Plane #1 - Martin Mars Flying Boats.

Gosh aren't they pretty? They are Martin Mars flying boats used by the Navy after the war. They (the Navy)ran a scheduled service from SFO to HNL. Then the Navy sold them to an outfit , a sort of cooperative, made up of a lot of huge woodlot owners to fight forest fires in the area. I don't expect they paid much for them from the Navy (It included all the maintenance tooling the Navy had used.) However, converting them to water bombers must have cost several fortunes. They could take on up to 60 or 70 thousand gallons of water in a high speed taxi down a lake. They could discharge it over a fire in a heartbeat.

These were based at Sproat Lake about 75 to 100 miles north of where Moores lived. (Victoria). They had a huge hanger housing all the Navy maintenance equipment and a ramp to get the planes out of the water. It was sort of like a little airline. The engines I believe were Wright 3350's (cubic inches) rated at about 2500 HP. Your Mother got to see one discharging and taking on water at the lake where we were staying with Moores. The cabin actually belonged to Jill and David Stevens. They took us on a tour of one of the Mars and we were very impressed. Boyd, Glenn Iverson and I had made the trip up to Sproat Lake.