The 10 Biggest Firefighting Planes in the World

This workhorse of an aircraft can do it all. Military transport, humanitarian aid delivery system and fire truck.

Built in the U.S., the Lockheed C-130 has been in service for more than 60 years. When it’s working as a firefighter, the plane can be adapted to hold more than 3,000 gallons of water or chemical fire suppressant. The plane, which is used in the U.S. and Australia, can unload its watery cargo in seconds to douse fires.

Another American creation is the Douglas DC-7. Dating back to the ‘50s, this plane is used by fire services including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

With a cruising speed of 355 mph, the Douglas DC-7 can hold more than 3,000 gallons of fire retardant, which can be dispersed via bay doors in its fuselage.

It isn’t just the U.S. that ships some impressive flying fire trucks: the Russians have a few tricks up their sleeves in this department too. Launched in the late ‘90s, the Beriev Be-200 is one such craft.

This amphibious plane has tanks lining its fuselage that can hold nearly 3,200 gallons of fire-fighting liquid. There’s a daring way of filling those tanks, too: The pilot lands on a body of water, opens the bottom doors, and throttles up — the tanks fill with water as the plane accelerates.

The biggest fire truck you’ll find in Japan is the mighty ShinMaywa US-2, which has space for 3,595 gallons onboard.

It’s another amphibious plane that can be filled up during takeoff on water. Once fully loaded, it’ll happily cruise at 300 mph thanks to a set of four Rolls-Royce turboprop engines.

This next aerial firefighter is a converted passenger plane. The McDonnell Douglas MD-87 first went into service back in the mid-1980s.

After scrapping all 114 passenger seats, the firefighting model can hold more than 4,000 gallons of fire retardant. This can be pumped into the plane at an impressive rate of 600 gallons per minute.

In Canada, Australia and the U.S. you can find fire services using the world’s best-selling passenger plane, the Boeing 737, as a wildfire-fighting tool.

To do this, the passenger jet has been stripped of its seats and now holds a tank that can pack in more than 4,000 gallons of firefighting liquid.

Another favorite of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is the Martin Mars airtanker. This amphibious plane started out as a reconnaissance vehicle for the U.S. Navy, before being converted to serve its true purpose.

Now, the plane can fit in 7,200 gallons of water, which it can fly to a fire at speeds of up to 190 mph. There, it can drop its cargo over an area of four acres or more.

Another Russian creation, the Ilyushin Il-76 has been in service since 1967, when it launched as a commercial freighter.

This firefighting “waterbomber” can hold more than 11,000 gallons of fire retardant that can be dropped on wildfires. But, where other planes in this list merely dump the liquid through a door in the hull, the Ilyushin Il-76 deploys hundreds of exploding capsules filled with fire retardant.

Coming in just a whisper larger than the Ilyushin is the DC-10. This heavy tanker can hold an impressive 12,000 gallons of fire fighting liquid in an exterior tank beneath the plane’s hull.

The first firefighting DC-10 entered service in 2006 at the order of California’s then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. When it drops its load of fire retardant, the plane can cover an impressive stretch more than a mile long and 300 feet wide.

While all those other craft are pretty impressive, they pale in comparison to the daddy of this list, the mighty 747 Supertanker. This behemoth of a flying fire truck can cram in more than 24,000 gallons of fire retardant.

As well as the sheer volume of liquid it can carry, the Supertanker also has a neat way of dispersing its fire retardant. The Supertanker can use a high-pressure spray to fight fierce blazes, or cover greater areas by dropping its cargo at the speed of falling rain.