C-17s dropping water balloons on fires? Cool...

.... but in a Canadian aviation history book I read a while back, they
talked about early aerial firefighting attempts, including dropping paper
bags full of water on the fire. It delivered the water, but the impact of
the bag often sent sparks flying everywhere, spreading the fire while
putting out the centre bit of it.

It seems to me that the C-17+water balloon could have the same flaw. The
advantage would be that you could drop a whole LOT of the things, of
course.

Interesting, anyway. Anyone want to be that with the extra-destructive
fires in California this year there'll be more interest in firefighting
come next budget time in lots of places?

(It was a bad year in BC, too, but we've had worse, and the rest of
Canada seems to have gotten off fairly well...)

Brian.