Chapter VII: Part 7

Aircraft used by the Navy were Catalinas (PBY's), Liberators (PB4Y-1's), and Privateers (PB4Y-2's). All were four-engined, land-based bombers, some fitted with extra gasoline tanks for long ranges. Before leaving base in the Philippines or the Marianas, the aerologists briefed the crews. In flight, the aerologist directed changes in the course of the plane, but the pilot could use his own judgment at any time when he thought the change might exceed operational safety. From June through September, 1945, the Navy flew a total of one hundred typhoon missions, averaging ten hours each. Lieutenants Paul A. Humphrey (a Weather Bureau scientist after the war) and Robert C. Fite, both of whom flew constantly on these missions, gathered data from all flight crews, and at the end of the season wrote descriptions of five typhoons which were more or less typical.

Some of the most interesting of these missions were directed into the big typhoon which came from the east, crossed Luzon in the Philippines and roared into the China Sea, in the early part of August. On the fourth of the month, one of the Catalinas was checking the weather three hundred miles east of Leyte and saw a low pressure system developing a small tropical disturbance. It grew, was checked daily, and on the sixth blew across Luzon and reached its greatest fury in the South China Sea on the seventh.

The first plane that went into the typhoon in this position was directed to the right and north of the center, to take advantage of tail winds and to spiral gradually into the center. As it approached the center, the plane climbed to about five thousand feet, and the crew had a beautiful panoramic view of the clouds piled up on the outer rim of the eye. On account of the awful severity of the turbulence the plane had experienced around the eye, they descended again and flew to home base at altitudes between two hundred and three hundred feet.

On examination of the aircraft after the battered crew had let down at home base, it was found that the control cables were permanently loosened, the skin on the bottom of the port elevator fin had been cracked away from the fuselage, one Plexiglas window was bowed inward, and the paint was removed from the leading edges. Because of the violence of turbulence on this flight, the nervous crew of the second recco plane on that day was instructed to reconnoiter but not to try to go into the center.

On the fifth of September a violent typhoon formed between the Philippines and Palau and moved northwestward toward Formosa. On the tenth a recco plane ran into trouble in this storm. Twice while flying at two thousand feet, it met severe downdrafts, losing altitude at five hundred to one thousand feet per minute while nosed upward and climbing at full power. The eddy turbulence was extremely severe and most of the crew members became sick. The second recco plane on that date ran into violent turbulence also, and at times it was almost impossible for the pilot and co-pilot to keep the plane under control.

And then disaster struck! By the end of September the Navy storm hunters had gone out on one hundred missions into the hearts of typhoons and, although many of them had been frightened and badly battered, there had been no casualties. They made up a report as of September 30, commenting on their phenomenal good fortune on these many flights. But on the very next day, October 1, one of the crews which had been making these perilous missions departed on a flight into a typhoon over the China Sea. Those men never came back. No one had any idea as to what had actually happened, but the members of other crews could well imagine what might have happened, and whatever it was, it must have ended in typhoon swept waters where none of the storm hunters expected to have any chance of survival. It could have happened in the powerful winds around the eye or in one of those bands extending spirally outward from the center, filled with tremendous squalls and fraught with danger to brave men venturing into these monstrous cyclones of the Pacific. The report--even before this sequel--had stressed the hazardous nature of reconnaissance.

In these Pacific missions, the pilots and aerologists, even without radar, had become aware of the doughnut-shaped body of the storm with squall bands spiraling outward (the octopus arms). But they got very little information that they thought would help in predicting the movements of typhoons, except the old rule that the storm is likely to continue on its course unchanged, tending to follow the average path for the season. The explorations by aircraft as a means of getting data were far more useful in locating storms and determining their tracks, however, than any other methods.

After the end of 1945, the reconnaissance of tropical storms, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific, was in trouble, owing to demobilization. Many experienced men returned to civil life and it was necessary to start training all over again. The Navy set up schools for two squadrons of Pacific storm hunters late in 1945, at Camp Kearney in California. The graduates were in action in 1946.

After the surrender of the Japanese, the Air Corps maintained a Weather Wing in the Pacific, with headquarters in Tokyo. Part of its job was to give warnings of typhoons threatening Okinawa, where the United States had established a big military base. Here they thought they had built structures strong enough to withstand typhoons, but they learned some bitter lessons. The most violent of all the typhoons of this period was one named "Gloria" which almost wiped Okinawa clean in July, 1949.

A most unusual incident occurred over the Island of Okinawa when the center of Gloria was passing. The Air Force was short of planes in safe condition for recco, but managed to get enough data to indicate the force and probable arrival of this violent typhoon. It happened that Captain Roy Ladd, commander of Flight #3, was in the area, with Colonel Thomas Moorman on board, making an inspection of recco procedures in the area. Their report gave the following information:

"As Gloria roared over a helpless and prostrate Okinawa, weather reconnaissance members of Crew B-1 circled in the eye of the big blow and watched the destruction of the island while talking to another eyewitness on the ground. That hapless human was the duty operator for Okinawa Flight Control, who, despite the fact that his world was literally disappearing before his eyes and the roof ripping off overhead, nevertheless stuck to his post and eventually contacted three aircraft flying within the control zone and cleared them to other bases away from the storm's path."

