Investigators head to scene of fatal tanker crash

Federal authorities investigating a fatal crash of an air tanker fighting a southern Utah wildfire over the weekend plan to visit the wreckage site in hopes of determining what caused the plane to plummet into a canyon and disintegrate over a 600-yard debris field. National Transportation Safety Board investigator Van McKenny says authorities would visit the site for the first time Tuesday to gather evidence. Once a Cold War-era submarine attack plane, the Lockheed Martin Corp.-made P2V has for years been both a mainstay of the nation's aerial firefighting arsenal and a cause for concern. Flying in the turbulent, unforgiving skies above raging wildfires, the planes have crashed at least seven times from either mechanical problems or pilot error, causing 16 deaths, dating back to 1990 when they were slowly added to the nation's firefighting fleet. The latest crash in Utah that killed two pilots and a crash-landing by another one of the same planes in Nevada, both on Sunday, have renewed calls for the federal government to speed up efforts to modernize the nation's firefighting aircraft fleet used to drop fire retardant. All of it, just as the busiest part of the wildfire season begins in the West...more