Chapter VI: Part 6

The morning crew went to Eglin Field and only one ship and crew was left at Morrison as the big storm closed in. The weather officer on this last flight was Lieutenant Edward Bourdet. He said:

"The weather during the entire morning at Morrison was bad. There were
numerous thunderstorms with heavy rain showers that reduced visibility
at times to less than one-quarter mile. Our flight took off at 10 A.M.
We went just east of Miami where the wind was easterly at about fifty
knots. We circled the storm center according to instructions and the
wind went around from east to north and then through west to south. We
experienced not only vertical currents but shearing horizontal
currents. It is surprising that an airplane can hold together under
such punishment. I found that there is no dry place in the nose of a
B-25 in hurricane rain and I had to sit on the papers to keep them
fairly dry, but I was also troubled in trying to keep myself from
being battered against the side of the plane. We did not enter the eye
of the storm but were in the northeast corner. The pilot later
remarked, 'Our left wing tip may have been in the calm, but we sure as
hell weren't.' It was here that I experienced the worst turbulence and
the heaviest rain I have ever seen. The noise was terrific."

Lieutenant Bourdet added:

"The worst part of flying hurricanes is the fact that if there should
be some trouble, structural or otherwise, that would force the plane
down, the crew would not have a chance of getting out alive. The best
part is the fact that you know that you are instrumental in providing
adequate warning to all concerned and in saving lives and property."

During the time when these crews were flying into Kappler's Hurricane and sending reports to the Miami center, on September 15, the people of Florida were making last-minute preparations. Windows were boarded up, streams of refugees filled the highways, the radios were full of warnings, and the venturesome stood on the street corners as the gales began roaring in the wires and big waves came booming against the coast. Palm trees bent nearly double and debris began to fill the air. There was great damage at the Richmond Naval Air Base. Three big lighter-than-air hangars were destroyed. They collapsed in the wind at or near the peak of the hurricane and intense fires, fed by high octane gasoline, consumed the remains.

An investigating committee found that the winds must not have been less than 161 miles an hour to account for the bending of the large steel doors. Weather records recovered from the base indicated a two-minute wind of more than 170 miles an hour and as high as 198 miles an hour for a few seconds.

The center of the hurricane crossed the southern tip of Florida and moved up the west coast on the sixteenth as it turned north-northeastward, and then swept over Georgia and the Carolinas. Its center lay on the Georgia coast on the seventeenth. The boys who flew to Eglin Field had to take it again as its center came near and some of them flew into the hurricane after it passed Eglin. Among these was another weather officer, Lieutenant George Gray, who had seen this storm in several different places and now viewed it from the air as it whipped the Georgia coast. His report is worth reading:

"Riding through 'Kappler's Hurricane' was as rough a trip as I ever
care to take. Admittedly, I know very little about flying from a
pilot's point of view--how hard it is to keep a ship steady, the gyro,
the cylinder head temperature, and all the rest that had the boys so
worried. My criterion for roughness has always been how hard it is for
me to hold on and how much the air speed fluctuates. We up front had
to hold on with both hands when the going got bad. Some of the boys in
back, we heard, with close to a thousand hours reconnaissance flying,
actually got sick. The thing, though, that really frightened us was
not the turbulence so much, because we had had to hold on with both
hands before--it was the rain and the white sea below us.

"We saw the rain first from aloft. It looked absolutely black, as if a
sudden darkness had set in in that part of the sky. The blackness
seemed to hang straight down like a thick dark curtain from a solid
altostratus deck at about fifteen thousand feet. How much further
above this layer the build-up extended, I do not know. I kept
thinking, 'We're not actually going into that.' We did though, and
somehow with all the rush, we didn't have so much time to worry and
become frightened as we expected. The rain was really terrific. It
leaked in the nose and ran in a flood down the crawlway. The nose
usually leaks and a soaking on a trip is not at all unusual, but this
was different. I have never seen the water pour in and spurt so
before. Where the plexiglass meets the floor section there was a
regular fountain about six inches high that flooded the whole area.
The noise was terrific. It pounded and crushed against the top and
sides till we thought it would all collapse in upon us. I didn't
notice any particular temperature change in the heavy rain though the
pilots afterward all reported enormous cooling in the engines. Writing
was almost impossible. The forms and charts on the table were like so
much papier-mâché. There was no place that we could put them out of
the water's way.

