Chapter V: Part 5

The hurricane hunter and forecaster who stepped into this responsible position at a critical time was Grady Norton. Born in Alabama, in 1895, Grady joined the Weather Bureau shortly before World War I, then became a meteorologist in the Army, after taking training at A. & M. College of Texas, where a weather school was established early in 1918. But he had no wish to be a forecaster or to send out warnings of hurricanes.

Nevertheless, the people in Washington were unable to get out of their minds the fact that whenever Norton made forecasts for practice, his rating was very high, especially for the southeastern part of the country. The Bureau encouraged him at every opportunity because he was one of those who are born with the knack of making good weather predictions--which is an art rather than a science, even in its present stage of development.

Then in 1928, Grady went on a motor trip and arrived in southern Florida just after the Palm Beach hurricane had struck Lake Okeechobee, killing more than two thousand people. He saw the devastation, the mass burials, the suffering, and determined to do something about it. By 1930 he was at New Orleans, getting experience in forecasting Gulf hurricanes. After five years, the hurricane teletype and the centers at Jacksonville and New Orleans were established and Grady was put in charge of hurricane forecasting at Jacksonville. There, and later at Miami, his name, Grady Norton, coming over the radio, became familiar and reassuring to almost every householder in the region. For twenty hurricane seasons he took the brunt of it in almost countless emergencies. In some instances, he made broadcasts steadily and continuously every two hours, or oftener, for two days or more without rest, his microphone having direct connections to more than twenty Florida radio stations, and by powerful short-wave hook-ups to small towns all over the state. As the hurricane threatened areas beyond Florida, he continued the issue of bulletins, warnings, and advices. In the last ten years of this service, he was warned by his physicians to turn a good deal of the responsibility over to his assistants, but the public wanted to know his personal decisions.

In 1954, after Hurricanes Carol and Edna had devastated sections of the northeast with resultant serious criticism of the Bureau in regard to the former, a fast-moving blow that allowed very limited time for precautions, Norton died on the job while tracking Hurricane Hazel through the Caribbean. A tall, thin, sandy-haired Southerner, Norton had a slow, calm way of talking that put him, in the public mind, at the top of the list of hurricane hunters of his generation. And it was generally conceded that to his efforts were to be credited in a large degree the advances in hurricane forecasting in the years after 1935. But the outstanding progress was gained from the use of aircraft to reconnoiter hurricanes, in which Norton played a very important part.

In Grady Norton's place, the Bureau put Gordon Dunn, who was an associate of Norton's at Jacksonville when the service began and who had more recently been in charge of the forecast center at Chicago.

By the end of 1942 it was plain that the weather offices of the Army and Navy would have to join with the Weather Bureau in hunting and predicting hurricanes. It was agreed that the combined office would work best at Miami. For the 1943 storm season, the Weather Bureau moved its forecast office from Jacksonville to Miami, with Norton in charge, and the military agencies assigned liaison officers there for the purpose of coordinating the weather reports received and the warnings issued. All the experts felt that military aircraft would have to be used to get the reports needed. In August, 1943, the news of Colonel Duckworth's successful flight into the center of the Texas hurricane was the decisive factor. Reconnaissance began in 1944.

_9._ WINGS AGAINST THE WHIRLING BLASTS

_Said the black-browed hurricane
Brooding down the Spanish main
"Shall I see my forces, zounds!
Measured in square inches, pounds?
With detectives at my back
When I double on my track!
All my secret paths made clear!
Published to a hemisphere!
Shall I? Blow me, if I do!"_
--Bret Harte

After Joe Duckworth flew into the center of the hurricane near Galveston on July 27, 1943, there was much excitement about the remarkable fact that he had experienced no very dangerous weather or damage to his plane on the trip. But the experts realized that hunting hurricanes as a regular business would be different. Men who had flown the weather in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the tropics and subtropics, and those who had just thought about it, had visions of undulating seas stirred by soft tropical breezes, white clouds piled in neat balls on the horizon, blue water, blue sky, and lush palm-covered coasts and islands. And yet they knew that nowhere is the sly trickery of wind and storm more dangerous. Suddenly and with no apparent reason, the soft breezes turn into quick little gusts and wrap themselves around a center, with gray clouds spreading and rain coming in brief squalls. The whirl spreads, gathering other winds into its orbit, and hard rain begins. Soon there are violent gales and the power of the storm is apparent in the roaring of the wind and sea.

And so it is easy to think of a plane in a hurricane as being like an oak leaf in a thunderstorm, except that the leaf is bigger in proportion but lacks the skillful handling of a youthful crew, alert, fearful and resourceful, straining desperately to keep it from rocketing steeply into the wind-torn sea below. For these reasons, the men who ventured in 1943 to probe tropical storms by air were exceedingly cautious about it. They went into it at a high level--usually as far up as the plane would go--and came down by easy stages, in the calm center, if possible, ready to turn around and dash for land the moment anything went wrong.