Describing the situation, Captain Ladd stated that he had attempted radio contact with Okinawa for some time but was prevented from doing so by severe atmospheric conditions. After a connection had been established, one hundred miles out from Okinawa's east coast, the control operator requested them to contact two other aircraft in the area and advise them to communicate with Tokyo Control for further instructions.

Shortly thereafter, the RB-29 broke through heavy cloud formations into the comparatively clear eye of the big typhoon. The southern tip of the island became visible, just under the western edge of Gloria's core. Gigantic swells were breaking upon the coast and the control operator advised that winds had been 105 miles per hour just thirty minutes before and had been increasing rapidly. He reported that the control building's roof had just blown off, all types of debris were flying by, and aircraft were being tossed about like toys.

A little later, the ground operator had to crawl under a table to get shelter because nearly all of the building had been blown away, bit by bit. Structures of the quonset type were crushed like matchboxes and carried away like pieces of paper. Their roofs were ripped like rags. A cook at the Air Force Base hurried into a large walk-in refrigerator when everything began to blow away. "It was the only safe place I could find," he explained afterward. "The building blew away but the refrigerator was left behind and here I am."

One of the meanest of the typhoons of this period was known as "Vulture Charlie." It was dangerous to airmen because of the extreme violence of its turbulence. Ordinarily, the typhoons were known by girls' names, and for that reason the typhoon hunters in the Pacific were known as "girl-chasers." But "Vulture Charlie" got the first word of its name from the type of mission involved, and "Charlie" from the third word in the phonetic alphabet used in communications.

On November 4, 1948, an aircraft commanded by Captain Louis J. Desandro ran into the violent turmoil of Vulture Charlie and described it as follows:

"We hit heavy rain and suddenly the airspeed and rate of climb began to increase alarmingly and reached a maximum of 260 miles per hour and four thousand feet per minute climb to an altitude of three thousand seven hundred feet. The sudden increase in altitude was brought about by disengaging the elevator control of the auto-pilot and raising the nose to control the airspeed. Power was not reduced because of our low altitude. After about thirty seconds to one minute of this unusual condition we hit a terrific bump which appeared to be the result of breaking out of a thunderhead. The airspeed then decreased to 130 miles per hour in a few seconds due to the fact that we encountered downdrafts on the outer portion of the thunderhead and were momentarily suspended in air. At this point the left wing dropped slightly and I immediately shoved the nose down to regain airspeed. Before a safe airspeed was again reached, we had descended to an altitude of one thousand one hundred feet.

"As a result of this turbulence my feet came up off the rudder pedals. The engineer, who was sitting on the nose wheel door instructing a student engineer, came up off the floor like he was floating in the air. The navigator and weather observer were raised out of their seats. A coffee cup, which was on the back of the airplane commander's instrument panel, was raised to the ceiling and came down on the weather observer's table. Cabin airflow was being used and the airflow meter exploded and glass hit both engineers in the face."

In December, 1948, a crew under the command of Lieutenant David Lykins was instructed to use the boxing procedure in a typhoon called "Beverly." On one of their missions, they flew into it on December 7. The following is based on his report:

The operations office instructed the crew to climb to the seven hundred millibar level (about ten thousand feet) after take-off, penetrate the eye of the storm, take a fix in the center, then make a spiral descent and sounding down to one thousand five hundred feet and proceed out of the storm on a northwesterly heading, to begin the pattern around the storm center.

After the briefing, the crew ate dinner, while talking anxiously about the trip, and returned to the aircraft to load personal equipment. When they were airborne with the gear and flaps up, they made an initial contact with Guam Control. There was no reported traffic, so they were cleared. The instructions were complied with and a heading of 270 degrees was taken up. Soon there was discernible on the horizon a vast coverage of high, thin clouds at about thirty thousand feet. This indicated the presence of the storm, verified by the south wind and slight swells that were perpendicular to the flight direction of the plane. The wind was increasing and the swells were noticed to intensify. The boundary of the storm area was very distinct as they approached the edge. At this point, the surface wind was estimated to be thirty-five knots from 180 degrees.

A few minutes later they were on one hundred per cent instrument flying conditions and the moderate to heavy rain and moderate turbulence persisted until they missed the eye and flew south for fifteen minutes. Because they were on instruments and could not see the surface, they were unable to determine the highest wind velocity in the storm. It was estimated close to one hundred knots. At this point they noticed that they had a good drift correction for hitting the center satisfactorily, so they held the 270 degrees heading, relying on the radar observer to be able to see the eye on the scope.

Approximately fifteen or twenty minutes later, the radar observer reported seeing a semi-circular ring of clouds about twenty-five degrees to the right at about twenty-five miles range. The same kind of ring was detected to the left, about the same distance, however. Figuring they had drifted to the right of the center, they elected to intercept the left center seen on the radar and flew until they received an ill-omened pressure rise, when it was apparent they had made a wrong choice!

