The article I posted below said "The aerial firefighting environment is terrifically hard on an aircraft with anywhere from 5.7 to 7 times the fatigue of airline flying".
According to my quick calculation, these planes carry up to 33,000# of liquid for quick dumps on fires which means very fast changes in stresses on the structures.
Don't know the age of this plane but the one in your post was around 45 years old. One would logically assume the operators would do very intense structural inspections on a regular basis.
That article also said there was two C-130s lost in 2002 with a second lost in South Dakota.
Very dangerous business even without worrying about the planes falling apart......
Thanks too for the reminder about the Martin Mars, which I believe is no longer being built. That thing is very impressive, being able to land on a lake and refill on the move. Now that takes some guts!
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