Fire Engines Photos

Peter,
reallly a great peice kit, in the early eighties attended a I.F.E. visit at Upper Heyford.Were given a chance to to operate the monitors to knock out a "hot" fire in what i think was a scrap F-111 fueslage, really effective!

Added by Alan Jones on 09 March 2009.

I was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford when the P-4's arrived. Great truck

Added by Roger Moler on 03 November 2009.

Hi Roger, we had one at RAF Sculthorpe in 1978, I was impressed with the knock down capability with AFFF but thought they seemed sluggish on the move.

Added by John Stott on 03 November 2009.

They were a little slow off the line but once the turbo kicked in that big cat diesel was impressive. We had a race down the main runway, I can't remember how fast we were going but it was substantial.

Added by Roger on 03 November 2009.

Yes Roger the engine had grunt, it couldn't match the RAF Mk9 for acceleration, not that we held any runway races or took bets or anything....

Added by John Stott on 04 November 2009.

Yes, memories - I can remember the sailors racing their 2 Airport Crash Trucks down the runways of a Canadian Naval Air Station...very comforting, as I was learning to pilot an airplane there.

Talk about a cross-over of traditional roles; and you could have a "hookie", or, "killick", a Leading Seaman, in the Crash Truck crew.

Regards, from Canada,
Pat_R-B

Added by Pat Rivers-Bowerman on 06 November 2009.

Pat, they were only testing the machines as there is often a need to get to student pilots quickly, something to do with landing as I recall!

Added by John Stott on 07 November 2009.

OK. Now to add fuel to the fire. Just picked up my new (used) diesel pusher motorhome. Cat C-12 with 440 hp and 1650 ft lbs of torque. I'd put it against the P-4 in a runway race.

Added by Roger on 10 November 2009.

Roger, you have got that terrible American habit my friend, gas guzzling! lol!

Added by John Stott on 11 November 2009.

Good point, John, it sure must have worked; all nine of us cadets, that summer, gained our "Wings", without any major prangs.

And, I went on to do a lot of time in Air-Sea Rescue, with the Coast Guard. Another cadet became a Flying Copper - career in the RCMP (Mounties) as an aircraft pilot.

What a great summer, that was.....

Regards, from Canada,
Pat_R-B

Added by Pat Rivers-Bowerman on 11 November 2009.

Well done Pat, I never fancied being a pilot, not natural flying, prefer my feet on the ground!
Where did the mountie put his horse?

Added by John Stott on 12 November 2009.

I worked in firetruck maintenance from '88-'92 and remember working on these trucks.

Added by Kyle Koeper on 16 February 2014.

Cool truck, blast to drive with the exception of the gearbox. P4 would pump a ton of water out of its turret though, they told us to do our best not to hit the anti nuke demonstrators climbing up the fence, oops sorry about that, the look on their face when they flew off was awesome lol. Not bad to sleep in for war games, crappy off road, thank god the P19 came in for the gulf war, talk about night and day.

Added by Tom Weslager on 16 January 2015.

Hi Tom
How it going mate

Added by Gary on 15 July 2018.

Gary Taylor please contact me, Tom here [email protected]

Added by Tom Weslager on 17 June 2019.

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