"We noticed the ocean particularly on the last day when the storm
swept out to sea again off the Georgia coast. The day before on our
way back to Morrison Field from Eglin where we rode out the blow, we
flew low over the Everglades and saw roofless homes and millions of
uprooted palmettos. The next day as we flew up the coast, we could see
other remnants of the storm--huge pieces of timber, trees, roofs of
outbuildings, and maybe even houses. The interphone was busy all the
while as first one and then another of the crew saw something also
afloat. As we got nearer the storm but still only in the scattered
stratocumulus which is typical of almost any over-water flight, the
rubbish seemed to disappear. Whether it was simply that the water
itself was too rough for the timber to stand out or whether everything
lay below the seething whiteness, I don't know. On our first trip into
a tropical storm, the navigator kept repeating over the interphone,
'That water gives me the creeps.' It did. I kept thinking about
ditching in it and floundering around in a 'Mae West'; I guess we all
did. The waves were huge. Every now and then one would crest up and
just as it was about to crash, the wind would grab hold of the foam
and mist and crash it back into the sea. I took several pictures of
the gradually heightening sea, though I doubt that its seething, alive
look could be transposed to paper.

"We saw the storm hit the Carolina Cape. It was easy to see how trees
in the Florida swamps without much root to grasp the earth were
uprooted. Trees along the Carolina and Georgia coasts--big ones,
taller than the houses in the vicinity--were bending before the blow
the way wheat seems to ebb and flow in a summer's breeze. The seas
were very high and in occasional breaks in the lower clouds we could
catch glimpses of yellowish breakers and a littered beach. It looked
as if the rain and thrashing surf had churned up the bottom, and mud
had mixed with the foamy water. The shore was littered with debris,
big trees, and blackened seaweed, mostly. As a sort of aside, on the
matter of stirring up the bottom, we found several conch shells and
bits of coral on the beach after the storm that are not considered
native in these parts.

"Whether this next is typical of hurricanes or merely evidence that
the storm had spent itself, I don't know, but I do think it worthy of
mention. We noticed occasional breakups in the clouds--not large
areas, just a few seconds when everything brightened and when the firm
outlines of a large cumulus could be seen through thin low scud. This
was not in the center but as much as forty miles away where the stuff
should have been most solid and where the sea was near its roughest. I
have seen the 'Eye' of a hurricane on land as a weather forecaster. At
that time we noticed a real breakup with stars and moonlight visible.
The wind and noise stopped for a while and we could see an occasional
bulging cumulus through the night. Whether this phenomenon is due
merely to less energy available over land than over water, I wouldn't
even guess. In any event we noticed no such complete break in the eye
at sea. In the center, so-called calm, though for my money it was
mighty rough, about all that we noticed was that the pounding rain
stopped for a minute or so. The clouds did not break clear through.
There was a slight breakup to perhaps five thousand feet. There were
bases of cumulus and several indefinite layers below this overcast
though. The terrific bouncing around also stopped. We were out of the
place in just a minute or two, so the eye couldn't have been much more
than five miles in diameter. Some of the other ships circled in the
center, saw a flock of birds milling around there, and noted violent
up and down drafts near its edge. We were in and out of the thing so
fast that, frankly, we hardly had time to notice anything. I think we
could have fallen the seven hundred feet to the water without my
knowing it, we were so busy with the camera, papers, and instruments.

"I might say a little more about the cloud formations we noticed since
it was my job on this day to note them and take pictures of them while
the other observer tried to compute pressure. Ahead of the storm here
at Morrison Field on the morning of the sixteenth, we got a good
picture of pre-hurricane thunderstorms. Squalls with forty-mile gusts
swept across the runways. The rain came down in sheets so that we
could watch it move toward us like a dark wall. Some of the boys out
loading one of the ships for evacuation saw one of these terrific
showers bearing down on them and they started to run for cover. The
water was moving faster than they could run and before they'd moved
fifty feet they were soaked to the skin. On the morning of the
seventeenth, it lay just off the Georgia coast and had started to
re-deepen. We flew up the eightieth meridian though it was hard to
hold any steady course. As some of the navigators have probably
mentioned, we could see our own drift. After we noted a good windshift
into the east to assure us that we were in the northeast quadrant, we
headed across current for the center and once there headed roughly for
the great outside to the west. With such terrific drift, I don't see
how anyone knew where he was going.

"Heading north: The usual over-water five-tenths stratocumulus bases
at two thousand, tops at thirty-five hundred, gradually began to lower
at about one hundred twenty-five miles from the center to roughly
eight hundred feet, and a fairly solid lower layer of clouds. Flying
above this layer at about forty-five hundred feet we could see tall
bulging cumulus and thickening altostratus at about fifteen thousand
ahead. There were other thin layers of stratocumulus and altostratus,
but it wasn't until we got within fifty miles or so of the center and
the rain really began to come down and the cumulus were as thick as
trees in a forest that these intermediary layers began to thicken and
thatch in between the tall cumulus the way they do in any
well-developed storm system. By fifty miles out we were in solid cloud
and heavy rain. Picture-taking became impossible except in the
occasional breaks mentioned above. Even these breaks, if they should
come out, would show little because continuous instrument weather, to
me at least, looks pretty much the same whether it's part of a violent
hurricane or smooth circulation stratus over a seaboard town. You can
see the wing tips and not much more.

"If a general conclusion is necessary, mine would simply be that I'd
just as soon not tempt fate in any more such storms."