To make sure they were not chasing circular rings of heavy clouds or false eyes on the scope, they made a turn to 180 degrees and held it long enough to enable them to see the surface wind. After about ten minutes they saw the surface and judged the wind to be coming from approximately west-northwest. They headed back for the center of the storm with the wind off their left wing, allowing fifteen to twenty degrees for drift. In approximately fifteen minutes the radar observer reported the eye as being almost directly ahead. Lieutenant Lykins said:

"At 0906Z (1906 Guam time) we broke out into the most beautiful and well-defined eye that I have ever seen. It was a perfect circle about thirty miles in diameter and beautifully clear overhead. The sides sloped gently inward toward the bottom from twenty-five thousand feet and appeared to be formed by a solid cloud layer down to approximately five thousand feet. From one thousand feet to five thousand feet were tiers of circular cumulus clouds giving the effect of seats in a huge stadium."

They descended in the eye, made their observations and then prepared to depart. Lieutenant Lykins continued:

"As we entered the edge of the eye we were shaken by turbulence so severe that it took both pilots to keep the airplane in an upright attitude. At times the updrafts and downdrafts were so severe that I was forced down in my seat so hard that I could not lift my head and I could not see the instruments. Other times I was thrown against my safety belt so hard that my arms and legs were of no use momentarily, and I was unable to exert pressure on the controls. All I could do was use the artificial horizon momentarily until I could see and interpret the rest of the instruments. These violent forces were not of long duration fortunately, for had they been it would have been physically impossible to control the airplane.

"Since the updrafts and downdrafts were so severe, we were unable to maintain control of the altitude; all we could do was to hold the airspeed within limits to keep the airplane from tearing up from too much speed or from stalling out from too little. After the first few seconds, we managed to have the third pilot, who was riding on the flight deck, advance the RPM to 2400 so we could use extra power in the downdrafts, and so we could start a gradual ascent from the area. Neither of us at the controls dared leave them long enough to do it ourselves.

"The third pilot received a lump on his forehead when he struck the rear of the pilot's seat, and bruised his shoulder from another source in doing so. Since he had no safety belt, he was thrown all over the flight deck.

"This area of severe turbulence lasted between five and six minutes and every second during this time it was all both of us could do to keep the airplane in a safe attitude and to keep it within safe airspeed limits and maintain a general heading.

"It is almost impossible for me to describe accurately or to exaggerate the severity of the turbulence we encountered. To some it may sound exaggerated and utterly fantastic, but to me it was a fight for life.

"I have flown many weather missions in my thirty months in the 514th Reconnaissance Squadron, I have flown night combat missions in rough winter weather out of England, and I have instructed instrument flying in the States, but never have I even dreamed of such turbulence as we encountered in typhoon Beverly. It is amazing to me that our ship held together as it did."

When the severest turbulence subsided the hurricane hunters found they had gained an altitude of about six thousand feet. At this point they decided to climb to 10,500 feet and proceed directly to Clark Field. It was night time and, since they were shaken up pretty badly, this seemed the most sensible course of action to be taken. They had no way of knowing the extent of any damage they might have sustained. The engineer reported that the booster pumps had all gone into high boost; one generator had quit. The radar observer said that the rear of the airplane was a mass of rubble from upturned floorboards, personal equipment, sustenance kits, and such. The flight deck had extra equipment all over it. In addition, the co-pilot had twisted off a fluorescent light rheostat switch when the plane hit the turbulence as he was adjusting it. The radar observer reported his camera had been knocked to the floor.

After his experience in leaving the eye of Beverly at one thousand five hundred feet, the lieutenant had one statement to make and he said it could not be overemphasized.

"An airplane with human beings aboard should never be required to fly through the eye of a typhoon at an altitude below ten thousand feet. If a pattern must be flown at one thousand five hundred feet in the storm area, it should be clearly indicated that the area of the eye be left at the seven hundred millibar level and the descent be made at a distance of not less than seventy miles from the center. Full use of radar equipment should be exercised in avoiding any doubtful areas."

On inspection after landing, the following damage to the airplane was found: A bent vertical fin, warped flaps, tears in fairing joining the wing and fuselage, untold snapped rivets on all parts of the airplane, fuselage apparently twisted, and one unit in the center of the bomb bay was torn from its mountings.

Reports of this kind leave some doubt as to whether the typhoon actually is not more violent than the West Indian hurricane.

Another typhoon of extraordinary violence which gave the storm hunters serious trouble struck Wake Island on September 16, 1952. Wake is a little island in the Pacific Ocean, a small dot on the map, the only stopping-place between the Hawaiian Islands, more than two thousand miles to the eastward, and the Marianas, more than one thousand miles to the westward. This spot, a stop for Pan American planes, was captured by the Japanese and then recaptured by the United States in World War II. When the Korean War opened, military planes used this small island as a refueling place en route from the Pacific Coast of the United States to Japan.

Before taking off from Honolulu, the airmen wanted a forecast for this long route and a report of the weather at Wake. Also, before taking off from Wake, they asked for a forecast for the trip to the next stop at Guam, Manila or Tokyo. The military called on the Weather Bureau and Civil Aeronautics Administration to furnish the weather service and the communications. They started operations at Wake very soon. By 1952 men from these two agencies were on the island, some with their wives and children. The Standard Oil Company and Pan American Airways also had people there. For the most part, they were housed in quonset-type structures, but some old pillboxes constructed during the war still dotted the island and could be used for refuge from typhoons if the wind-driven seas did not rise high enough to flood them. There were only three concrete buildings and they were used for offices and storage.

