There have been some fantastic air tanker drop videos this year, including the DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT) laying down miles of fire retardant under horrible visibility, but this P-3 Orion (or L-188 Electra?) yawing all over the place while spewing slurry takes the cake!

The was developed from the and both are very tough machines. The P-3 has spent the better half of a century hunting submarines low over the ocean in the corrosive salty air, and a handful have been converted to air tankers, although went out of business last year, grounding their seven P-3A tankers. As of very recently those aircraft are being resold and put back into operations, and this year their 3,000 gallon dropping ability could be put to good use as fires burn out of control all around the west. The Lockheed Electra based tankers and continue to fight fires as this is being written.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to chase enemy subs from the air or to hunt pirates off the…

Although prop-driven tankers have been utterly reliable for decades, they are growing very old and their is a new push to thrust air tanking into the jet age. Here's a bonus teaser for my upcoming piece on new jet-powered air tankers, these are two of the most impressive of this new breed, the DC-10 Very Large Air Tankers and Erickson Aero's MD-87 tankers,which are being developed and are based right here in Oregon:

P-3/Electra video posted to the public on Facebook, stated video credit goes to Josh Jankowski- seriously nice job dude!