Sometimes birds such as Lieutenant Gray describes are carried hundreds of miles before they escape from the hurricane. Species from Florida have been found as far north as New England.

_11._ TRICKS OF THE TRADE

_A gallant barque with magic virtue graced,
Swift at our will with every wind to fly;
So that no changes of the shifting sky,
No stormy terrors of the watery waste,
Might bar our course,_
--Dante

After two years of probing tropical storms by air, nearly everybody connected with the operation agreed that it was hazardous. But most of the men who were active in it had one main idea. As soon as the winds, rain, clouds, seas, and calm center of the average hurricane had been thoroughly mapped, a standard method should be devised for flying into the center and getting the vitally needed weather information en route with the least possible danger to the craft and crew. They thought of something like a football team, each man highly trained in a definite job, with faultless teamwork, and all members of the crew on the alert every moment.

Courses of instruction were organized. In all of them one fact became abundantly clear in the first two years. No two hurricanes are exactly alike. All of them are big compared with thunderstorms and tornadoes, but some are much larger than others. The recco crew may run into one in the uncertain stages of formation and at other times they may be nosing into an old storm with strange and unsymmetrical parts. Of certain elements they were reasonably sure--all these storms have clouds, rain, squalls, and central low pressure, with strong winds spiraling more or less regularly in a direction against the motions of the hands of a clock.

With these thoughts in mind, the instructors tried to devise methods that would prevent accidents. "What do you mean, accidents?" asked a junior weather officer at one of the conferences. "The whole thing is just one big accident, if you ask me. There's only one rule that's any good. Just be careful and don't fall in the ocean!" As a matter of fact, most of the rules had that one vital thought in mind, but there were different ways of doing it.

The Air Corps and Navy soon developed their own special methods. From the beginning the Navy preferred the low-level method; that is, they flew by the quickest route to the calm center of the storm, going in at a low level, generally at an elevation between three hundred and seven hundred feet. There are good reasons for this. Weather information--especially the facts they want about tropical storms--is vital to the safe operation of surface ships such as cruisers, destroyers and mine sweepers, and it is also used in the movement of aircraft from and to the decks of carriers. Task forces want to know about the speed and direction of winds at sea level, as well as the condition of the sea when storms are imminent.

It was the aim of the Navy to keep their weather reconnaissance aircraft below the level of clouds, where the aerologist could watch the surface of the sea as much of the time as is possible within the limits of reasonably safe operation. When in a tropical storm, the aerologist guided the pilot around or into the center. Down near the water, say one hundred to three hundred feet altitude, turbulence is apt to be very bad, sometimes extremely violent. Above seven hundred feet, clouds are likely to interfere and this was extremely dangerous at that altitude in those early years because the altimeter which they used to indicate height of the aircraft by pressure of the atmosphere was sometimes badly in error in a tropical storm. If the pilot and the aerologist lost sight of the water's surface for a few minutes, they suddenly found the aircraft about to strike the precipitous waves of a storm-lashed sea.

Pressure of the atmosphere falls with increase of elevation, roughly one inch drop in pressure for each one thousand feet. If we put an ordinary barometer reading 29.90 inches in a plane on the ground and go up one thousand feet, it will read about 28.90 inches. The pressure altimeter is a special type of barometer that shows elevation instead of pressure. When the pressure is 29.90 inches and the altimeter is set at 0, we go up to where the pressure is 28.90 inches and it reads one thousand feet. But if the pressure over the region falls to 28.90 inches and the altimeter is not adjusted, it will read one thousand feet at the ground and be roughly one thousand feet in error when we go up to where the reading is 27.90 inches.

In ordinary weather, big changes in the barometer take place slowly and there usually is plenty of time for correction. In a flight into a hurricane, big changes take place rapidly. The change caused by the plane going up may be confused with the drop in pressure in the hurricane. If the plane is in the clouds when these changes take place, the pilot may have a frightening surprise on coming into the clear again. More recently, the hunters have been equipped with radar altimeters which give the absolute altitude for check. They send a radar pulse downward and it is bounced back from the sea surface to the instrument. The time it takes to go down and back depends on the height--the higher, the longer it takes--and the instrument is designed to give the indication very accurately in feet. Thus, the radar altimeter removed some of the dangers of low level flight.

So the Navy hunters moved in at low levels, preventing the "mush from becoming a splash" as they put it, and although their experienced pilots were marvelously efficient in flying on instruments in clouds or "on the gauges," they kept the white welter of the storm-lashed sea in view whenever possible. Of course, it is not possible to fly straight into a storm center. The big winds carry the plane with them and so the pilot might as well use the winds to good advantage--he will go with them to some extent, whether he likes it or not.

