There was a picture of a water bomber dropping a load of fire retardant in the paper today. The aircraft appears to be similar to a C-130 Hercules. It has four turboprop engines and is land based, but the wing is a low wing, not a high wing like the Hercules. It is not a flying boat.
This photo accompanied an article about the wildfires in California. The picture was striking for several reasons. The plane is flying at very low altitude, very close to a house, and you can see the individual propeller blades. I don't think I have ever seen a picture of an airplane with the engine running where you could see the individual propellar blades like this. Usually the prop is turning so fast that the blades are just a blur. Could this be an artifact of digital photography? It is so striking that I thought perhaps it was photo-shopped. I looked on the newspapers site, but I could not find the photo. I did find some similar photos on the web.
This one is similar in many respects including the markings on the airplane. The difference here is that this plane only has two engines, is steeply banked and appears to be flying into the ground.
This plane has four engines and you can see the blades, but it is a flying boat.Update November 2019 replaced missing picture.
3 comments:
I saw the same remarkable picture. I believe it is just an extremely fast shutter speed. It just does not make sense that a photo journalist would spend the time to carefully photoshop in stationary propellers, not to mention the standards of not doctoring photographs. Anyway, the plane in the picture appears to be a converted P-3 Orion. These sturdy planes are descended from the Lockeed Electra. Here is the wikipedia entry for the aircraft:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-3_Orion
I was thinking that they may have photo-shopped in the whole airplane. You know, taken a picture of the plane sitting on the tarmac and slid the whole thing in. Would you be able to tell? And standards require integrity, and wherever you go, there is always someone who is willing to bend the rules. But after I saw some other photos of water bombers, I am convinced that the picture in question was not doctored. And thanks for identifying the plane.
definitely a photoshop job. Looks like a photo put together to be used in a FF training curriculum, maybe an intro slide to a powerpoint presentation.
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