The next after Duckworth and his associates to look into a hurricane was Captain G. H. MacDougall of the Army Air Forces. The second fully-developed storm of 1943 came from far out in the open Atlantic and passed east of the Windward Islands on a north-northwest course toward Bermuda. MacDougall wanted to have a first-hand view of its insides. Ships in the Atlantic were reporting extremely high winds and waves fifty to sixty feet high and five hundred to six hundred feet in length. MacDougall went to see Colonel Alan, who said he was ready to pilot the plane. So the two took off from Antigua on August 20.

According to the report by MacDougall, they came in at a very high level and began to explore the outer circulation of the storm. He said: "We ran into rain falling from overcast. There were broken cumulus and stratus clouds below us. As the sun became more and more blotted out, we seemed to be heading into a bluish twilight. In spite of the low visibility due both to rain and moderate haze, it was impossible to make out the ocean through the wind-torn stratus below, and while we were yet to see the teeth of the storm, the snarl was already too evident. A surface wind of forty to fifty miles per hour from the southwest was probably a good estimate in this part of the storm. Colonel Alan now began to let the plane down and we stopped taking oxygen. At the same time, the wheels were let down to minimize the turbulence, and the plane leveled off at an elevation of one thousand feet which was below the stratus.

"For those of us who had spent enough time in the Caribbean to be familiar with the magnitude of the waves usually encountered, it was hard to believe what we saw below. The seas were tremendous and the crests were being blown off in long swirls by a wind that must easily have exceeded seventy miles per hour. The long parallel streaks of foam streaming from one wave to another made it evident from which direction the wind was blowing."

About a month later, a tropical storm formed in the western Gulf of Mexico, not far from Vera Cruz. Shortly afterward, it moved toward the Texas coast, increasing rapidly in force, and there was general alarm. People began to abandon the beaches and protect their property in the coastal towns. At this time there was a young officer, Lieutenant Paul Ekern, at Tinker Air Field near Oklahoma City, who was anxious to see the inside of one of these big storms. This one looked like his last chance for 1943 and he began talking it up. He found Sergeant Jack Huennekens who was ready to go and they looked for a plane and pilot. Time went by, but the hurricane center slowed down to a crawl and described a loop off the coast, taking three days to turn around. Excited conversations about the storm created interest, and about the time that Ekern and Huennekens found an Air Force pilot, Captain Griffin, anxious to go, a Navy man came over from Norman, Oklahoma, and said he had some instruments he would like to carry into the hurricane and get records of conditions encountered. He was told that anybody crazy enough to go was welcome. He introduced himself as a Navy Aerologist, Gerald Finger, and they all shook hands and got their things ready.

On the afternoon of the eighteenth, with the hurricane still hanging ominously off the coast but with some loss of violence, the crew took off for south Texas, carrying the Navy man and his instruments. They came into the storm area at about thirty thousand feet and proceeded cautiously toward the center. At this level there was very little turbulence, but the view was magnificent. There were mountainous thunderclouds, some extending fifteen thousand feet above the plane. Carefully they explored the region and finally came into a place where they could see the surface of the Gulf white with foam and piled-up clouds ringing a space where the sky was partly clear. This, they decided, must be the center.

Cautiously they went down to twelve thousand feet, circling around as they descended, and keeping records of temperature, humidity, and pressure. At times they flew through clouds on instruments in the rain, and now and then there was light icing. After about three hours, they began to run low on gas, so they flew through the western part of the storm and back to Oklahoma.

At the end of the hurricane season, these flights were reported to the Weather Bureau and recommendations were forwarded to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that military aircraft be used routinely to explore hurricanes and improve the accuracy of the warnings. The Joint Chiefs referred this to their meteorological committee, with representatives of the Army Air Corps, the Navy and the Weather Bureau, and on February 15, 1944, a plan was approved for the coming season. As far as possible, crews with experience in flying the weather were selected. Some of these had been on daily missions on the Atlantic, for the protection of convoys. By the beginning of the 1944 season, planes and men were at their posts in Florida, ready to go on instructions from the joint hurricane center in Miami.

Probing of hurricanes by air came to a sharp focus in September, 1944. On the eighth, signs of a disturbance were picked up in the Atlantic, northeast of Puerto Rico. As it approached the northern Bahamas, its central pressure was extremely low, below 27.00 inches--estimated at 26.85--and it covered an enormous area with winds of terrific force. From here its center crossed the extreme eastern tip of North Carolina, sideswiped the New Jersey coast, doing vast damage, and then hit Long Island and New England with tremendous fury. On account of the war, ships at sea were not reporting the weather and the hurricane hunters had a real job on their hands.

On the morning of the tenth, Forecaster Norton at the Miami Weather Bureau studied the weather map, grumbled about the lack of observations from the West Indies, and decided to ask for a plane to go out and report the weather north of Puerto Rico. He had little to go on, but he thought it was a very bad storm. On the afternoon of the ninth, the Air Corps had sent a plane out from Antigua. They had reported winds of eighty miles, very rough seas, and center about 250 miles northeast of San Juan. Very little information had come from the area since that time, except the regular weather messages from San Juan. After trying to get the Navy office on the telephone half a dozen times, Norton gave up. Every time he started to dial, the phone rang and he answered it, making an effort to hang up quickly and get a call in before it rang again. But many people had learned about the storm and were anxious for more information, hence the phone was constantly busy.

