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Firefighting aircraft directory/United States/Sikorsky S-61/N161CG

Aircraft reference

N161CG

S-61 N · Coulson Aviation (USA)

Helicopter bombersUnited States
Representative photograph of the Sikorsky S-61

Representative type photograph. No verified publishable photograph of N161CG was found.

Peng Chen · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Identity

Mission
Helicopter bombers
Registration
N161CG
Mode-S address
A0F59E
ICAO type
S61
Model
S-61 N
Manufacturer
Sikorsky
Operator
Coulson Aviation (USA)
Country of registration
United States
Home base
Thermal, California · United States

About the Sikorsky S-61

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 twin-engine S-61N carries a longline bucket or belly tank and can refill through a snorkel. This heavy-helicopter configuration delivers about 1,057 US gallons for sustained water drops and can also transport crews and equipment.

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

The Sikorsky S-61L and S-61N are civil variants of the SH-3 Sea King military helicopter. They were developed and produced by the American helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft.

ICAO type · S61

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 S61ICAO Doc 8643 entry: designator, wake category, engines.
Reference data assembled on August 16, 2026 from adsbdb, hexdb.io. Run pnpm fetch:aircraft --refresh to rebuild it.