O-11A Fire Truck

With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, America invested in Civil Defense including fire protection. The US Air Force was no exception. The American LaFrance Foamlite Co. was awarded several large contracts to build a new generation of advanced crash fire rescue (CFR) trucks for the United States Air Force. The first O-10 vehicle was handed over to the USAF in 1951. Over the next eight years, American LaFrance and Marmon-Herrington built more than 1,100 of these boxy all-terrain O-10, O-11A, and O-11B crash trucks, which could be airlifted anywhere in the world.

Following the O-10, was the O-11A. It came with dual foam nozzles on the forward cab roof and four cab doors. The wheelbase had grown to 190 inches, and overall length had been extended from 26 feet, 5 inches, to 30 feet, 4 inches. Part of the size increase involved higher capacity for the fire-fighting agents: 900 gallons of water, 100 gallons of foam, and 40 gallons of bromochlormethane. The drive train had also been changed, and a Continental S 6820-8 engine with 820 cubic inches and 310 horsepower had been installed, along with a Spicer 6854 or 6855 five-speed transmission and a two-speed Timken T-138 transfer case. Tires were bigger (14.00×20 instead of 12.00×20). The auxiliary engine for the Hale discharge pump was a Continental air-cooled eight-cylinder model PE-200-2.

These trucks remained in service into the early 1970s.