"I thought this was an unlisted phone," he complained to the map crew. "It is," replied an assistant. "We gave the number only to the radio, press, and a few others, to make sure we could get a call out when we had to, but these restricted phone numbers leak out. We'll have to change the number again."

Norton squeezed between the map man and the wall and sat down at the teletypewriter in the corner after the operator had stepped out into the hall. The office was crowded and when one man wanted to leave his place, nearly everybody else had to stand up to make room. Norton rang a bell, rattled the teletypewriter, and finally got Commander Loveland on the line down at the Navy office.

This was an exclusive line--Weather Bureau to Navy--and Norton pecked out a message. "Looks like a bad hurricane out there. It's maybe three days from Florida if it comes here, but it probably won't. Looks like it would go up toward the Carolinas. We can't be sure. Maybe we should have a recco this morning. What do you think?"

"Think we can get one up there from Puerto Rico this morning," came the message from Loveland. "I'll see what I can do. Did you check with the Army?"

"Yes, the Major talked to Colonel Ellsworth and he says they expect to get a plane out there from Borinquen this afternoon. Also, I asked for clearance on a public message yesterday and got an OK last night."

At that time, because of the war, public releases about storms along the coast were still restricted and had to be cleared with Naval Operations in Washington. If enemy submarines learned that planes were being evacuated from airports on the seaboard, they were emboldened to come out in the open and attack shipping along the coast. Oil tankers and other ships would have a bad enough time in the storm without running into submarines openly on the prowl. But the Chiefs of Staff had to balance this against the possible loss of life and property in coastal communities.

On their mission to explore the storm, the Navy crew from Puerto Rico ran into heavy rain and turbulence. Visibility was nil as they approached the center. They stayed down low to keep a view of the ocean but found the altimeter badly in error. As soon as they broke out of the clouds, they found the sea was much closer than they had figured. The plane was almost completely out of control several times. They changed course, got out of the storm, sent a message to Miami, and returned to Ramey Field in Puerto Rico.

Steadily the hurricane kept on a west-northwest course, increasing in size and violence. As it went along, the aircraft of the Navy and Air Forces were on its heels and driving toward the center, like gnats around an angry bull. It was headed for the Carolinas; everybody was agreed on that now. Ships were in trouble, running to get from between the hurricane and the coast as the winds closed in, and anxious people waited for the next report.

At that time, a hurricane was thought to have four stages of existence. First was the formation stage, often with circulatory winds and rain developing in a pressure wave coming westward over the Atlantic or Caribbean. Second, it quickly concentrated into a small but very violent whirl and, over a relatively small area, had the most violent winds of its existence. In this stage it might not have been more than one hundred miles in diameter. Third, it became a mature storm, spreading out, and although its winds did not become any more violent, they spread over a much larger area, maybe as much as three hundred miles, or more, in diameter. Fourth was the stage of decay, when it began to lose its almost circular shape and the winds began to diminish. Now it went off to the northward and became an extra-tropical storm or struck inland in the south and died with torrential rains and squally winds.

This hurricane seemed to be an exception. As it spread out to cover a bigger area, its winds seemed to develop greater fury. A Navy plane went in as it approached the Carolinas and found extreme turbulence, winds estimated at 140 miles an hour, torrential rain that penetrated the airplane, and no visibility through the splatter and smear on the windows. And when the stalwart crew came down below the clouds, the sea was a welter of foam, with gusts wiping the tops off waves that reached up to tremendous heights.

While no planes were lost in probing this terrible storm, a destroyer, a mine sweeper, two Coast Guard cutters, and a light vessel were sunk. An Army plane estimated the winds at 140 miles an hour. The weather officer, Lieutenant Victor Klobucher, said that it was the worst storm that had been probed by the hurricane hunters up to that time. The turbulence was so bad that, with both the pilot and co-pilot straining every muscle, the plane could not be kept under control, and several times they thought it would be torn apart or crash into the sea. On returning to the base, the fliers found that 150 rivets had been sheared off one wing alone.

On the morning of the fourteenth of September, the terrible tempest was close to the eastern tip of North Carolina, apparently destined to sideswipe the coast from there northward with devastating force. There was some alarm in Washington. It might possibly turn more to the northward and its center might come up Chesapeake Bay or up the Potomac River. A violent storm in Washington at that time would have been detrimental to the prosecution of war plans. In 1933, a smaller hurricane had taken this course and its destructive visit to the Bay region and the Capital had not been forgotten. Also, in the minds of the military was the opportunity offered that day to explore a big hurricane and find out more concerning its inner workings.

On that critical morning, Colonel F. B. Wood, a veteran flyer in the Air Corps, came down to Bolling Field outside Washington with hurricane-probing on his mind. After talking about it to the men around the field, he decided to try a flight at least into the outer edges of the storm as it passed to the eastward during the day. He thought about the junior officers and men being sent into these furious winds and he felt it was a good idea for one of the head men to go out and see what it was like.

