As a huge California Air National Guard tanker dives into the smoke-filled Pacific Palisades Canyon, the ground below rushes up and fills the windshield. Sirens blared in the cockpit, and a woman's voice on the recording warned: "Altitude! Altitude!"

Guard video, shot over the pilot's left shoulder, shows him aggressively operating the control stick to keep the massive plane in the air and on target, releasing a stream of wet retardant. Next to his elbow, as Hollywood-level drama fills the rest of the frame, sits a bright red, undisturbed box of Chick-fil-A takeout boxes.

That's life for the 100 or so firefighting airmen who battled in the heat, dirt and danger to save Los Angeles from this week's brutal blazes. It was hard work around the clock - eating whenever I could.

As the rest of us crane our necks to look up at the sky, or click on jaw-dropping YouTube videos to watch what Cal Fire officials say was the most intense and complex aerial firefight in U.S. history, interviews with pilots paint a picture of life-sustaining A vivid picture of the struggle. Take control of their vessel in extremely dangerous conditions.

All the while, people hovered over the burning hillside and watched as those on the ground armed themselves with powerful garden hoses while the flames "burned" their homes.

"There are no words to describe it other than horror," said Joel Smith, a helicopter pilot with the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The pilots have been working four-hour shifts since the fires broke out on Jan. 7, flying more than 50 aircraft from around the state and country.

So far, this is not the largest fire in California, nor the largest loss of life. But Paul Karpus, director of Cal Fire's air operations division, said that was impossible in terms of sheer complexity.

"This is the first time in Cal Fire's history that it's been running 24 hours a day," Capps said.

They knew from day one that this would be the fight of their lives.

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Pilot Dan Child realized within hours of his first day on the job that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. As he circled overhead, high winds - with gusts approaching 90 mph in some places - battled with him for control of the craft, directing traffic for other pilots trying to navigate the turbulent canyon below.

"If we didn't stop, we knew we were either going to damage the aircraft or have an accident," said Child, who has been conducting aerial firefights for the LAFD for 15 years. So he made the painful decision to cancel the mission until things calmed down.

"It wasn't an easy decision...it felt like a punch in the gut," Child said. "But before we had an accident, someone threw this thing over the side of the mountain and let's bring them back and let the wind calm down."

But even the next morning, January 8, the airspace over the fire remained volatile and dangerous.

"We're still getting beat up," Childs said. "This is really bad."

Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Commander for Air Operations Brandon Ruedy was on the helicopter that morning assessing Child's condition and said it was clear the situation wasn't getting better.

"You would hear the engine humming, but not only were we descending, but I heard the engine change pitch and noise," Rudy recalled. "Basically, it scared the hell out of both of us."

As the winds subsided later this week, just about anything with wings or rotors that could help save the troubled city began to appear in the skies above Los Angeles. Reinforcements came from the Air National Guard, Cal Fire, Ventura County, Orange County and private contractors from across the country.

From large DC-10 airliners modified to coat entire hillsides with bright red fire retardant at the flame front, to military helicopters designed to precisely deliver life-saving water jets to burning buildings, to small reconnaissance aircraft hovering high in the sky Conduct complex mechanical ballets.

Capps said there have been other wildfires that have attracted as many aircraft, particularly some rural blazes in the northern part of the state, but never in such congested urban airspace.

When wildfires burn where they're supposed to be - in the field - it's relatively easy for crews to set a pattern and keep a safe distance from each other as they go from water to flames and back again.

In Los Angeles, it's a completely different story because firefighters can't occupy the entire sky.

They must work with the Federal Aviation Administration to establish restricted airspace for firefighters while still leaving room for the staggering number of civilian aircraft to safely fly in and out of LAX, Burbank, Van Nuys and Santa Monica airports.

