How Germany Handles Forest Fires With Just One Water-Bombing Plane

While Greece, Spain and France deploy fleets of firefighting aircraft against the forest fires of a new European heatwave, Germany operates exactly one water-bombing plane. In recent weeks, the Müritz National Park in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania burned across some 400 hectares, a reminder that the country is not immune even as its neighbours dominate the headlines.

The single aircraft, known as Hexe 1, is stationed in the Harz district under a four-year contract with Polish company MZL and has been available each summer from April to September since 2024. According to district fire chief Kai-Uwe Lohse, a pilot and mechanic are on permanent standby in Ballenstedt, putting the aircraft in the air within about 20 minutes of a request. Its tank is filled on the ground, with 2,300 litres loaded in 60 to 80 seconds, and it is used primarily for initial attacks on fires in hard-to-reach forest areas.

Officials say the minimal national fleet is not simply an oversight. Much of the risk landscape is different from southern Europe: in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania alone some 155,000 hectares are considered contaminated with old ordnance, and the Müritz park is among them. A fire can detonate unexploded munitions and hurl fragments up to 1,000 metres, forcing authorities to weigh the danger to pilots. Jörg Beckmann of the state fire and disaster protection office notes that German fires also tend to be smaller, requiring precise drops rather than the broad water patterns that help in large Spanish or Greek blazes.

Germany instead leans on helicopters with underslung buckets from the police and the armed forces, which are slower but more accurate. The EU's rescEU reserve has 28 planes and the Commission has ordered 12 newer Canadair DHC-515 aircraft plus five helicopters for roughly 600 million euros, but delivery is not expected before 2028. Germany, which hosted two rescEU aircraft in Braunschweig until contracts lapsed in 2024, is not among the six, mostly southern states due to receive the new planes.

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Why Munitions, Small Fire Perimeters and EU Logistics Keep Germany at One Aircraft

Why the German Fire Picture Looks Different From Southern Europe

Beckmann's account points to two structural constraints. One is ordnance: places like the Müritz National Park can explode under fire, making low-level scooping flights hazardous for crews. The other is geometry: an amphibious Canadair needs a water body at least 2,000 metres long, 100 metres wide and 3 metres deep to scoop while airborne. A TU Munich and DLR study found only nine lakes in all of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania meeting that test, and during the 2019 Lübtheen fire a French squadron could not be used because the nearest suitable water was too far. Even where a plane could operate, precision matters more than payload when a fire covers a small, defined area.

The Funding Logic Behind the Harz Exception

Hexe 1 exists because one district paid for it. The Harz contract with MZL guarantees a 20-minute reaction time, and the district fire chief says the aircraft has been requested by Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and Thuringia as well. The arrangement sidesteps a bottleneck Lohse describes for helicopters in Saxony-Anhalt: the need for a political decision on cost coverage before a police or fire helicopter can be dispatched, which is hard to obtain outside office hours. That makes the Harz model a local workaround rather than a national system.

The rescEU Expansion and Germany's Waiting Game

The EU's planned 12 Canadair DHC-515s will not reach Germany. They are to be based in six mostly southern member states, reflecting where the summer demand actually peaks; Beckmann argues that in high season aircraft would be pulled to Greece or France anyway. The Braunschweig experience supports that logic: two rescEU planes averaged about one mission a year and became too expensive to keep. The practical result is that Germany will depend on helicopters, the Harz plane and ad-hoc support from European partners until at least 2028, when the DHC-515s are certified and delivered.

What the One-Aircraft Setup Means for German Regions and the EU's 2028 Fleet

For German state and federal disaster authorities, the immediate implication is that rescEU will not fill the gap before 2028, so interim firefighting capacity has to come from helicopters, regional contracts and cross-border assistance. The Harz arrangement shows what a local solution can deliver: a four-year contract, a 20-minute readiness target and a 2,300-litre ground-refuelling cycle. States with large forest areas meeting the water and ordnance tests would need similar funding clarity, since the Braunschweig stationing lapsed in 2024 and no northern replacement has been announced. While the new DHC-515s are planned only for southern Europe, the summer dispatch of Hexe 1 to Bordeaux illustrates how quickly national resources can be pulled into the EU's southern fire season.