Wood talked to Lieutenant Frank Record and found he was anxious to go. He grabbed the telephone and got Major Harry Wexler on the line. Harry was a Weather Bureau research official who was in the Army for the duration.

"Harry, how about taking you out in the hurricane today?" Wood asked. "I'll pilot the plane. Frank is going along."

"Sure you can take me out, but you've got to bring me back," Harry answered. "This is a round trip, Floyd, I hope." Wood agreed to do his best to make a round trip out of it.

At two o'clock that afternoon, the trio took off and headed east with some misgivings. They knew that this was one of the worst tropical storms that had been charted up to that time. The hurricane was then centered near Cape Henry, Virginia. The wind at Norfolk had been up to ninety miles an hour. Colonel Wood described it as follows:

"Immediately after take-off, we penetrated a thin overcast, the top of which was about fifteen hundred feet, and then proceeded to a point approximately twenty miles northeast of Langley Field. The boundary of the hurricane, as seen from the latter location, was a dense black wall running along the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay. The airplane was turned on a heading so as to fly a track that would lead straight toward the estimated position of the center of the hurricane. Altitude was three thousand feet. A drift correction of 30° was allowed to account for the estimated one hundred miles per hour cross wind encountered at the outer edge of the storm. Immediately on entering the outer edge, the atmosphere turned very dark and a blanket of heavy rainfall was encountered."

Very surprisingly, the flyers reported that in this area a strong but steady down-current was also encountered. The latter was contrary to the accepted idea that all of the area encompassed by the steep pressure fall in a hurricane contains ascending rather than descending air up to great heights. Although visibility was very low, due to the heavy rainfall, there were very few clouds below the altitude of the airplane (three thousand feet), except for some scud over Cape Henry.

The waves in Chesapeake Bay were enormous. A freighter plowing through the Bay was being swept from bow to stern by huge waves which at times appeared to engulf the whole vessel at once. Spray was being thrown into the air at heights which appeared to reach two hundred feet above the surface of the Bay. From the appearance of the water, both within Chesapeake Bay and east of Cape Henry, it is not surprising that a Navy destroyer of the 1850-ton class was sunk there. One of the foremost thoughts in the men's minds at the time was that should the aircraft be forced down in the hurricane, neither life rafts, "Mae Wests," or any other lifesaving device would have saved them from drowning!

The flight was continued on toward the assumed position of the center of the hurricane. Although the downdraft continued strong, very little turbulence was encountered. The airplane lost a speed of about seventy miles per hour in the necessary climb required to make up for the downward motion of the air. The heavy rain continued. At a point approximately fifty to sixty miles inward from the outer edge of the hurricane, they suddenly entered an area of rising air. This area also contained fairly dense clouds below, but very thin clouds above. The sun was visible through the thin clouds overhead. They seemed to be on the edge of the center. The vertical air movement was of such magnitude that the airplane was lifted from the three thousand foot level to five thousand feet before power could be reduced and the airplane nosed downward. Turbulence in this area was also considerably more severe than in the zone of descending air just passed through, but was not of such severity as to endanger the flight.

Although the flight was continued for a few minutes on toward the point where the center of the hurricane was thought to be, the conditions of flight remained constant; that is, moderate turbulence, rising air, and the sun faintly visible through the thin clouds overhead. The men thought they were off to one side or other of the center, but not finding it, and not knowing the direction in which to fly to locate it exactly, the airplane was turned around and flown on a track which was estimated would lead toward Norfolk. An altitude of five thousand feet was maintained on the way out. The dark band of descending air and heavy rainfall was traversed in the reverse order as during the incoming flight. They emerged from the hurricane at a point approximately thirty miles east-northeast of Norfolk.

Afterward, Colonel Wood felt more confident about junior officers flying into hurricanes, but there were many questions yet to be answered. Incidentally, the three men in this plane and the members of the squadron who flew into the same hurricane from Miami were awarded the Air Medal in February, 1945, for their bravery in these flights.

Colonel Wood drew the following conclusions:

"Although one of the more important points indicated by our experience during the aforementioned flight is that hurricanes can very probably be successfully flown through after they have reached temperate latitudes, it should not be accepted as conclusive proof that all hurricanes may be flown through. Although there have been several instances of flights into hurricanes before they migrated out of the tropical regions, it is not known whether, at the times the flights were made, any of these storms were of an intensity that even approached the maximum possible. Further, it is not known for certain whether the hurricane that passed along the Virginia coast on the fourteenth of September is typical of all hurricanes once they reach temperate latitudes. Indications are that this hurricane was about as severe as they ever get to be at these latitudes, but insufficient flying experience in hurricanes has been obtained to determine conclusively that all hurricanes in temperate latitudes are safe to fly through. Any pilot who in the future might desire to repeat the experience referred to in this statement is advised that any hurricane should be approached gingerly and with a view toward making an immediate 180° change in his track, should severe turbulence, hail, or severe thunderstorm activity be encountered.

