Originally Posted by
megan
With the exception of the Canadair and Be-200 I'm hard pressed to think of any aircraft designed with water bombing in mind. Personally can't see what difference it makes as to the airframe used, the catalogue of aircraft used is long, Neptune, B-24, DC-7, Catalina, Electra, Avenger, Mars etc etc The 747 and MD-87 are now used as well.
Of course at the other end of the scale are all the fixed & rotary wing aircraft now used for firefighting. For fixed wing, most are purpose built aerial agriculture aircraft adapted to fire-fighting. While looking through recent "Aerial Work" related accidents on ATSB site, it was apparent that there were at least as many accidents during aerial application tasks as those related to firefighting. Low level flight is clearly more risky, regardless of the role.