On the morning of September 11, 1952, the Weather Bureau forecaster drew a low center on his weather chart far to the southeast of Wake. His analysis was based largely on two isolated ship reports, the only information available from a one million square-mile ocean area lying to the east-southeast of his tiny island station. Here was just enough data to arouse suspicion and alarm that a developing tropical disturbance was somewhere--anywhere--within this vast expanse of sea and air; but not enough information to indicate a position, or probable intensity, or actually to confirm the existence of a well-defined storm.

During the next three days, the question of continuing the low on successive charts, and the problem of deciding its position, were mostly matters of guesswork on the part of the Weather Bureau staff at Wake; there was only one ship report from the critical area during the time. Then on September 14 the existence of a vortex was established. A single ship report, together with reports from Kwajalein and Eniwetok, gave good evidence of cyclonic circulation.

From this time on, until the storm struck at daybreak on the sixteenth, everybody on the island worried about it, and the weathermen went all out in tracking it and disseminating information. Meanwhile the typhoon--which had been named "Olive"--grew into the most destructive storm to hit Wake since it was first inhabited in 1935. The forecasters' job was a difficult one because of meager observational data. There were heartbreaking delays in securing airplane reconnaissance due to mechanical breakdown that grounded the B-29 stationed at Wake for that purpose until an engine part could be flown in from Tokyo.

Early on the morning of the sixteenth, strong winds of the typhoon began to sweep across the island, a very rough sea was breaking on the shores, and debris was flying through the air. One can easily imagine the alarm of these people in the vast Pacific, on a tiny island beginning to shrink as the waters rose, and giving up its soil, rocks, and parts of buildings to the furious winds, steadily increasing. A large power line fell across several quonsets just north of the terminal building, and huge sparks began flying where they touched the Weather Bureau warehouse.

The account which follows is condensed from the report made by the Weather Bureau man in charge, Walton Follansbee:

The wind indicators in the Weather Station shorted out early, and expensive radiosonde and solar radiation equipment was badly burned by the runaway power. The indicators in the tower, however, remained operative until the last weatherman abandoned it. They took turns climbing the tower steps to check the velocities, calling the readings off over the interphone from tower to weather station. On Follansbee's last trip to the tower, the strongest gusts observed were eighty-two miles per hour, although one of the observers had caught gusts to ninety miles per hour shortly before. The strain on the structure was severe, and he was happy to get down the stairs safely. Soon afterward, Jim Champion, observational supervisor, took full responsibility for this unwanted task. He then reported over the interphone that the wind was north-northwest at eighty miles per hour with gusts to 110. Follansbee advised him to abandon the tower. He replied that he believed he was safer staying there than trying to come down the stairs, which were wide open to the elements. He was told to use his own judgment, since it was his life at stake.

Women and children had been taken to the terminal building or other safer places than the quonsets, which now began to break up. Anybody who ventured in the open was likely to be blown off his feet and that was exceedingly dangerous, for the sea was close by, and now and then the roof of a quonset went off and was carried dangerously across the island and out to sea. Winds of hurricane force blew the water from the lagoon which began engulfing the south and east parts of the island. The wind reached a steady velocity of 120 miles an hour, with gusts up to 142 at the height of the storm.

By that time, most of the women and children were huddled in the operations building and they were terrified when the roof went off, leaving them exposed to the torrential rain and furious winds, but the walls held. About this time, a report was received from a reconnaissance plane that had come from Guam and made its way into the center of the typhoon. The crew put the center about thirty-five miles northeast of Wake but said the plane was suffering structural damage and was heading for Kwajalein.

By evening the winds were subsiding and a check showed that owing to such preparations as they had been able to make and the constant struggle of all on the island to prevent disaster, not a single life was lost and no one was seriously injured. Wake Island, however, was a shambles, and there was very little food not contaminated and practically no drinking water. The water distillation plant had been destroyed.

But soon one of the Air Force B-29 planes ordinarily used in typhoon reconnaissance flew in from Kwajalein and brought three hundred gallons of water in GI cans lashed to the bomb bays and two tons of rations for distribution to the battered and hungry people of Wake Island. Before long, the little island was back in business, serving the big planes on the way from Hawaii to the Far East.

_13._ GUEST ON A HAIRY HOP

"_On the rushing of the wings of the wind. It is indeed a knowledge
which must be felt to be in its very essence full of the soul of the
beautiful._"
--Ruskin

A hurricane flight which proves to be rougher than usual is known among the hunters as a "hairy hop." It is an amazing fact that there are men who want to come down to the airfield when a big storm is imminent and "thumb a ride." Mostly, they are newspaper reporters, magazine writers, photographers, civilian weathermen, and radio and television people. Usually they are accommodated, if they have made arrangements in advance. Some of these rides have been quiet, like a sightseer's trip over a city, while others have been "hairy."