"It is believed that the method of examining a hurricane by flight reconnaissance that would produce the most revealing results is to attempt an approach to it from the stratosphere. It is thought, further, that such a flight could be made over the outer rim of the hurricane and a let-down into the center or hollow eye of the storm be made with complete safety. A record of the temperature at various flight levels while descending through the central (hollow) portion of the storm, together with photographs of the cloud structure, would be of tremendous value."

In October there was another hurricane in Florida. It began in the western Caribbean on the thirteenth and crossed western Cuba on the seventeenth. On the south coast the hurricane winds created an enormous tide. More than three hundred people were killed, and a Standard Oil Company barge was carried ten miles inland. When the big winds roared across Florida on the eighteenth and nineteenth, it was a severe storm with a calm center that was at one time about seventy miles long.

As it drove violent winds and seas toward Florida, an airline company, Transcontinental & Western Air, decided to investigate and sent an experienced pilot, Captain Robert Buck, in a B-17, to fly through and observe the weather and electrical phenomena in the storm. Of course, he considered the flight hazardous but he was willing. Any person who had experienced the violent winds of these storms or read about their destructive effects was likely to assume that a plane at low levels in the middle part of the storm might have its wings torn off.

Buck started to climb into the edge of the storm at Alma, Georgia, going in warily at four thousand feet and finding only light to moderate turbulence from there to nine thousand feet, after which it became smoother. This was in accordance with the reports of other fliers who had ventured in at high levels, and he was reassured.

At eleven thousand feet the rain changed to sleet. This was not unexpected. Ordinarily it is much colder at such a height than at the ground. The temperature drops about one degree for each rise of three hundred feet. Although the plane was flying in instrument conditions and "blind," there were no ordinary water-cloud particles, but simply haze and sleet.

At 12,700 feet, with the temperature at the freezing point, the plane flew through moderate to heavy snow with very large flakes. The climb was continued and the snow remained moderate, but as the altitude increased, the size of the snowflakes decreased. The air was perfectly smooth, with the exception of about one minute of light turbulence at 16,000 feet. During the entire climb no ice was encountered, but there were a few patches of snow sticking on the airplane. This was definitely not ice. Due to loss of radio reception on all receivers, including the loop, it was difficult to obtain the wind accurately. It was estimated to be easterly at approximately eighty-five miles an hour, to about 16,000 feet, where it changed to westerly with about the same velocity.

At 19,400 feet, the temperature had dropped to 27°. At 22,800 feet, the snow was light and fine and the temperature was 18°. The temperature had dropped to 14° at 24,600 feet.

At 25,000 feet, the plane broke out of the side of the storm near the top. At 25,800 feet, the plane was flying in the clear where the temperature was 18°. During the entire climb from 9,500 feet to 25,000 feet, no fog was encountered, only particles of snow.

Near Jacksonville, Florida, the tops of the clouds dropped sharply to 8,000 feet. The plane flew east out to sea to check the eastern side of the storm and, satisfied that Jacksonville was close to the storm's center, proceeded to the coast again and to Daytona Beach, where the craft landed.

Pilot Buck concluded that the paramount danger lies in an aircraft becoming lost, due to the failure of radio navigation caused by static, coupled with the high winds. He said that a tropical storm of the type flown is not hazardous to aircraft in respect to structural failure and loss of control, if an altitude of over approximately 8,000 feet is held.

In December, all the men connected with the hurricane warning service in the Army, Navy, Weather Bureau and other agencies--including the top officials, the forecasters, the men who directed the flights, the pilots, weather officers, and others who made up the crews, the radio men on shore, and the Coast Guard people--were fully represented in a conference in Washington. Here they all went over their experiences and offered every possible suggestion for improving the service. Many things were needed, but two tough problems worried everybody.

One was how the crew could find out where they were in latitude and longitude or in distance and direction from some point on an island or on the coast after they found the center of the storm. After all, the weather observer, navigator, and the radio man might figure out how to get in the eye, and the plane might get into it, but if they failed to get their position accurately, the information was of doubtful value. This nearly always depended on radio signals from distant shore stations, for it was seldom that they could get a celestial fix as a mate does on a ship at sea. The second problem was communications--how to get the weather message off and be sure it had been received at a shore radio station, and see also that it reached the forecast offices promptly. All of this had many sources of delay. In a hurricane, the atmospherics were often excessive. At times the radio man on the plane could hear nothing but loud static in his ear phones. He was powerless to do anything except to send "blind" and hope somebody would receive it and understand what it was. Slowly these problems were solved in part as time went on.

_10._ KAPPLER'S HURRICANE

_Black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell._
--Milton

Kappler's Hurricane was one of the most violent of history. It got its name from a weather officer, a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps named Bernard J. Kappler. The story includes the vivid personal reactions of a number of men who explored this tremendous storm as it built up its energy while crossing fifteen hundred miles of tropical and subtropical sea surface and finally ravaged parts of Southern Florida, including the outright destruction of the big Richmond Naval Air Base.