If we imagine ourselves in the center of the hurricane, facing forward along the line of motion of the storm itself--not the motion of the winds around the center--we know that the safest sector to fly in is behind us on our left, and the worst is in front of us on our right. At the left rear, there is likely to be better weather--less dense cloudiness and not so much rain. The winds are not so violent. So the Navy pilot flies with the wind. He goes in until he has winds of, say, sixty miles an hour. He puts the wind on the port quarter and this carries him gradually toward the center of the hurricane.

When he gets the wind speed to suit him, he brings the wind between the starboard quarter and dead astern and flies ahead to the point where he thinks he has the best place to go for the center. According to Commander N. Brango, one of the Navy's top specialists in hurricane navigation by air, "Choosing the proper run-in spot is tricky business, for it is the point at which the wind is the reciprocal of the storm's direction of motion. The pilot must watch for this point carefully, as he may pass it quickly; if he does there is imminent danger that the drift may carry the aircraft into the most severe quadrant of the hurricane." So the pilot goes into the center without wasting any time. Delay results in fatigue and it is important that the men be freshly alert. The pilot puts the wind broad on the port beam and he cannot possibly miss the eye. The next thing, the plane is in that amazing region where the sea boils, the breezes are light or missing altogether, the rain has ceased and the clouds are arranged in circular tiers, like giant spectators in a colossal football stadium.

This is a marvelous place. The crew is at ease. Coffee goes around. In the last few moments before coming into the eye, the craft leaks like a sieve. Everything is wet but the squirting from a hundred crevices in the plane ceases in the center and now it is possible to do some paper work. The aerologist is busy with the weather code and the radio man begins pounding out a message. They circle around. The pilot takes them up to maybe five thousand feet altitude and back down again, circling around.

And then the time comes to leave the center. The pilot calls a warning over the phone and there are two or three wisecracks. But this departure from the eye is dangerous. The plane begins to catch the shear of powerful winds around the center. Here a man can get thrown around violently and be seriously hurt, if he fails to get a good grip on something or neglects his safety belt.

Now the pilot sets the wind broad on the starboard beam and both he and the co-pilot hang onto the controls. This is rough going and there may be some surprises, but after a little they are out of the big wind circle and the navigator thinks the gales are down to something like fifty knots. The pilot sets course for the Navy airfield and the staccato notes of the radio continue to carry vital weather information to the forecasters. On this subject, Captain Robert Minter, an old hand, at one time in charge of aerology in the Office of Naval Operations, is full of enthusiasm. He guaranteed that the Navy could get a ship off the ground on a hurricane probe within an hour after the Weather Bureau forecaster asked for the information.

The Air Force has a different problem. Like the Navy, they are dedicated to the task of getting vital weather data for the forecasters, but their own problem is to evacuate military aircraft from threatened bases and get information needed for aeronautics. Also, they have the responsibility of giving weather forecasts and warnings to the Army. Until a few years after World War II, the Air Corps was a part of the Army, and when all three services were joined in the Department of Defense, the Air Force kept the weather job for both departments as a matter of economy and efficiency. Therefore, for this and other reasons, the Air Force follows a hurricane-probing plan which differs from the Navy's.

Flying generally at higher levels in tropical storms, the Air Force, as much as the Navy, puts a great deal of reliance on radar, which has become a marvelous aid in watching the weather. In the beginning--years ago--radar was not designed for weather purposes, however. During World War II, radar was used to spy on enemy ships and aircraft in fog or in darkness, to distances of 150 miles or more. The high-frequency rays sent out by the radar strike the object and are reflected back to the transmitter, where a sort of a silhouette appears on a scope. It may be black with white areas showing images of solid objects, such as planes and ships. In those days early in World War II, the weather was a nuisance to the radar people. It often seemed to interfere with the use of radar for military purposes, but the operators soon learned that the interference came from rain drops in local or general storms and that the rainy areas could be located and followed on the scope and, with the proper design, the apparatus could be used as a weather radar.

The first experiments with radar carried on board aircraft in organized tropical storm reconnaissance were made in 1945. Within three years, all the planes were carrying radar sets and had crew members whose sole business it was to watch the radar scope and tell the pilots and weather officers what kind of weather lay ahead.

Scarcely had these observations begun when the radar weather men discovered an amazing fact. On the radar, a tropical storm looks like an octopus with a doughnut for a body and arms that spiral around the body as if the creature had been caught in a whirlpool. These arms are bands of squally weather, oftentimes violent turmoil. Between the bands (or octopus arms) the wind is furious, of course, but there is less turbulence and cloudiness, and here the aircraft is in much less trouble than in the squall bands. The cause of these violent bands spiraling around the center has not been figured out yet for sure, but all tropical storms have them, and the hunters are beginning to understand them better.

The distance you can see from the radar station depends on how much weather there is. If there are large patches of dense rain, they may reflect all the rays back to the receiver and none may go through to show other rain areas farther away. Because of this, the radar shows the eye of the storm, but usually not the entire circle of clouds around a distant eye. Not enough radar energy is left to reflect from the opposite side of the eye. For this and other reasons it is necessary to have an experienced man to interpret the images on the radar scope.

