These photos were taken by Hiroshi Ando who was one of the drop system operators on Global SuperTanker Services’ 747 SuperTanker, Tanker 944. Earlier this year the company shut down and sold the aircraft to National Airlines, who re-registered it as N936CA and is using it as a freighter. Hiroshi shot the photo above earlier this month when the aircraft was in Hawaii. He said he has spotted the plane a few times there while it was flying on military cargo flights.

Logistic Air purchased the retardant delivery system that was in the SuperTanker and has plans to install it in a nose-loading 747-200 when the aircraft completes maintenance after the first of the year. Their website for the aircraft says “Returning to Service in 2022.”

The day after Thanksgiving, November 26, a wildfire north of Honolulu, Hawaii threatened structures near Kalana Drive and Alu Street. After the report was received around noon 12 pieces of apparatus staffed with about 34 personnel responded.

Two helicopters owned by the City and County of Honolulu assisted firefighters by dropping water that was dipped out of a swimming pool at Kalihi Valley District Park.

Hiroshi said the fire north of Honolulu started about four hours after Coulson’s C-130 Air Tanker 131, N131CG, departed Hilo after the crew stopped to spend the night on their ferry flight from the US West Coast on their way to begin a firefighting contract in Australia for the country’s 2021/2022 bushfire season.

In a news release the Honolulu Fire Department described the fire as “large scale, rapidly spreading” driven by wind. They said it burned about four acres.

In 2018 Hiroshi sent us photos he took of the Holy Fire while the SuperTanker was working on the fire which burned more than 22,000 acres northwest of Lake Elsinore, California.

It is dry in Hawaii. The Drought Monitor classifies conditions in the state as ranging from abnormally dry to extreme drought.