The fact is that this storm seems to have had its birth over western Africa. There were signs of it there and near the Cape Verde Islands on the first two days of September. Later there were some indications of its winds and low pressure in radio reports from ships but eventually it was lost for the time being, far out in the Atlantic.

Kappler discovered it on September 12, 1945. He was on a regular weather-reporting mission to the Windward Islands. Every day one or more B-25's took off from Morrison Field at West Palm Beach and explored the atmosphere on flights to Antigua, British West Indies, returning via the open Atlantic to Florida. On that day there was nothing unusual until the plane in which Kappler was flying was about two hours from Antigua. Here, he noted a black wall of clouds to the east and at his suggestion the pilot, First Lieutenant D. A. Cassidy, took the plane down to fifteen hundred feet and they looked around.

Without any doubt, a tropical storm was in the making. Its winds already were blowing around a center with gusts at about seventy miles an hour. There was moderate turbulence, with stretches of rain, but they had no particular difficulty in flying through it. They reported it to headquarters and were told to land at Coolidge Field in Antigua and be prepared to take another look and report in the morning.

This operation was known as "Duck Fight," consisting of five B-25 aircraft and five crews made up of twenty officers and fifteen men. This particular group had been at British Guiana but had moved up to Florida in May for the new hurricane duty. It was their job to explore this region twice daily, looking for weather trouble when no storm was known to be in progress. If a suspicious area was found, they were deployed and used in accordance with directives from the hurricane center at Miami. The Navy also had planes assigned to similar missions.

After breakfast on the thirteenth Kappler's crew took off again. About two hours out of Antigua, they encountered winds up to about eighty knots (a little above ninety miles an hour) but flying was smooth. The crew made a few jokes on the general subject of how easy it was to fly through hurricanes. The co-pilot, Lieutenant Hugh Crowe, had the controls. He turned toward the center and the wind picked up to 120 knots. Soon they were in trouble, with severe turbulence and heavy rain. The air speed fluctuated between 160 and 240 miles an hour and cylinder temperatures began to fall rapidly. Crowe fed power to the engines, but the plane began getting out of control. Cassidy had to help him keep the ship level. Kappler shouted that the pressure was dropping rapidly--the pressure altitude was seventeen hundred feet but their actual height was only nine hundred. Crowe said the turbulence was the most severe he had ever experienced. The plane yawed fifteen degrees on either side of the heading. The navigator, Lieutenant Redding W. Bunting, said dryly, "In my opinion a hurricane is not the place in which to fly an airplane."

By the fourteenth, it was obvious to all concerned that they had a really big storm on their hands. Its center had been north of Puerto Rico on the thirteenth, and on the fourteenth, moving rather rapidly, it was passing north of Haiti. The first plane took off from Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico, in the morning, Cassidy at the controls, and within an hour the crew were getting into it. At the end of this flight, Co-pilot Crowe said, "My respect for hurricanes has increased tremendously!"

First, the right engine was not running smoothly and after a little it almost stopped. Cassidy asked Bunting where the nearest land was and when he said Cuba, they turned 90° and made for it. After twenty minutes the engine was doing better, so they had a brief conference and decided to try for the hurricane center. Turning back, they saw gigantic sea swells and a white boiling ocean ahead. Soon they hit the worst turbulence Cassidy had ever seen, and with it there were intervals of torrential rain. It was terrific. The cockpit was leaking like a sieve. Most of the time it took full rudder and aileron to lift a wing. The plane got into attitudes they had never dreamed of. It was impossible to hold a heading, for the ship was yawing more than 30° and taking a terrible side buffeting. Maybe this lasted three to five minutes but it seemed like hours. Suddenly they passed through the edge of the center, it was smooth for about a minute, and then they were in the worst part again. Bunting noted a piece of advice, "When you are near the center, about all you can do is brace yourself and hold on to something that won't pull loose."

Bunting reported afterward that it took both pilot and co-pilot to control the ship and at times the RPM set at 2,100 would drop to 1,900 and then rise to 2,200, due to the terrific force of the wind. Kappler kept phoning the correct altitude to the pilot at short intervals because of the enormous changes in pressure. It was impossible to write in the log book so he scribbled as best he could on a piece of paper and copied it afterward. He noted that before entering the eye it was very dark. Inside it was cloudy but the light was better, indicating that the upper clouds were missing. When the flight was finished the crew was glad to be back at Morrison Field--to put it mildly!

Another plane at Morrison Field had been out the day before and soon was taking off again, at 2:00 P.M. The pilot was Lieutenant A. D. Gunn. He flew a direct course to the center of the storm--he hadn't realized the day before that he was elected to go through it again today, so he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. These two days had provided his first such experience. One cylinder head slid to a very low temperature in the heavy rain and Gunn dropped the landing gear and tried to keep it up to 100°, but one engine died. The turbulence was so bad that neither he nor the co-pilot could tell which engine was out. The severe turbulence lasted for a full thirty minutes, about ten minutes of this being flown on one engine, with the crew desperately working on the other while they bounced around. The flight engineer, Sergeant Harry Kiefaber, had to leave his seat because of water pouring down his back and the tossing up and down, with his head repeatedly hitting the top of the plane. He tried to go back to join the navigator but the plane started to fall off to the right and he had visions of ditching in a mass of white foam. The pilot got it under control but it seemed that they were being tossed around like popcorn in a popper. Gradually the turbulence ceased, the other engine began running smoothly and they headed straight for Morrison.