One of the first newspapermen to take a ride into a full-fledged hurricane was Milt Sosin of the Miami _Daily News_. In 1944, Milt read about men of the Army and Navy who were just beginning to fly into hurricanes and he became obsessed with the wish to go along. When he asked for permission, the editor said "No" in a very positive tone. He could see no point in having a good staff correspondent dropped in the ocean during a wild ride in a hurricane. Sosin insisted and he was told to see the managing editor. He did and there was another argument. Sosin told him, "If I don't, somebody else will and we'll be scooped." Reluctantly, the managing editor gave permission. But when Sosin asked the immigration authorities, they said "No. You have no passport, and you don't know what country you may fall in." They refused. Sosin hung around and argued. He pointed out that if the plane went down at sea, he wouldn't need any passport to the place he was going, and they finally agreed.

Milt Sosin got his wish in full measure on September 13, 1944, in the Great Atlantic Hurricane which had developed a fury seldom attained, even in the worst of these tropical giants. It had crossed the northern Bahamas and was headed northwestward on a broad arc that was to bring its death-dealing winds to New Jersey, Long Island and New England. Already we have told the story of Army and Navy planes probing this big storm, including the pioneering trip by Colonel Wood and others of the Washington weather staff. At the end of this trip, Sosin was glad to be back on land and vowed, "Never again!" But, somehow, he still had the urge to see these storms from the inside and afterward was a frequent guest of the Navy and Air Force.

One of Sosin's most interesting trips was on September 14, 1947, in a B-17. They took off from Miami. Al Topel, also from the Miami _Daily News_, went along to take pictures, and Fred Clampitt, news editor of Radio Station WIOD, was the other guest. The big hurricane was roaring toward the Bahamas with steadily increasing fury and the people of Florida were worried--and for good reason, for three days later it raked the state from east to west, killing more than fifty people and causing destruction estimated in excess of one hundred million dollars. By many observers it was eventually rated as the most violent hurricane between 1944 and 1949.

They ran into it east of the Bahamas. As the plane burrowed its way through the seething blasts, Sosin wrote in his shaking notebook:

"This airplane feels as if it's cracking up. Ominous crashes in the aft compartment accompany every sickening lurch and dive as, buffeted by 140-mile-an-hour winds and sucked into powerful downdrafts, the huge bomber bores through to the core of the storm."

Sosin said that the pilot, Captain Vince Huegele, and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Don Ketcham, were literally wrestling with the hurricane in clothes sopping wet from perspiration and, as soon as they came into the center, began to take off their wet garments. Ketcham had "pealed down to his shorts before the plane plunged back into the mad vortex."

At this point they were surprised to see another plane in the storm, a B-29, flying in the eye at thirty-six thousand feet, trying to discover the "steering level" where the main currents of the atmosphere control the forward movement of tropical disturbances such as this one. The radio man, Sergeant Jeff Thornton, was trying to contact the B-29, miles overhead, but with no luck. Sosin wrote in his notebook:

"But here at this low level we have more to worry about than trying to reach the other plane. We are getting an awful kicking around. Wow! That was a beaut. Al Topel was foolish enough to unfasten his safety belt and stand up for a better angle shot of the raging turbulent sea below. We must have dropped one hundred feet and his head hit the aluminum ribbing of the plane's ceiling. Then, trying to protect his camera, he skinned his elbows and knuckles. Now he's given up and has even strapped a safety belt around his camera."

The crew was busy plotting positions and checking on the engines. To them it was an old story, except that none could recall such violent turbulence. The craft was low enough for them to get glimpses of the sea but they wanted a better view and they began to descend cautiously. Sosin wrote:

"The turbulence is getting worse. The sea is streaked with greenish-gray lines which look like daubs made by a child who has stuck his fingers into a can of paint. Now we are closed in. We are flying blind. Capt. John C. Mays, the weather observer, starts giving the pilots readings from his radar altimeter while Huegele sends the plane lower and lower in an effort to establish visual contact with the sea.

"'Five hundred feet,' Mays calls into the plane's intercom.

"'OK,' replies the skipper.

"'Four hundred feet.'

"'Roger.'

"'Three-fifty.'

"'Roger.'

"'Two-fifty.'

"'OK.'

"'Two hundred feet,' Mays' voice is still even.

"'OK,' comes Huegele's voice.

"It may be OK with him but it isn't with me. I just found myself tugging tentatively on the pull toggles which will inflate my 'Mae West' life jacket if I yank hard enough. I checked a long time ago to make certain the CO cartridges were where they should be.

"Fred Clampitt, WIOD news editor, is turning green.

"No, it's not fear. He's sweating so much that the colored chemical shark repellent in a pocket of his life jacket is starting to run.

"Then we sight the sea again. From this low level the waves are frightening. They are traveling in all directions, not in just one, and they break against each other, dashing salt spray high into the air. It's all too close.

"Now the ceiling is lifting and we are climbing--250, 300, 500, 700 and we level off. It grows less turbulent and Observer Mays looks up from his deep concentration.

"'I may be wrong,' he says, 'but it looks to me as if it's made a little curve toward the north.'

"Which is very interesting--but more interesting is the fact that the day's work is over and we're on our way home."

