The twin-engine P2V air tanker owned by Neptune Aviation of Missoula had been fighting a wildfire earlier in the day that had forced evacuations over the weekend in California's Alpine County near Hope Valley south of Lake Tahoe, Reno fire spokesman Steve Frady said Monday night.
Names of the three confirmed dead in the crash had not been released, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
It marked at least the third time a P2V owned by Neptune suffered a fatal crash while fighting wildfires on government contract over the past 15 years. Two men were killed when one crashed near Missoula in 1994 and two other men died in a crash near Reserve, N.M., in 1998.
Officials for Neptune did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Monday night.
Investigators for the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board were on their way to the scene, officials said.
The crash just north of Reno started a small brush fire that local crews extinguished, Frady said. He said the debris field from the crash covered approximately 5 square miles northwest of the airport northeast of U.S. Highway 395.
"It was full of fuel and retardant and had been on the Hope Valley fire and apparently was headed back to make one last drop," Frady told The Associated Press.
The plane, an anti-submarine bomber built in 1962 by Lockheed, typically was used by the U.S. Navy to patrol the ocean during World War II.
The fire in California south of Lake Tahoe had burned about 150 acres and was estimated to be 30 percent contained on Monday.
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