But the conditions on the fourteenth were just an introduction to what happened on the fifteenth. The first crew took off at 7 A.M., with the edge of the hurricane causing rough weather at the field. Here is the story told by the navigator, Lieutenant James P. Dalton:

"Frankly speaking, throughout my entire life I have been frightened,
really frightened, only three times. All of this was connected
intimately with weather reconnaissance. I think I can truthfully and
without exaggeration say that absolutely the worst time was while I
was flying through Kappler's Hurricane on September 15, 1945. We were
stationed at Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, Florida, at the time.
Everyone except the Duck Flight Recco Squadron had evacuated the field
for safer areas the day before.

"Hurricane reconnaissance being our business, we of course stayed on,
in order to operate as closely as possible to the storm. We were to
take off at 7:00 A.M. local time and by then several thunderstorms had
already appeared, thoroughly drenching us before we could climb into
our plane. But each crew member was keenly alert, for he knew what to
expect. I've flown approximately fifteen hundred normal weather
reconnaissance hours; that is, if you can call going out and looking
for trouble 'normal flying.' I have covered the Atlantic completely
north of the equator to the Arctic Circle, flying in all kinds of
weather and during all seasons but never has anything like this
happened to me before.

"One minute this plane, seemingly under control, would suddenly wrench
itself free, throw itself into a vertical bank and head straight for
the steaming white sea below. An instant later it was on the other
wing, this time climbing with its nose down at an ungodly speed. To
ditch would be disastrous. I stood on my hands as much as I did on my
feet. Rain was so heavy it was as if we were flying through the sea
like a submarine. Navigation was practically impossible. For not a
minute could we say we were moving in any single direction--at one
time I recorded twenty-eight degrees drift, two minutes later it was
from the opposite direction almost as strong. But then taking a drift
reading during the worst of it was out of the question. I was able to
record a wind of 125 miles an hour, and I still don't know how it was
possible, the air was so terribly rough. At one time, though, our
pressure altimeter was indicating twenty-six hundred feet due to the
drop in pressure, when we actually were at seven hundred feet. At this
time the bottom fell out. I don't know how close we came to the sea
but it was far too close to suit my fancy. Right then and there I
prayed. I vouched if I could come out alive I would never fly again.

"By the time we reached the center of the storm I was sick, real sick,
and terribly frightened, but our job was only half over. We still had
to fly from the center out, which proved to be as bad, if not worse,
than going in.

"Mind you, for the first time, and after flying over fifteen hundred
hours, I was airsick; and I wasn't alone. Our radio Operator spilt his
cookies just before we reached the center.

"After a total of five hours we landed at Eglin, the entire crew much
happier to be safely back on the ground. At the time of our take-off
we really didn't think it possible to fly safely through a hurricane.
Personally I still don't. And I say again, I hope never to be as
frightened as the time I flew through Kappler's Hurricane. It isn't
safe."

Lieutenant Gunn, the pilot who had been in it the day before, was a man who took things calmly. He reported his experience:

"This morning the storm was only an hour and a half from the field.
The usual line of squalls around the edge of the storm was hitting
Morrison Field about every hour and a half. Of course this trip was to
take us through the very center.

"We left Morrison at one thousand feet. The entire flight was
turbulent and rainy. We circled the storm counterclockwise again and
ran into the same turbulence and rain as before. This time the clouds
must have been as low as five or six hundred feet, as even though we
were only at one thousand feet, we could seldom get a glimpse of the
ocean, which was churned up to such an extent that it seemed to be one
big white cap. The altimeter was off one thousand feet at one point
placing us at five hundred feet; then we could see the water. I
believe even the fish drowned that day. As we entered the northeast
quadrant, it got so rough that both pilot and co-pilot were flying the
ship at the same time. The winds were so great at this point one could
actually see the ship drifting over the sea. I think we had a drift
correction of thirty-five to forty degrees at times.

"I don't think anyone will form a habit of this particular job. Prior
to taking off I tried to take out hurricane insurance but it seems
that they have no policies covering B-25 planes. Anyway, all the
insurance salesmen had evacuated to some distant place like Long
Beach, Calif."

Sergeant Robert Matzke, the radio operator, put it this way:

"September 15 was the day that I was picked on a crew to fly the
hurricane. Having been forewarned by several of the boys who had
returned from the hurricane the day before, I set myself for something
a little rougher than a weather mission with occasional turbulence. I
figured that we had flown through what could well be considered rough
weather while flying reconnaissance out of the Azores and maybe the
boys were trying to throw a little scare into us as new men to the
Morrison initiation.

