The last air-worthy Martin Mars water bomber is headed to the B.C. Aviation Museum in Sidney.
The Hawaii Mars, owned by Port Alberni-based Coulson Groups of Companies, hasn’t been used to fight wildfires since 2015 and has been sitting idle at the company’s Sproat Lake air base since its retirement eight years ago.
Discussions between the aviation museum and company president Wayne Coulson about bringing the massive aircraft to Sidney have been ongoing for more than a year. The sides are now trying to determine the costs and logistics to get the bomber to the museum’s site at Victoria International Airport.
“It would be one big jewel — make that a boulder — in our crown at the B.C. Aviation museum,” Steve Nichol, president of the B.C. Aviation Museum, said in an interview.
“But it will be a monumental project just to get it here.”
The Martin Mars is a storied beast. Only seven were ever made by the California-based Glenn L. Martin Company, all for the U.S. navy as ocean patrol and long-range transport during the Second World War. Most were used for naval cargo on the San Francisco-Honolulu route until 1956.
The last four, sold as scrap, were bought by a B.C. forestry consortium and later converted to water bombers. One Mars crashed while firefighting in Northwest Bay near Nanoose Bay in 1961 with the loss of four crew, and another was critically damaged in a storm.
The remaining two Martin Mars bombers were acquired by the Coulson Group in 2007 from Timberwest and its subsidiary, Forest Industrial Flying Tankers. The Philippine Mars, painted blue and white, was retired in 2012 and isn’t considered air-worthy. The red and white Hawaii Mars had its last fire season in B.C. in 2015, when it secured a 30-day contract with the province.
The massive water tankers fought fires in British Columbia and other provinces for more than half a century. They were the largest fixed-wing water bombers in the world, with wing spans of 200 feet and bodies 120 feet long, and the ability to carry about 6,000 gallons of water.
The Hawaii Mars was put up for auction in January by California-based Platinum Fighter Sales with an asking price of $5 million, but no offers emerged.
Coulson wasn’t immediately available for an interview, but the company said on its website that the organization is “working with a local museum to have this iconic aircraft proudly displayed in British Columbia.”
Nichol said the Mars bomber no longer has commercial value,“but there is a real historical value.”
He said the aviation museum plans to make the Martin Mars a centrepiece of its collection of B.C. wildfire aircraft, which already contains an A26 Douglas Invader and Convair 580. The Mars would be the first firefighting water “scooper” for the museum. He said there are future plans to build a hangar for all three.
But getting it there presents several costly hurdles.
Nichol said Coulson would have to put engines on it again, get a crew back and acquire a temporary flying certificate.
The aircraft would have to have several checks to be prepared to fly again, and would have to use older-style aviation gas.
It would then have to be flown to Patricia Bay and hoisted onto a barge.
Nichol said changes would have to be made to some of the docks and infrastructure at the coast guard base at Patricia Bay to barge the big plane to land, where it would have to be fitted with dollies to be rolled out of the ocean and across West Saanich Road and Victoria International Airport property to the museum.
The Martin Mars bombers are water planes and have no landing gear.
“There’s a lot that has to happen,” said Nichol, estimating it could cost $500,000 just to get the aircraft from Sproat Lake to Sidney. “And we’re working through a lot of those details.”
Nichol said the museum isn’t in a position to pay much — or anything — for the Martin Mars. The museum does not receive any federal or provincial government funding and is a volunteer-based non-profit that relies on donations, fundraising and gate proceeds to finance its aircraft restoration projects, including a Second World War Lancaster bomber.
“We’ve got lots of projects and not a lot of money,” said Nichol. “As much as we want to preserve [the Martin Mars], we can’t bankrupt our museum to get this.”
Ideally, Nichol hopes some sort of deal can be worked out to have the plane by October, or it may have to wait another year if the ground at the airport is too soft to ferry the giant plane.
Coulson, which fights fires in several countries around the world, has used the Martin Mars bombers as templates for firefighting tanking systems on newer aircraft, including CH-47 Chinook helicopters and C-130 Hercules and Boeing 737s planes.
The Coulson fleet is composed of the largest volume of large air tankers worldwide and the crews now work in the U.S., Australia, Chile, Argentina and South Korea.
“The timber companies back in the 1960s had it right,” the Coulson Group of Companies said on its website. “They had the vision to hit a forest fire with as much speed and volume as possible via an initial attack. We still utilize this same vision 63 years later.”
The B.C. Wildfire Service, however, has switched from big tankers to smaller ones with turbine engines and quicker turnaround times that can make short scooping runs on smaller bodies of water.
The smaller air tankers under contract with the B.C. Wildfire Service can collect 3,000 litres of water in about 15 seconds and have a much shorter takeoff distance compared with the Martin Mars.
In total, the service operates a fleet of 20 air tankers and eight “bird dog” planes that lead the tankers to attack wildfires. It also employs helicopters and water-skimmers, which refill their tanks from lakes while in flight.
The workhorse in the B.C. fire fight is helicopters, which are able to cycle quickly between water pickup and drop sites.
The service currently has several helicopters on contract. Bucket technology has improved to the point where water can be scooped from ponds, streams and lakes less than a metre deep.
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