From a radar in an airplane at high levels, these limitations are not so troublesome. Recently, too, the range of military radars has been increased. Whereas the radar formerly was very useful in getting a view of the eye from the aircraft, it did not give the eye's geographical position, which had to be determined by other means, except when the eye was close enough to be seen from the coast. With increased range, the aircraft can get between the hurricane center and the coast or an island, and both appear on opposite sides of the radarscope. In such cases, the distance and direction of the eye from a known point on a coast or island can be figured.

In the last two years, the Navy has used radar methods of this type extensively to obtain fixes of hurricane centers at night. In these instances, the crews fly at greater heights than in daylight and can get the eye and the coast on the scope at the same time. This gives a good estimate of center location to supplement the daylight penetrations without flying into the storm center in darkness. Actually, night flights directly into hurricane centers were not profitable, as non-radar observations of sea surface, clouds and winds were not possible in darkness.

It is apparent that a plane going into a storm at some upper level soon gets into the clouds and the sea surface is no longer visible. But the crew can depend on the radar to help find the center and they can go down in the eye of the storm and look around and, if necessary, the plane can descend in the outer parts of the storm and get estimates of the wind by a drift meter. For this latter procedure, the Air Forces at one time used what they called a "low-level boxing procedure." On this we can get the facts from the instructions issued by the head of the Air Weather Service, Brigadier General Thomas Moorman, Jr., a veteran of weather operations in World War II and in charge of weather reconnaissance in the Pacific, including the work done so effectively during the Korean War.

In 1953, Moorman directed that, in the interest of flying safety, there will be no low-level penetration of hurricanes. The Air Force pilots were asked to go into and out of the eye at the pressure level of seven hundred millibars which, under average conditions, is at about ten thousand feet altitude. Within 100 miles of a land mass, the flights in a hurricane would be at a minimum altitude of two thousand feet. To put it, in part, in the General's words, the hurricane mission would be conducted as follows:

For high-level penetration, the first priority would be given to obtaining an observed position of the storm center, either by a radar fix plus a navigation fix on the aircraft position, or a position found by penetrating the storm and obtaining a navigation fix in the eye. The storm would be approached on a track leading directly toward the center. If the storm center could not be reached at the seven hundred millibar level, the low-level boxing procedure could be followed, but if the radar set was not operating, no attempt would be made under these conditions to go into the eye.

For the low-level boxing procedure, the following instructions applied, quoting General Moorman in part:

"The storm area is approached on a track leading directly to the storm center and may be approached from any direction. As the winds increase in velocity, corrections will be made so that the wind is from the left and perpendicular to the track. The point at which the box is started is the mid-point of the base side of the rectangular pattern to be flown around the storm. When winds of sixty knots are encountered, the first leg will be started with a 90° turn to the right.

"The low-level box will be flown within the 45-60 knot wind area maintaining a true track for the first half of the leg, then a true heading for the succeeding legs. Surface winds should be 45° from the right when the left turn is made to the next leg. Double driftwinds should be obtained on each corner observation and each mid-point when practical. Reconnaissance of an area of a suspected hurricane will be flown with the same procedure.

"The weather observer will check the co-pilot's altimeter at frequent intervals to insure that it is reading the same as the radar altimeter.

"All flights will depart storm area prior to sunset, regardless of the degree of completion of the mission.

"Flight altitude while boxing the storm will be a minimum of five hundred feet absolute altitude, or at such higher altitude as will permit observations of the sea surface without hazard to safety. If contact flight cannot be maintained at five hundred feet, the legs will be flown a greater distance from the eye."

The "boxing procedure" was used a great deal by the Air Weather Service in the early years but by 1954 it had been eliminated. The seven-hundred-millibar method was revised, and as used in flights out of Bermuda in 1954 was described by Captain Ed Vrable, navigator, in part as follows: "(1) The aircraft flies down wind at right angles to the storm path to a point of lowest pressure, about twenty miles directly in front of the eye; (2) Flight is continued down wind for three minutes beyond the low point and then the heading of the aircraft is changed 135° to the left; (3) The aircraft continues on this course until the pressure begins to rise and then turns 90° to the left and into the center."

This new Air Force plan of flying into the hurricane at seven hundred millibars (ten thousand feet, roughly) is much like the Navy's low-level method, except that the Air Force crews enter down wind across the front of the storm, but this is nearly always an advantage for aircraft based at Bermuda. From that island their most direct approach to an oncoming storm is into the front semicircle.

The Air Force has another aid in measuring weather in a storm. It is an instrument called a "dropsonde," a specially designed apparatus which works on the same principle as the older "radiosonde." A marvelously ingenious instrument, the radiosonde is a unit of very small weight containing miniature instruments for measuring pressure, temperature and humidity. It also has a metering device, a battery, and a small radio transmitter. The apparatus is carried aloft by a rubber balloon filled with helium. As the balloon rises, the radio transmitter sends signals for pressure, temperature and humidity at each level reached, and the signals are copied on a register at the ground weather station.

