A STUDY OF THE GAS TURBINE POWERED MB-5 AIRCRAFT FIREFIGHTING AND RESCUE VEHICLE.

Abstract : One of the MB-5 series of crash trucks was equipped with a gas turbine engine as a source of power. During the testing of this vehicle the operating characteristics of the engine were monitored under different load conditions, variable road speed, and variable foam pump speed. The turbine powered vehicle was compared to other, conventional engine model, trucks now in operation, both for rapidity of acceleration and for ease of operation. A standardized simulated firefighting operation called a 'scramble' operation was devised for the integration of human engineering with the relative efficiency of each of the three vehicles. Time intervals required to reach a given series of check points during a fixed firefighting procedure were recorded by multichanneled instrumentation or by observation. The turbine-powered vehicle proved to be superior in acceleration performance and equal in firefighting capability to conventional engines. These factors alone may not justify the higher initial cost of turbine power plant. (Author)