In 1947, the Air Forces were assigning B-29's to their Kindley Base at Bermuda, to replace the B-17's. The big superforts had room for guests and it soon became common to have somebody hanging around Kindley to get a ride. When a big storm was spotted east of the Windward Islands on the eleventh of September of that year, two newspaper reporters and a photographer from _Life_ Magazine, Francis Miller, were waiting at Bermuda for a hop. The big hurricane became even more violent as it turned toward the southwest and swept across Florida. It was September 14th when Milt Sosin of the Miami _Daily News_ got his "hairy hop" in this same blow. As it crossed the coast, winds of full hurricane force stretched over a distance of 240 miles and the wind reached 155 miles an hour at Hillsboro Light. By this time the hurricane hunters were fully occupied and the riders were left on the ground. Miami communication lines were wiped out and control of the hunters had been shifted to Washington. In charge of a B-17 at Bermuda was Major Hawley. His co-pilot was Captain Dunn, who had learned hurricane hunting in "Kappler's Hurricane" and other earlier storms. Late on the seventeenth, as the storm roared across Florida with night closing in, Hawley had heard nothing from Washington about his plane going into it, so he gave up and told the riders to come back in the morning.

Early the next morning, one of the reporters, a staff writer for the Bermuda _Royal Gazette_, was sitting around in his shorts and thinking about breakfast when Lieutenant Cronin rushed in and said they were ready to take off. The reporter started to get dressed, but Cronin said, "Let's go. Just as you are. You may drown but you won't freeze." They stopped in Hamilton, got the other reporter and the photographer, and found Hawley walking up and down, impatiently waiting for last instructions. So the reporter took a trip of 3,350 miles in his shorts and had a bird's-eye view of the southern Seaboard, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and a bad-acting hurricane.

It was a "hairy hop." They had orders to refuel at Mobile, so they put down at the airfield there, all other planes having been evacuated the day before. An Air Force man came out and asked, "Where you goin'?" They told him and he turned around and shouted, "Some dang fools think they have a kite and can fly through a hurricane." More men came out and they got gas in the plane. One big fellow said, "You can have your dern trip. But keep the storm away from here." In twenty minutes they were in the storm. The crew members were bare to the waist, perspiration pouring down, water coming through the panel joints, and everything was wet and shaking. One of the reporters described it this way:

"Suddenly the plane keeled over on one side, the left wing tip dipped down vertically, and for a moment I thought the end had come. I gulped for breath as the plane dropped. The sea rushed up towards us; huge waves reared up and mocked us, clawing up at the wing tip as if trying to swallow us in one. A greater burst from the engines, a hovering sensation for a second and then, with the whole plane shuddering under the strain, our nose once again tilted upward. I felt weak and with difficulty breathed again."

The plane had no radar and the crew had a lot of trouble trying to locate the center of the hurricane. The forecasters at Miami were anxious for an accurate position of the center. At that time airborne radars were being installed as standard equipment as rapidly as they could get around to it but the B-17's came last. Low pressure guided them, and they were trying to get into the part of the hurricane where they found the pressure falling rapidly. It was a big storm and they were having little luck in the search. "Lashed by winds and rain, the B-17 staggered across the sky," one of the reporters said afterward. He went on to tell his story:

"I was growing sick in the bomb aimer's bay stretched over a pile of parachutes and hanging onto the navigator's chair for dear life. Some baggage, roped down beforehand, now lay strewn across the gangway. Parachutes, life jackets, water cans and camera cases were thrown about into heaps. The photographer, trying in vain to take pictures out of the window, was knocked down and sent flying across the fuselage. His arms were bruised from repeated efforts. My stomach was everywhere but where it should have been. Everything went black. The plane was thrown from side to side and the floor under my feet dropped. We emerged from a big cloud into an eerie and uncanny pink half-light. The photographer clambered from the floor and tried to look out. He thought the reddish light was an engine on fire.

"Before we touched down at Tampa, after four hours of flying around in the hurricane, we reporters and the photographer were exhausted. And even then they had failed to get into the calm center, although they had sent back to Washington a lot of useful information on the storm's position."

More than anything else, the preliminaries unnerve the guest rider. They tell him about the "ditching" procedures; that is, what to do if the plane is on the verge of settling down on the raging sea. Two or three hours before take-off they are likely to have a ditching drill, along with the briefing on the storm and the check on the equipment. The guest is told that if they bail out, he will go through a forward bomb bay door. There is hollow laughter as someone makes it clear that there is very little chance of survival. But they want the guest to have every advantage.

Commander N. Brango of Navy reconnaissance says: "Yes, we get a good many requests from men who want to go along. Would you like to go on an eight- to ten-hour flight in a four-engine, thirty-ton, Navy patrol plane? You will probably see some of the beautifully lush islands of the Antilles chain, waters shading gradually from pale green to a deep clear emerald, shining white coral beaches, native villages buried in tropical jungles, and many other sights usually referred to in the travel advertisements.

"Doesn't that sound enticing? There is just one catch. You may have to spend four to five hours of your flight-time shuddering and shaking around in the aircraft like an ice cube in a cocktail shaker, with rain driving into a hundred previously undiscovered leaks in the plane and thence down the nearest neck. You may bump your head, or other more padded portions of your anatomy, on various and sundry projecting pieces of metal (of which there seem to be at least a million). You may not be able to see much of anything, at times, since it will be raining so hard that your horizontal visibility will be nil, or you may be able to catch glimpses, straight down about 300 feet, of mountainous waves and an ocean being torn apart by winds of 90 to 150 miles per hour. There's one thing I will guarantee you, you won't be writing postcards to your friends saying, 'Having a wonderful time, wish you were here,' because you won't be able to keep the pen on paper long enough to write much of anything."