The dropsonde is a radiosonde that is thrown out of the aircraft flying at a high level, and allowed to descend by parachute, instead of being carried up by a balloon. There is a special listening post in the plane, where the data are recorded as the apparatus descends. The data are then put into the form of a message for transmission by the plane's radio operator to the forecasting base. This work with the dropsonde is usually done by the radar operator, in addition to his other duties.

Much of this fascinating work is done by the Air Weather Service of the Air Force on routine daily flights, whether or not there is a tropical storm to be studied. As an example, they have made daily flights from Alaska to the North Pole and back, to keep tabs on the strange weather up there. In this way, there--and in other parts of the world--they get weather daily from places on land and sea where there are no weather stations, no merchant ships to report, and no people to act as weather observers. These flights are named after some bird common to the region. The North Pole flight is called "Ptarmigan"; others are called "Vulture," "Gull," etc. Special flights into tropical storms in the Atlantic and Caribbean are called "Duck" missions.

Some of these improvements in the hurricane-hunting methods of the Air Weather Service were mentioned in a report by Robert Simpson, a Weather Bureau meteorologist, who flew with the Air Force into "Hurricane George" in 1947. This was a big storm which appeared first over the ocean to the eastward of the Lesser Antilles. The squadron assigned to the job had been moved to Kindley Field, at Bermuda. Simpson saw Lieutenant Colonel Robert David, who was in command, and arranged for the flight in one of the new planes piloted by an experienced officer, Lieutenant Mack Eastburn.

Hurricane George, so-called by the Air Force boys, although such names were not then official, moved slowly and menacingly across the Atlantic, north of Puerto Rico, and headed toward Florida. Simpson was in it several times with the Air Force. On the first flight, they were in an old B-29 which had too many hours on the engines and had been a bad actor on previous missions, but this time it behaved like a lady and they picked up a great deal of useful information. On the next trip they had a new plane. Here is a part of Simpson's story:

"Success is a marvelous stimulant. While we had every right to be near exhaustion after our thirteen trying hours this first day in 'Hurricane George,' we did not get to bed early that night. There was too much to tell, and too much to discuss concerning the flight scheduled to leave early the next morning. This second flight promised to be even more lucrative of results than the first, for we were scheduled to fly in the newest plane in the squadron. It had only 100 hours or so in the air and contained many new features the other planes didn't have. Moreover it had bomb bay tanks and could leave the ground with nearly eight thousand five hundred gallons of gasoline.

"There were a few changes in the crew but Eastburn was the pilot again on the second flight. The takeoff was scheduled for 6:30 A.M. The storm was in a critical position as far as warnings were concerned, and the Miami office was anxious to get information as early as possible upon which to base a warning for the East Coast. 'George' was located over the eastern Bahamas and was moving slowly westward, a distinct threat to the entire Eastern Seaboard but immediately to the Florida coast."

The first hint of what was in store for the hurricane hunters that day turned up as they completed their briefing at the ship and prepared to board the plane. The engineer, in a last-minute checkup, found a hydraulic leak and there was a delay of a little more than an hour before that could be repaired. Finally they pulled away from the line and out to the end of the runway. Number 4 engine was too hot. There was another delay while further checks were made into the power plant. Finally they were off--all one hundred thirty-five thousand pounds. This was to have been a very long flight and every available bit of gasoline storage had been utilized.

The plan on this day was once again to make a try for data near the top of the storm, to verify and expand the startling information gained the preceding day. This plane had de-icer boots and they were not concerned about the rime ice that might tend to accumulate, as it had the day before. First, they were anxious to get certain data from a low-level flight, and to learn how effectively the radar could be used for navigating a large plane like the B-29 near the center of the storm. They went out at ten thousand feet again but continued to a point about eighty miles north of the storm at this elevation. By this time they had crossed about four of the spiral rain bands (the spiraling arms of the "octopus"). Here the plane turned downwind parallel to another of the rain bands and flew through the corridor to within viewing distance of the eye. They gradually descended as the base of the middle-level clouds lowered near the storm center. Leveling off at seven thousand five hundred feet, they were in and out of clouds with horizontal visibility low much of the time. However, there was scarcely a thirty-second period when the crew were unable to see the sea surface below. Navigation at this stage was entirely by radar. Again the amazing thing was the lack of turbulence throughout this flight. This was a really big storm. They were flying at only seven thousand five hundred feet through one of the most violent sectors, only twenty to thirty miles from the eye itself, yet they encountered nothing that could be described as important as moderate turbulence. Simpson's early experience in hurricane flying in 1945 in a C-47 had been repeated. They were flying in comfort under conditions which gave them a command of all the information needed to report the position and intensity of the storm. Simpson remarked: "What a difference this is from the battering flights at five hundred feet in the B-17's which have been standard operating procedure ('SOP') with the squadron until this season!"

