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Firefighting aircraft directory/Germany/Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion/3E9555

Aircraft reference

3E9555

SIKORSKY CH-53GA/GS Sea Stallion · Luftwaffe — Hubschraubergeschwader 64

Helicopter bombersGermanyGRIFN 61
Representative photograph of the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion

Representative type photograph. No verified publishable photograph of 3E9555 was found.

André Gerwing · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Identity

Mission
Helicopter bombers
Registration
3E9555
Mode-S address
3E9555
ICAO type
H53
Model
SIKORSKY CH-53GA/GS Sea Stallion
Operator
Luftwaffe — Hubschraubergeschwader 64
Country of registration
Germany
Home base
Laupheim; deployed to BA 120 Cazaux · Germany
Call sign
GRIFN 61

One of two CH-53 sent to France on 2026-07-27 under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, with "Smokey" 5,000 l buckets. Identified by Mode-S address only — the individual serial is not published.

About the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion

Water-bombing helicopter

It uses a suspended bucket or an installed tank to take water from a nearby source and place short, precise drops, including in steep or confined terrain. Depending on its configuration, it may also move crews, equipment, or rescue teams.

What this type can do

The CH-53 is a heavy-lift military transport helicopter pressed into firefighting with an external container: the German machines carry a 5,000-litre “Smokey” bucket, filled in a hover from any standing or slow-moving water. It brings near-tanker volume to ground no road reaches, and can move crews and equipment on the same sortie.

This describes the type’s usual firefighting capability; it does not prove what this aircraft is carrying or doing now.

The CH-53 Sea Stallion is a family of American heavy-lift transport helicopters designed and built by the American manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft. The Sea Stallion was developed in response to a March 1962 request from the United States Navy's Bureau of Naval Weapons for a replacement for the Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave helicopters flown by the United States Marine Corps (USMC).

ICAO type · H53

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Flight history

Every sortie this server has recorded, reconstructed from the positions the volunteer ADS-B network heard. Select a row to isolate it on the map.

Reading the archive…

Photographs

Freely licensed images are stored with this project; the rest are shown from the site that publishes them.

No freely licensed photograph of this airframe was found. The photography links below reach the databases that hold spotter images of it.

Elsewhere

Live tracking & flight history

  • Flightradar24Commercial flight history, airport pairs and scheduled times.
  • ADS-B ExchangeUnfiltered live globe, including aircraft other trackers hide.
  • adsb.lolThe volunteer network this map reads its trajectories from.
  • FlightAwareRegistration record and recent activity.

Photography

  • JetPhotosScreened spotter photography, newest first.
  • Planespotters.netPhotographs alongside the production and delivery record.
  • Airliners.netLong-running photo archive, often the oldest images of a frame.
  • Wikimedia CommonsFreely licensed images — the ones this sheet is allowed to host.

Registries & airframe records

  • Airframes.orgAirframe history: serial number, operators, incidents.
  • adsbdbOpen registration database, in JSON.
  • hexdb.ioMode-S address record used by the tracking community, in JSON.

Type reference

  • ICAO type H53ICAO Doc 8643 entry: designator, wake category, engines.
Reference data assembled on July 30, 2026 from . Run pnpm fetch:aircraft --refresh to rebuild it.