You have guessed by now that the carefully phrased invitation was just a trap to get you aboard one of the Navy's "Hurricane Hunter" patrol planes as it departs on a hurricane reconnaissance mission. According to Brango, these flights have been described by visiting correspondents, using "thrilling," "awe-inspiring," "terrifying," and other equally impressive adjectives. Actually, it is difficult to find words to describe such a flight. That it is hazardous is obvious, but the feeling that accomplishing the mission may mean the saving of many lives and much property makes it seem worth doing--not to mention the lift received from an occasional "well-done" from up the line.

Just to indicate to the prospective guest what it may be like, Brango gives "Caribbean Charlie" of 1951 as an example.

Charlie was spawned several hundred miles east of the Windward Island of Trinidad. The first notice the Navy had of its presence was a ship reporting an area of bad weather, and almost immediately one of the hurricane hunter planes from the advanced base in Puerto Rico was in the air to get the first reports on Charlie. For the next nine days Charlie led them a wild, if not a merry chase. He slipped by night through the Windward Islands and into the Caribbean, loafed across this broad expanse of water, then slammed into Kingston, Jamaica, dealing that city one of its most devastating blows in history. Then Charlie headed across the Yucatan Channel and over the Yucatan Peninsula, where he lost some of his push. Some sixteen hours later he broke into the Gulf of Campeche with renewed fury, stormed across the Gulf and into the Mexican coast at Tampico, on August 22, again costing lives and millions in property damage.

During his long rampage, he was being invaded almost daily by Navy planes. On Tuesday, August 21, Brango had the fortune of being assigned to the reconnaissance crew for that day.

They departed Miami at noon of a bright sunny day. For three hours they flew over a calm ocean, flecked with sunlight. By then they could see the looming mass of clouds ahead, which indicated Charlie's whereabouts. Dropping from seven thousand feet cruising altitude to six hundred feet, they started getting into the eye. The sun had disappeared and the winds jumped rapidly to seventy miles an hour. For almost an hour they swung around to the west and south, feeling for the weaker side, as the winds got up to one hundred miles per hour and the rain and turbulence became terrific for about ten minutes before they broke through the inner wall and into the eye.

According to Brango, "The eye is a pleasant place! Many of them have blue sky, calm seas and air smooth enough to catch up on your reports and even drink a cup of coffee. Charlie's eye wasn't too good--big, but cloudy; still it was better than what we had just come through, so we hung around for about thirty-five minutes, watching the birds. There are usually hundreds of birds in the eye of a hurricane. Probably they get blown in there and have enough sense not to try to fly out. But not us, we want out."

Soon the decision to start out was made, and the order went over the inter-com: "Stand by to leave the eye--report when ready." This always brings the stock answer, which has become a standard joke in the squadron: "Don't worry about us mules, just load the wagon!"

The flight out was rough. Sunset was nearing, and in the storm area night falls rapidly. For almost two hours they beat their way through one hundred mile-per-hour winds toward the edge of the storm and in the general direction of Corpus Christi, their destination. The turbulence and rain on the way out were so severe that they were unable to send out messages and position reports, so someone in the crew, catching a glimpse of the waves beneath, came through with the scintillating remark that "We're still lost, but we are making excellent time."

About nine hours after they had left Miami, they landed at the Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, Texas. An hour later they were out of their dripping flight suits and "testing the quality of Texas draught beer."

At dawn the next morning, another crew and another plane from the squadron was into the hurricane, only a few hours before it struck Tampico and then swirled inland, to dissipate itself on the mountain range to the west of that coastal city.

Shortly before the middle of September, 1948, the Weather Bureau in Washington had a long-distance call from the Baltimore _Sun_. A staff correspondent, Geoffrey W. Fielding, wanted to fly into a hurricane. The Weather Bureau arranged it through General Don Yates, in charge of the Air Weather Service, and on September 20, Fielding was authorized and invited to proceed to Bermuda at such time as necessary between that date and November 30, to go with one of the crews on a reconnaissance mission. The Air Force offered transportation to Bermuda and return at the proper time.

On the day of Fielding's call, a vicious hurricane was threatening Bermuda and the B-29's were exploring it, but it was too late to arrange a trip. On the thirteenth it passed a short distance east of the islands, with winds of 140 miles an hour. The next tropical disturbance was found in the Caribbean west of Jamaica and became a fully developed storm on September 19. As it raked its way across the western end of Cuba on the twentieth, and southern Florida on the twenty-first and twenty-second, Fielding flew to Bermuda. By the time they were ready to take off, the storm was picking up force after crossing Florida and was headed in his direction.

Not the worrying type, Fielding made notes of everything: the ditching tactics, the lifesavers and parachutes, sandwiches for lunch, the weather instruments, and the exact time of take-off, 12:03 P.M., Bermuda time. Already, high, thin cirrus clouds were seen, spreading ahead of the storm. Southward, the clouds lowered and thickened. And then the aircraft commander, Captain Frank Thompson, saw a tanker wallowing in the heavy swells a quarter of a mile below, and everybody had a look. Big seas swept over the bows of the ship and crashed on deck. The crew of the B-29 felt sorry for the men on the tanker.