The fascination of flying in comfort so near the storm center tempted them to continue this exploration of reconnaissance tactics somewhat longer. However, there were many other important things to be done on this flight and there was no time to waste. They picked their way across one of the bands to an outer "corridor" and retreated to a point about 150 miles from the center and once again began to climb. Perhaps in the fascination of traveling so close to the eye in such comfort they had become complacent. In any case, the events which followed in fast succession left no room for further complacency. They had climbed no higher than twelve thousand feet when someone spoke on the interphone with a bit of a quiver in his voice, "I smell gasoline." The hatches were opened and the plane vented hurriedly. Eastburn went aft to investigate and returned with a worried look on his face. He spoke to the engineer, who scrambled through the tube (connecting the fore and the aft sections of the plane) on the double. It was not until after he returned, about twenty minutes later, that the rest of the crew learned that they had developed a very serious gasoline leak in one of the hoses connecting the bomb bay tanks. Nearly a thousand gallons of gasoline had been streamed through the bomb bay doors. The engineer had completed the repair satisfactorily and, after a brief consultation with the plane commander, the crew consented to go ahead with the project.

"We climbed to twenty thousand feet," said Simpson in his report. "I was seated on the jump-seat between the radar operator and the engineer, looking through the tube. I saw from the tube a wisp of smoke drifting lazily toward the aft section. I do not recall my exact reaction but I am sure I was not a picture of composure when I called this to the engineer's attention. Nor did he stop to check with the plane commander before demonstrating that he also was a handy man with a fire extinguisher. The cause was a simple thing. As we climbed, the engineer had turned on the cabin heater, the insulation of which was a bit too thin in the tube so that the padding in the tube began to smolder. Perhaps this wasn't a very important item but it didn't contribute to the peace of mind of any of the crew, especially when it was remembered that only a few minutes earlier the bomb bay gas tank immediately beneath that tube had been leaking like a sieve. Again the plane commander checked with the crew. Again, but with noticeable hesitation, it was agreed that we would proceed with the project. Higher and higher we climbed. This time we reached the forty thousand feet mark with the base of the high cirrostratus still above us. So we leveled out, trimmed our tabs and set our course for the storm center. This time we were determined to descend from forty thousand feet in the eye to get a sounding there and then return home at low levels.

"We soon reached the base of the cirrostratus and entered the clouds. The de-icers were working. Again the data began to roll in along the same pattern as observed the previous day--at least for several minutes, until the interphone was filled with the excited voice of the right scanner with a spine-tingling report to the commander, 'Black smoke and flame coming from number 4.' At the same time the plane began to throb, roll and yaw. In less time than it takes to say it, the 'boys' in the front compartment of this B-29 became _mature men_--wise, efficient, stout-hearted men, each with a job to do and each one doing it with calculated deliberateness, yet speedily. There was grim determination here but no evidence of emotion. This magnificent tribute to topnotch training had an exhilarating effect upon me and tempered to some extent the abashment which I could not help feeling as a result of my helplessness in this situation, and the fear which clutched my heart.

"We were lucky! The single carbon dioxide charge released by the engineer extinguished the fire in the engine. Number 4 was feathered and began to cool but our troubles were far from over. The engineer had manuals and technical orders spread out on all sides of him and was working feverishly to restore some power to number 4, as the indicated air speed dwindled from 168 to 166 to 164 or 5, hovering precariously above the deadly stallout at 163. We were only a few miles from north of the center by this time but no one had recorded the data. We were too busy worrying. The pilot was in the process of putting the plane into a long glide to increase the air speed, when the left scanner claimed the interphone circuit with, 'Black smoke and flame coming from number 1.' This time we _were_ in real trouble. However, the engineer had anticipated further difficulty and was ready again. It was only a matter of seconds before the fire was out and some semblance of power had been returned to number 1. But we were still five hundred miles from the nearest land and very near the center of a granddaddy of hurricanes. So we declared an emergency and headed for MacDill Field."

Altogether, this was an ironical turn of affairs. An old plane had acted like a lady the day before and now a new one had frightened the crew with its mechanical troubles, but the newer methods of hurricane hunting, the "tricks of the trade," had fortunately taken some of the danger out of the storm itself. Otherwise the mechanical troubles might have combined with the weather to spell disaster.

_12._ TRAILING THE TERRIBLE TYPHOON

"_The workshop of Nature in her wildest mood._"
--Deppermann

So far as anyone knows, the most furious of the typhoons of the Pacific are no bigger or more violent than the worst of the huge hurricanes of the Atlantic and the West Indies. They belong to the same death-dealing breed of storms, but the typhoons come from the bigger ocean; they sweep majestically across these vast waters toward the world's largest continent; and to the south and southeast lies a longer stretch of hot tropical seas than anywhere else on earth. Perhaps it is the enormous extent of the environment that explains the fact that in the average year there are three or four times as many Pacific typhoons as there are West Indian hurricanes. The greater excess of energy generated in this enormous Pacific storm region by hot sun on slow-moving waters is evidently released by a more frequent rather than a more violent dissolution of the stability of the atmosphere.