“We can’t just come in and say, ‘This is our airspace; this is our airspace;’ and everybody else get out,” Capps said. “That’s not even an option. "

Another complication of fighting fires in urban landscapes is the danger of accidental falls. Capps said he would normally be reluctant to fly a helicopter over a big city with a giant bucket hanging from it. Capps said the possibility of one of the loads being released "is always, always in the back of our minds" when helicopters fly over the 405 or 101 freeways.

But winter is typically a slow season for aerial firefighters, when crews do a lot of maintenance to keep these machines flying safely. So when California officials turn to private companies to lease aircraft to help fight fires, helicopters with built-in fuel tanks are often unavailable and they resort to what they can get.

All of these aircraft and their crews operate in some of the toughest, most dangerous conditions they have ever faced.

First is the wind. Most helicopters cannot fly in sustained winds exceeding 35-40 mph. Even if they can take off, the unpredictable gusts and calms brought by Santa Ana weather can make flying extremely dangerous.

These vessels carry thousands of pounds of fuel and water and are therefore under incredible pressure. "When you're flying an aircraft, you're always operating at peak performance," said Cal Fire air assault officer John Zuniga. "Maximum power, everything maximized."

So if anything goes wrong, you can't just slam on the gas and get out of it.

And they fly dangerously close to the ground, sometimes no more than 100 feet high. "You have very little margin for error. If you get knocked over by a sudden gust, it's very dangerous," Zuniga said.

The next question is whether you can achieve your goal and make it work.

The idea is to drop a solid cylindrical column of water from a helicopter onto the flames. You don't want it to be so compact that it "digs a trench in the ground," but you want it to be sturdy enough to have some charisma, Cal Fire air traffic controller Kyle Lunsted said.

When winds exceed 30 mph, Kyle said, whatever you drop turns into mist that travels everywhere and does little to stop the flames.

Another issue plaguing the crossfire is drones, which are often flown by would-be influencers trying to capture footage for their social media feeds. A collision with a firefighting aircraft could easily have catastrophic consequences.

"The other day, I believe we had 40 drone intrusions in 24 hours," Zuniga said. That means crews have to stop fighting the fire and wait until they're sure the drone has left.

“A Black Hawk (helicopter) is designed to be shot at in a fight,” Zuniga said Tuesday, leaning against a helicopter at the Santa Monica Airport. But if the drone hits the right spot — and is Suck into the engine or hit the tail rotor - the plane could crash and the pilot could easily be killed.

Even relatively minor damage can be fatal because flying so close to the ground gives pilots little time to react.

Two Canadian-made Super Scoop planes, which many have seen skimming over the ocean next to the Palisades to soak up water, were struck by a drone last week when a drone hit its wing. A hole the size of a fist, causing it to withdraw from combat. Be on the leading edge.

There are also complications to flying at night, a relatively new innovation for firefighters. The pilots relied on night vision goggles, as well as light from the full moon, as they did during much of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

You still can't see things like power lines - a huge hazard - but you can see the flickering light of the metal towers holding them up. "We can tell which direction the towers are going by the way they form," Zuniga said.

The ability to fly at night was crucial Friday when the Palisades Fire, which had been pushing toward the ocean, suddenly made a U-turn and headed north.

Capps said jumbo jets carrying large amounts of retardant can only fly during the day, so there was a long and painful stretch Friday night as the fire swept through Mandeville Canyon, threatening Encino and Brent. While Wood was there, a squadron of eight helicopters desperately held the fort until the cavalry arrived at dawn.

It worked. The fire spread to about 1,000 acres and may have damaged or destroyed some homes, but helicopters prevented it from spreading again into urban areas. By Saturday night, much of the region was breathing a collective sigh of relief.

For the pilots, even as they make progress against the fire, there's no quick end in sight. Their shifts were relatively short, four hours in the air and then eight hours on the ground trying to recover, but the winds remained unpredictable and the intensity of the flight incredibly intense.

It's a chore, but that's what they signed up for.

"We've been training for something like this for years," Smith said. Being in the right place at the right time and helping save someone’s life or their home, “that’s our mission.”