"Watch that old ship roll down there," said the pilot. "Those poor guys may be in this a couple days. They make very little headway as the hurricane drives toward them. I wouldn't like to be in their place." The super fortress flew a straight course into the teeth of the hurricane and low, ragged, rain-filled clouds soon hid the tanker from view. Increasing winds buffeted the big aircraft, which now seemed like a pigmy plane in this vast wind system. They were instructed to follow the "boxing" procedure and were headed for sixty-knot winds in the northeast sector.

Over the inter-communications suddenly came the excited voice of the navigator, Lieutenant Chester Camp: "I've got them--there they are--sixty-knot winds. Bring the plane around." The plane banked in a right turn as the pilot brought the winds on the tail and shot fuel into the engines to force the plane through winds that would become more violent. So they started the first leg of the box.

The weather officer, Lieutenant Chester Evans, was seated in the bomb-aimer's position in the glass nose of the plane, practically in the teeth of the gale. In addition to keeping track of the weather, he guided the pilots by reading the altimeters to get the height of the plane above the sea. In spite of the jostling he was getting from the bouncing plane, Fielding investigated these operations and wrote in his notebook:

"In addition to the regular altimeter, Lieutenant Evans has a radar altimeter, which works on the principle of the echo sounding machine used by ships. A radar wave is transmitted from the small instrument to the surface of the sea and bounces back again. The time elapsed between transmission and reception is computed by the gadget in feet, giving an accurate height reading. The information is passed back to the pilots who adjust their pressure altimeters. In some cases the error of the pressure altimeter measures up to three or four hundred feet in a hurricane.

"The second leg of the box started at 3:05 P.M. and was quite short, lasting only thirty minutes before the plane had run through the low pressure and then to a place where it was six millibars higher. Low gray ragged clouds increased in this sector and the ceiling lowered. On order from the commander, called Sooky by the crew, the plane went down to two hundred feet. Below, seen through a film of cloud, the water raged and boiled. Huge streaks, many of them hundreds of feet long, etched white lines on the beaten water, which was flatter than a pancake. The roaring, tearing wind scooped up tons of water at a time which, as it rose, was knocked flat again by the force of the wind. Sometimes the wind would literally dig into the water, scooping it out. From this, huge shell-shaped waves of spume would careen across the water."

At this point, someone yelled, "Sooky, take a look at the water. You'll never see this again. Wind is ninety miles an hour now." All the crew peered through the windows. The sea was absolutely flat, except for huge streaks, some of which the weather observer estimated to be at least five feet below the surface of the water. The time was 3:45 P.M., according to Fielding, who kept precise notes on everything. Instead of being thrown all over the place as he had expected, the plane was being lifted up and flopped down again in a series of sickening jolts. To stand upright called for an acrobat, not a newspaperman. He found it useless to stand, anyway. It resulted only in a hard crack on the head when the plane dropped.

At 3:55 P.M., the navigator screeched over the interphone: "It's up to one hundred miles an hour, now. Gee, is this some storm!" The rain came in torrents. "Driven by a smashing, battering wind, it hammered on the skin of the plane. The wind joined in the noise, howling and screeching outside and the roar of the engines was drowned out by the mad symphony of nature," wrote Fielding. The plane bucked and yawed but it was designed for high-altitude flying, with pressurized cabins for use when needed, and no rain came in.

They were on the third leg now and it became hotter in the plane. Everybody was sweating profusely. Fielding wrote that the "storm bucked and tossed the heavy bomber through the skies like a leaf in autumn." At 3:58 P.M., the wind was up to 120 knots. In the midst of all the noise, Fielding heard a voice on the inter-com. "How are you feeling?" came a question. "Not so good," was the miserable reply. "I wish Sooky would get the plane out of this. That blue cheese I ate in a sandwich for lunch is turning over. All I can taste is that stinking stuff." Others admitted having fluttering stomachs.

The radar operator was unable to get the eye of the hurricane on the scope. The co-pilot, Captain Hoffman, commented on the scene: "This is a big storm. It has really picked up in size." Hardly were the words out of his mouth before he yelled, "Hey, look, it's clear outside! The sun's coming through." A shaft of sunlight probed through the clouds and filled the cabin with a reassuring glow. They ran the fourth leg but there was nothing new. Fielding thought that they had seen all that this hurricane could produce in the way of violence. The radio operator got Kindley Air Base on the 42-20 frequency and learned that all other military planes in the area were warned to head for the nearest mainland base. They asked for clearance to MacDill Field and got it at 6:25 P.M. Stars appeared in a clearing sky and the plane leveled off and roared through the darkness. It was good to be able to hear the engines again. Tins of soup were opened and legs were stretched. Stomachs had settled and there was light chatter over the inter-com. The plane touched down at MacDill at 10:45 P.M. The men went to bed with aching bodies but they slept. As Fielding said at the end of his notes, "We had been eleven hours in the air, much of it in violent weather, and the constant strain tells on you."