"It seems that we had no sooner left the ground when we encountered
rain and turbulence. This made me sort of leery of what was to come
and I figured that if I were to send weather messages while in a
hurricane, I'd have to send blind as the receivers were noisy already,
and to hear and answer to a call would be almost an impossibility. As
we proceeded toward the storm the rain became more intense and things
were getting quite 'damp' in the ship. There was a leak right over my
table and the steady downpour of water through this opening made it
necessary for me to write with the log tablet braced against my knee
to keep it from getting wet.

"The awful bouncing was getting my stomach and when we actually
entered the hurricane it took all my strength to reach for the key to
send a message. After a while I called to Lieutenant Schudel, our
weather observer, and told him that I was sick and would have to rest
my head on the table for a while. I had felt bad in a plane before but
this was the first time that I was deathly sick. After a few minutes
it was with all the strength that I could muster that I rolled my head
to one side of the table and lost a few cookies.

"After I vomited a while I felt one hundred per cent better and I went
to work pounding out the messages that had accumulated. It was
impossible for me to hear any signals on the receivers due to
atmospherics, so I sent blind, repeating myself over and over, in the
hopes that someone would copy and relay to Miami for me. Our ships
were vacating to Eglin Field that day and Sergeant Le Captain was
standing watch on the frequency I was using. He came through with a
receipt when I got to where I could hear in my receivers again.

"The flight that day was the roughest I have ever been on and a lot of
my time was taken up just holding on for dear life and watching the
B-4 bags bouncing up and down en masse like a big rubber ball. I was
glad when the wheels hit the runway at Eglin Field and hungry, too,
for my breakfast had stayed with me for a very short time. I imagine I
looked rather beat up when I stepped from the plane but the ground
felt so darn good under my feet and I didn't care who knew that I had
been sicker than a dog."

Each member of the crew saw a little different part of the picture. Boys who flew these missions regularly became matter-of-fact in their reports and it was only when they were involved in a really big storm that they talked frankly about their feelings. Here is the story of the flight engineer, Sergeant Don Smith, in Kappler's Hurricane on September 15:

"The morning of the fifteenth loomed dark and formidable. This was our
day to take a fling at the hurricane the other boys were telling us so
much about. As a matter of fact it doesn't make you feel as though you
were going on a Sunday School picnic. From the time we took off until
we hit the storm we encountered turbulence and white caps were dashing
around like mad but they were mild compared to what was coming.

"We circled the storm before heading for the center. We were hitting
rain and moderate turbulence all this time. All at once we broke
through the overcast and for a few seconds I wondered if it were
letting up, but only for a second. One instant everything was peaceful
and the next instant we were getting slapped around like a punching
bag with Joe Louis on the prod. I looked at the bank and turn
indicator and the rate of climb, and they both looked as if they were
going all out to win a jitterbug contest. Now it was really raining.
You've never seen it rain until you've been in a hurricane. I couldn't
even see the engines from the cockpit window. I knew our right engine
was the least bit rough before we started out and all I could think of
was 'For gosh sakes, don't be cutting out now.' Before we were out of
it, the engine sounded like a one-cylinder Harley motorcycle but
really she never missed a beat. It was about this time that our
cylinder head temperature dropped down to about 90° and the pilot
dropped the wheels to bring it back up. And it was also about this
time that we started for a milder climate.

"Don't ask me if I was scared or not. It would only be a fool or a
liar who would say he wasn't worried. One thing about it is that
you're so busy hanging on and trying to keep from getting thrown on
your face that there isn't much time to think whether you're scared or
not. It's really rough but there are no words to describe it. You'd
have to go along to get the picture."

Lieutenant Kappler, for whom the hurricane was named, was due to go to Eglin Field with the crew that penetrated the hurricane on the fourteenth, but he wanted to stay over and see more of it. So they took him on, and although they already had a weather officer, Lieutenant Howard Schudel, Kappler was allowed to go as photographer. Schudel made the weather report from which the following is extracted:

"The rain was moderate at a distance from the center but already I was
drenched because of a leaky nose in the ship. We flew almost
completely around the center with nothing especially spectacular. At
about twenty miles from the center we encountered severe turbulence
which lasted only until the center was hit. During this time is when I
found myself trying to code two weather messages at once and not doing
a very good job on either. I actually was too busy to get very scared
as to whether or not the plane would hold together. Between the severe
turbulence and the water which by then had covered the entire desk, I
could hardly read my own writing a half hour later when I was able to
send the messages to the radio man. The turbulence near the center was
of a nature I had never experienced previously. It was not a sharp
jolt as experienced in a cumulus cloud but more of a rhythmic up and
down motion. But on top of this there was a motion from side to side
that made it especially rough.

"To me the most unwelcome sight of the whole trip was the swelling,
churning sea. From nine hundred feet, which seemed to be our average
altitude, the height of the spray above the ocean could not be
determined. In places the surface was covered with sharp white
streaks. If one thought for very long about what would happen to him
if he were forced down upon this boiling ocean, he would be cured of
hurricane flying for some time to come.

"The center was very welcome. The turbulence there was only light and
the intense rain stopped completely. This gave me a momentary
'breather' so that I could swallow my stomach, assure myself that I
was not sick, and code up a few back messages."