This is one big, lumbering beast. The amount of water it carries is amazing though. This has got to be one of the world's highest-capacity firefighter planes!

Wonder what the operating costs on that thing are!

Many practical joke opportunities there

Wonderful video! Thx so much for posting.

funny thing is, almost a century later, we couldn't produce anything like that and certainly not as cheaply anymore

awesome but sad

Clever, and economical...

There was actually a real reason for that. My son was sleeping in my arms..and I could only work the mouse with my left hand (I'm right handed..).. So I could manage a couple clicks and that was the easiest thing to do..

That was awesome - hearing that thing running at full power during takeoff & the climbout must sound like the end of the world.

On a somewhat related note, after seeing an episode of The Deadliest Catch a few years back in which a vessel sank something like 900 miles from the nearest USCG base and all they had available for rescue were Jayhawks that had to travel 7 hours one way, is there any mechanical or technical reason why USCG C130s couldn't be converted to a floatplane design? They'd be able to arrive in about 1/3 the time, which would greatly increase the odds of survival for sailors in the water, and even if seas were too rough for them to land they'd still be able to drop rafts.

I vaguely recall there might have been floats made for the C-130...I kmow they made floats for the DC-3 which surprised the heck out of me when I first heard of it.

As for the Mars waterbombers, they are BIG! When I was a kid, we went on a trip in BC, and found the lake where they were based, and we launched our little boat to go have a look...well, the wing pontoons, were about the same size as our boat!!! Big planes. Not quite Spruce Goose, but big. They are expensive to maintain, but are maintained well. They have saved lives and houses. And saved jobs (hard to be a lumberjack when your forest burned down!). A few years ago this plane, among many other smaller waterbombers, and thousands of firefighters, volunteers and regular citizens, saved the town of Kelowna from a raging forest fire.

Oh, and the Martin Mars has a tiny cameo in "The A-Team" movie (I'm pretty sure the entire movie is filmed in Vancouver and local region...even the Mexico stuff is likely Kelowna area), when they take a plane to get onto the cargo ship...giant, and the scene is filmed right by Stanley Park.

My good friend Tom Curtis made the base these water bombers are stationed at for X-Plane. Can`t wait for someone to
make a good model of the plane for X-plane 10. Would love to see one for real.

And I remember the news reports of its use to save Kelowna. And the A-Team movie sequence.

Not the first man limited to one-handed web surfing, but I guess you don't like the Martin Mars that much... :O

You wonder how that massive hull can overcome the drag of the water to gain enough speed for ever getting airborne...

HUGE thick wing...massive low-speed lift...gain a bit of speed, less resistance in the water, gain a bit more speed, even less water to "push", next thing you know, you are picking up speed in the air!

But seeing them just sitting in the water floating like giants, it just doesn't "feel" like it could fly.

that's why the c130 will never be a floatplane

boatplanes are designed with hulls that will plane at a relatively low speed, raising them out of the water and effectively reducing the wetted area of the hull.

why boatplanes and amphib boatplanes are not more popular i'll never understand - they are so versatile and the building cost is not that much more (sometimes even cheaper) than normal aircraft.

I guess operation costs may be more for the floating hull design.