of the squad when he died on July 16, 2020, and said that “Willows had the right combination of airplanes, pilots and high fire zones.”

Ray Varney
Artois, Glenn County

Flew one of the Navy N3N biplane tankers.

L. H. “Mac” McCurley
Corning

An agricultural pilot who flew from the Corning area.

Warren Bullock
Red Bluff

One of the original pilots, flying from the Red Bluff area.

Joe Ely and the idea

The story of the Mendocino Air Tankers begins with a tragedy. On July 9, 1953, the Rattlesnake Fire broke out in Powder House Canyon on the Mendocino National Forest, about 28 miles northwest of Willows. A sudden wind shift sent the fire racing through dense chaparral. Fifteen firefighters lost their lives, and nine others barely escaped. It became one of the most studied wildland fire incidents in California history.

For Joe Ely, the Mendocino National Forest’s fire control officer, based in Willows, the loss raised a simple question: how could firefighters attack a fire without putting so many people in harm’s way? He knew that the agricultural pilots around Willows already had the right skills. They flew low, slow, and accurately while carrying and spreading liquids over crops.

In 1955 Ely began asking whether that skill could be turned on wildfires. As he later recalled, he first took the idea to “Lee Sherwood, the Airport Manager,” and only then did Floyd Nolta become enthusiastic about building an experimental air tanker. Nolta did not spend months on a design. He went to work. Within about a week he had cut an opening in the bottom of a Boeing Stearman and fitted a tank with a hinged release gate that the pilot worked from the cockpit.

Vance Nolta then flew the modified airplane over a controlled burn. He flew low, pulled the release, and the water put the fire out. Ely later recorded the result in four words: “The air tanker was born.”

The idea moved from experiment to operation quickly. In August 1955 Vance Nolta made an operational water drop on the Mendenhall Fire. More testing followed at the Willows airport, where Forest Service staff worked with the Noltas and other local agricultural pilots to learn how aircraft could deliver water and retardant safely and accurately. By 1956 the Forest Service had set up the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad at Willows, the first squadron of its kind. Local agricultural pilots became aerial firefighters, and crop-dusting airplanes became tankers.

Lee Sherwood and the Bird Dog

Lee Sherwood managed the Willows-Glenn County Airport and ran his own agricultural flying service. Once airplanes could carry water, someone had to tell them where to drop it, and that became his job.

When the squadron was organized at Willows in 1956, Sherwood flew a Piper Tri-Pacer as an observation airplane, with a Forest Service officer aboard. From above they could see the fire, coordinate with firefighters on the ground, and direct the tankers to the places where drops were needed. The airplane became known as the Bird Dog. The tankers delivered the water, and Sherwood helped put them on target. The Forest Service’s own history names Sherwood as the pilot of the original Bird Dog.

It was more than a supporting role. The first Willows operation was working out the foundations of what we now call air attack and aerial supervision. The squadron was mostly agricultural pilots flying converted agricultural airplanes, including modified Stearmans and Navy N3N trainers. In August 1956, its first month, it fought 12 fires, and by the end of that first season its pilots had been sent all over California.

The operation was small and improvised. The tanker pilots did not have radios at first. When a fire needed a tanker, dispatchers called Charlie Lafferty in Willows, and he phoned the pay phone in Sherwood’s hangar. During fire season there was apparently an unwritten rule: don’t tie up Sherwood’s phone.

Today aerial firefighting uses GPS, radios, dedicated air-attack aircraft, and trained aerial supervisors, but the idea is much the same: someone above the fire sees the whole picture and directs the aircraft doing the work. One of the earliest versions of that system flew out of Willows with Lee Sherwood at the controls. The Birth of the Airtanker Program plaque at the airport carries his portrait, labeled Air Attack Pilot, alongside Joe Ely and the original tanker pilots. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group calls him the first Air Attack.

Ely described the local pilots as “the last of the silk scarf and leather helmet boys,” and said “they would try anything.” We know much less about Ray Varney, Mac McCurley, and Warren Bullock than we should. If you knew them or have a photograph, we would like to hear from you.

A group photograph in the airport’s National Register nomination (Figure 12) shows the original pilots in front of their aircraft at Lake Elsinore in 1956. From left to right: Dale Nolta, Warren Bullock, Floyd Nolta, Harold Hendrickson, Mac McCurley, Ray Varney, Frank Prentice, and Vance Nolta. You can find it in the nomination document, attached to the City of Willows agenda for April 6, 2023.

