Not The Fire Truck!

[MIflyer]

There were two twin brothers who both became RAF Wing Commanders in WWII. One day one of them was flying to an important conference in the UK but found the airfield he had planned to use socked it. He landed at the first base he could get into. Most RAF airfields had a fire truck and an ambulance spotted on the field as close as possible to the runway. The WC leaped into the ambulance and directed the driver to take him to his conference.

One of the twin WC's then received a letter from the station commander complaining how inappropriate it was to have commandeered the ambulance. He responded that he understood the concern but that it was not he who had swiped the meat wagon but rather his twin brother, adding at the end, "As for me, I always take the fire truck."

 

[Gnomey]

 

[Ossington]

Not the Atcherleys?

 

[sotaro]

American fire trucks usually don't have locks.

 

[Shortround6]

American fire trucks usually don't have locks.

The ones I drove didn't have keys. Turn on the master switch, hit the starter button, release the air brakes, do what you need to for the transmission (automatic or manual).

MAKE SURE all men are on board and ready and ready to GO! and start moving.

 

[sotaro]

The ones I drove didn't have keys. Turn on the master switch, hit the starter button, release the air brakes, do what you need to for the transmission (automatic or manual).

MAKE SURE all men are on board and ready and ready to GO! and start moving.

Leaving out the four wheel drive/non air braked vehicles. those were the days!

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The ones I drove didn't have keys. Turn on the master switch, hit the starter button, release the air brakes, do what you need to for the transmission (automatic or manual).

MAKE SURE all men are on board and ready and ready to GO! and start moving.

Bingo. Crew cab helps for the last bit. Tailboard might be ugly money.

 

[Shortround6]

Bingo. Crew cab helps for the last bit. Tailboard might be ugly money.

The old ones had a buzzer you were supposed to press.
Didn't do much good if you were falling off.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The old ones had a buzzer you were supposed to press.
Didn't do much good if you were falling off.

Right, the tail-board straps on our P-12s had a few feet of play, you could maybe hit the buzzer if a speed-bump bounced you high enough.

 

[Shortround6]

Close to our 1955 (in use in the 70s as a spare, if two others were being serviced)

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

View attachment 704569
Close to our 1955 (in use in the 70s as a spare, if two others were being serviced)

At least ours had a cab! Still had the 1" booster-reels on either side, even after NFPA 1500 in 1992.

 

[Shortround6]

Our 1959 had a fiberglass cap on the metal body. Also had an engine swap with a 6 cylinder Continental replacing the V-12.
Done at the town garage with a surplus engine originally ordered by the French. French changed their mind and went with diesels. (They were smarter than we were)
Town Mechanics got clutch parts from a junkyard. Shift level came up through a hole in the floor as the shift gate was left off after they found that the newly bent linkage would not allow the lever to to move properly in the gate.
RPM of the engine did not match up well to the transmission making shifting difficult. Lack of accelerated pump in the carb made double clutching difficult. Likewise a heavy flywheel.
Not sure the cutch fully disengaged at times?

I was the last driver to use it in regular service (the '59) the new truck was being fitted out and while taking the old one on a call (false alarm) and blew a shift on a hill and could not get the truck moving again. Eased up on the clutch while giving it a bit of gas and turning the airbrake off. Truck didn't roll back but it didn't go up the hill either. Once the officer got the truck moving we went to headquarters and swapped over the rest of the equipment. Truck hung on for years as a spare, using up about 4 junk yard transmissions (not all with the same shift pattern, 3 & 4 swapped places) and one rear axle.

 

[sotaro]

Right, the tail-board straps on our P-12s had a few feet of play, you could maybe hit the buzzer if a speed-bump bounced you high enough.

Do you remember the code for the buzzer? Did you have a bar that swung down behind the tailboard riders as well as hand straps, or did the straps go around your torso?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Do you remember the code for the buzzer? Did you have a bar that swung down behind the tailboard riders as well as hand straps, or did the straps go around your torso?

No code for the buzzer, if we were lighting off and a tailboarder wasn't ready, a buzz, or if we were already moving and something bad happened in back, again, a buzz.

We had waist-straps and oh-shit handles. No bars or riders, just nylon straps with aluminum latches and the hand-holds from an overhead frame.

 

[MIflyer]

American fire trucks usually don't have locks.

A friend of mine went to work for the Detroit Fire Dept just after WWII, when he got back from flying Spits, Hurricanes, and B-24's. Recall the old fire trucks with separate steering in the back? When he was steering the rear and they came up on a 90 degree corner, he would turn the wheel so that he beat the rest of the truck around the corner and was already straightened out onto the new road when the front of the truck came around the corner.

The new trucks look like they combined a fire truck with a city bus.

 

[sotaro]

San Francisco is all tiller aerial ladder trucks. They are more maneuverable than the fire engines, despite being 20 feet longer. Before head sets with microphones and speakers, the only means of communication between the driver and the tiller was the buzzer. The crew cab is a vast improvement in comfort and also effectiveness on arrival as being together allows better communications.

 

[MIflyer]

I asked my friend why they used to say "Hook and Ladder." He explained that a Hook was kind of a long 2X4 with rungs sticking out the sides and a hook at the top. The idea was that you could hook it over the windows of the floor above you, climb up, then haul it up and hook it over the windows of the next floor and proceed on up, a floor at a time. That eliminated the need for long ladders. Sounds dangerous as hell to me.

Tiller type trucks on those hills in SFO?!?!?!?! YOW! Talk about a potential for excitement!

 

[Shortround6]

I asked my friend why they used to say "Hook and Ladder." He explained that a Hook was kind of a long 2X4 with rungs sticking out the sides and a hook at the top. The idea was that you could hook it over the windows of the floor above you, climb up, then haul it up and hook it over the windows of the next floor and proceed on up, a floor at a time. That eliminated the need for long ladders. Sounds dangerous as hell to me.

Tiller type trucks on those hills in SFO?!?!?!?! YOW! Talk about a potential for excitement!

Very good for fire fighter school demonstrations.

Now try and use them with full turnout gear and an air-pack.
Then try to get the victim to climb out the window and onto the ladder to go down.
One of the fire schools in my area back in the 70s used them during the training classes. That city and and all the surrounding towns couldn't remember when anybody used one at a real fire.

We sometimes couldn't get applicants to climb a 65 ft aerial ladder during the physical agility test to climb up, touch the top rung and climb down (70 degree angle or a bit lower) and it was standard procedure to send an "aide" right behind them to talk them down if they froze, Side rails were almost two feet deep at the top.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

We spent three days training on ladder ops when I was in tech school at Chanute AFB. That segment, and the smokehouse, produced the greatest number of washouts, iirc.

 

[sotaro]

Part of training for the San Francisco Fire Department fire college was using the pompiers from the ground to the top of the 8 story fire tower and back down. I tried my "creak" best, but I really couldn't stop wondering when "creak" was the last time someone "creak" did maintenance on the pompiers. Nobody died.

MIflyer, the tillers are more maneuverable than straight aerials, except perhaps the rear steer straights. Brakes, due to the hills, were the biggest issue when it came to certifying new apparatus. Throwing the aerial on a steep hill was definitely not for the faint of heart.