But there is something about typhoons that causes the people to look upon them with even greater terror than in the case of hurricanes. Likewise, the storm hunters tackle the job of tracking them with less confidence. Typhoons come from greater distances. Their points of origin may be scattered over a wider area. Much more often than is the case with hurricanes, there may be two or more at the same time. In their paths of devastation they fan out over a bigger and more populous part of the world. It takes more planes, more men and longer flights to keep up with typhoons than with hurricanes.

For many decades the people of the Far East struggled valiantly against the typhoon menace without much interest on the part of the Western World. Native observers reported them when they showed their first dangerous signs and then came roaring by the islands in the Pacific, including the Philippines, as they swept a path of devastation on the way to China or Japan. Men on ships equipped with radio sent frantic weather messages to Manila, Shanghai or Tokyo as they were being battered by monstrous winds and seas. Father Charles Deppermann, S.J., formerly of the Philippine Weather Bureau, who did as much as any man to help people prepare for these catastrophes, made an investigation to see why some of the typhoon reports from native observers were defective. He listed a few of the reasons.

One observer said his house was shaking so much in the storm that he was unable to finish the observation. He added that ninety per cent of the houses around him were thrown to the ground. Another common complaint was that the observers could not read the thermometers because the air was full of flying tin and wood. Another apologetic man put on the end of his observation a note that the roof of the weather station was off and the sea was coming in. The observer on the Island of Yap fled to the Catholic rectory and looked back to see his roof, walls, and doors blowing away, but he sent his record to the forecast office! Another observer on Yap was reading the barometer when it was hit by a flying piece of wood and the observer was knocked to the floor. One of the observers had excuses for a poor observation because he had to run against the wind in water knee deep. In another place, the wind blew two rooms off the observer's house at observation time. But the most convincing excuse for failure was from another town where the observer was drowned in a typhoon before the record was finished.

It is a strange fact, too, that one can look at all these records and the reports written by the Pacific storm hunters after they got going, and seldom see a vivid description of the fearful conditions in the typhoon. The white clouds turning grayish and then copper-colored or red at sunset. The rain squalls carried furiously along. The roar of giant winds and the booming sea as the typhoon takes possession of its empire in huge spirals of destruction. With death and ruin on all sides, nobody seemed to have the energy to write about it. The tumult passed, the wind subsided, the water went out slowly, and the observer wrote a brief apology for the bedraggled condition of the records.

In the same way, the typhoon hunters let their planes down at home base too tired to do anything except compile a few technical notes. The vastness of the thing seemed to leave them speechless. The plane went out on a mission and the base soon vanished, a shrinking dot on the horizon. The mind tired of thinking about the near-infinite expanse of Pacific waters, of thinking about running out of fuel in an endless search of winds, clouds and waves, of thinking about never getting back to that little dot beyond the horizon.

Into this ominous arena the American fleet nosed its way, island by island, in the war against the Japanese. By methods which had been handed down from older generations, strengthened by all the modern improvements that could be added, the Americans tried to keep track of tropical storms in this enormous region where trade winds, monsoons and tropical winds hold their several courses across seemingly endless seas, but here and there run into conflict or converge in chaos. Twice when their predictions were not very good, the fleet suffered and in the second instance the typhoon humbled the greatest fleet that ever was assembled on the high seas. The Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, demanded reconnaissance without delay. As men do in time of war, the Navy aerologists moved swiftly and effectively to meet the challenge. In fact, they had anticipated it in part and had plans in the blue-print stage, even before the big Third Fleet took its brutal beating in December, 1944.

Most of the stimulus came from the Atlantic side, where organized hurricane hunting had begun in the middle of the year. But it was not long until the Japanese were driven out of the typhoon areas. In June, 1945, they were being blasted out of Okinawa as typhoon reconnaissance was beginning. In fact, the first men to go out to penetrate a typhoon had to be careful to keep away from Okinawa. By that time the Japanese had committed all their fading sea and air power, including their last remaining battleship, to the defense of Okinawa, and after June, the U. S. Navy had no real enemy except the typhoon.

Beginning in June, 1945, the Navy airmen and aerologists flew two kinds of missions. Almost daily they went out to check the weather, and if they found a full-grown typhoon or one in formation in an advanced stage, special reccos were sent out. One flight went out as soon as it was daylight and the second took off about six hours afterward, early enough to make sure that the second would be completed by nightfall. This was rather tough going. As one of the aerologists pointed out, Pacific distances were so large that if they were considered in terms of similar distances in the United States, a common mission would be like a take-off from Memphis and a search of the area of a triangle extending from Washington, D. C., to New York City and back to Memphis.