Joining in 1957

As the program grew, more planes and pilots joined. Ely named four who came in 1957: Frank Michaud, Gene Ellan, Neal Wade, and George Jess. Jess was later killed on a state fire in Lake County.

Learning as they went

The first drops used plain water, and on a hot, dry day a 100-gallon drop from 50 feet could evaporate before it landed. The fix was to mix chemicals into the water. The first was sodium calcium borate, which gave the planes their nickname, borate bombers. Bentonite came next, then Firetrol, which worked best.

Mixing was the next problem. Wim Lely, an inventor in Orland, built a machine that could mix about a thousand gallons and pump it into a large airplane in a couple of minutes. Joe Ely later said the program might have fizzled without him. Rangers on the receiving end agreed the drops helped. Jack Weddle of the Covelo District wrote that his firefighters “found it to be a big assist in knocking down hotspots,” and Ranger Bill Jones called it “a real help to the men.”

Working with the ground

Fire agencies across California could order a tanker by calling Willows 80, where dispatcher Charlie Lafferty took the calls and passed them to the pilots through the phone in Lee Sherwood’s hangar. Communication started out rough. On one dispatch to the Six Rivers National Forest, ground crews gave the pilots a fire map divided into three zones and held up a card with a letter to show where to drop. Radios in the planes came later.

The pilots also pushed back on the Forest Service rule to stay 75 feet above the treetops. They preferred five.

How fast it grew

The whole idea went from a hole cut in a crop duster to a national tool in about four years. In July 1955 the Noltas ran a demonstration at the family airstrip. In August Vance Nolta flew the first free-fall drop on a wildfire. In 1956 eight pilots and seven small planes formed the first operational air tanker squad, which fought 12 fires in its first month and had worked 25 fires by that fall. That October, agencies came to Willows to test how height, airspeed, and wind changed the pattern a drop left on the ground. In 1957 the state forestry department formed its own squad and more pilots joined. By 1959 heavy tankers carrying 2,000 gallons were in service. The first Stearman’s tank held 170 gallons. Today’s largest air tankers carry up to 3,000, about eighteen times as much.

Then and now

Larger planes soon followed, including PBYs and F7Fs. Ely noted that a thousand gallons is ten times better than a hundred, but he gave the credit to the eight original pilots and their seven small planes. Today single engine air tankers and large air tankers are a staple of wildland firefighting. The single engine tankers carry up to 800 gallons, and the largest up to 3,000.

The weight is part of the story. A gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds and a gallon of retardant about 9, so a full single engine tanker drops roughly 6,700 pounds and the largest air tankers about 25,000. Ground crews can be hurt by a drop. Today the National Wildfire Coordinating Group teaches crews to know where tankers are and how they work, so they can stay clear. Its lessons-learned write-up on the first air tanker is dedicated to the first tanker pilots, Joe Ely, and Lee Sherwood, whom it calls the first Air Attack.

The tools have changed more than the job has. The Forest Service today uses aircraft to scout fires, move equipment and supplies, drop smokejumpers and rappellers, carry firefighters, light prescribed fires, and drop retardant to slow a fire so crews can contain it. Its own line is that aircraft alone cannot put fires out. That is the lesson Ely and the Willows pilots learned in the 1950s: the airplane buys time, and the people on the ground finish the job. Air tankers, air attack pilots, and retardant mixing are all part of the same line of work that began with a small group of crop dusters at Willows.

The Forest Service kept its regional air tanker operations at Willows until 1982. Larger aircraft needed a longer runway, so the operation moved to Chico Municipal Airport.

A plaque marking the Birth of the Airtanker Program stands at the Willows Airport, at County Road G and Airport Road near the airport cafe. The Forest Service put it up in 1981, “dedicated to the pioneers who started aerial firefighting.” It carries line portraits of Joe Ely, fire control officer; Lee Sherwood, air attack pilot; and the eight original pilots.

Drawn from the Mendocino National Forest lessons-learned summary, the text of the plaque, the Willows–Glenn County Airport National Register nomination, the Forest Service’s history of the Bird Dog, the text of the plaque as transcribed by the Historical Marker Database, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s “First Airtanker Drop” lessons learned, HistoryNet’s profile of the squad for the Prentice and Hendrickson details, the Forest Service’s fire aviation page, and Joe Ely’s 1981 account, “How It Was,” as shared on the Early Aviators website. The October 1956 drop tests and the state squad come from Carl Wilson’s 1980 account, “A Brief History of the Use of Aircraft on Forest Fires in California,” an unpublished document in the Mendocino National Forest archives.