The Hurricane Hunters

Part 1

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THE Hurricane Hunters

BY Ivan Ray Tannehill

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY NEW YORK 1956

Copyright, © 1955 by Ivan Ray Tannehill All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher

Published November, 1955 Second Printing, February, 1956

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-9480

Printed in the United States of America by The Cornwall Press, Inc., Cornwall, N. Y.

To my daughter and son-in-law, Doris and Bill

Acknowledgment

At appropriate places in the book the narrative serves as an acknowledgment by giving the names of a large number of men who furnished information in personal interviews, by correspondence, or in their reports which were included in the voluminous files searched in the last year.

In writing this book I had unstinted cooperation from the Air Weather Service and its Commander, Brigadier General Thomas Moorman, from the Aerological Branch of the Navy Department and its Head, Captain C. J. S. McKillip, and from the Chief of the Weather Bureau, Dr. F. W. Reichelderfer, and his associates in the field and the central office. In particular, Major William C. Anderson and associates in the Office of Information Services of the Air Weather Service and Captain Robert O. Minter of the Fleet Weather Central at Miami and his associates there in Airborne Early Warning Squadron Four at Jacksonville were extremely helpful. Of the associates of these men I wish to mention especially the assistance of Lieutenant Commander R. W. Westover and Air Force Captain Ed Vrable, both of whom are seasoned hurricane hunters.

Others not mentioned in the book who contributed to the warning service and indirectly to the material used here were Isaac M. Cline and Charles L. Mitchell of the Weather Bureau. Their writings supply much of the background for any work on tropical storms.

The Air Force, Navy and Weather Bureau kindly supplied official photographs used here, except the wave breaking on the sea wall by the Miami Daily News and the drawings of sailing ships in hurricanes which are credited to Colonel William Reid who published them in 1850 in his book on the "Law of Storms." The Author

CONTENTS

1. Monsters of the World of Storms 1

2. The Saddler's Apprentice 19

3. At the Bottom of the Sea 32

4. Storm Warnings 45

5. Radio Helps--Then Hinders 59

6. The Eye of the Hurricane 75

7. First Flight into the Vortex! 90

8. The Hammer and the Highway 103

9. Wings against the Whirling Blasts 117

10. Kappler's Hurricane 132

11. Tricks of the Trade 150

12. Trailing the Terrible Typhoon 167

Part 2

13. Guest on a Hairy Hop 185

14. The Unexpected 202

15. Fighting Hail and Hurricanes 224

16. Carol, Edna, Hazel or Saxby! 237

17. The Gears and Guts of the Giant 250

ILLUSTRATIONS

(Photographic supplement follows page 50)

The English warship Egmont in the "Great Hurricane" of 1780. The Calypso in the big Atlantic hurricane of 1837. A tremendous wave breaks against the distant seawall on Florida coast at the height of a hurricane. Typhoon buckles the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Bennington and drapes it over the bow. Winds of hurricane drive pine board through the tough trunk of a palm tree in Puerto Rico, September 13, 1928. Looking down from plane at the surface of the sea with winds of 15 knots. Sea surface with winds of 40 knots. Sea surface with winds of 75 knots. Sea surface with winds of 120 knots. Superfortress B-29 used by Air Force for hurricane hunting. Neptune P2V-3W used by Navy for hurricane hunting. Navy crew of hurricane hunters. Air Force crew being briefed by weather officer before flight into hurricane. Conditions at birth of Caribbean Charlie in 1951. Part of a spiral squall band, an "arm of the octopus." Through Plexiglas nose, weather officer sees white caps on sea 1,500 feet below. Navy aerologist at his station in nose of aircraft on hurricane mission. Radar operator and navigator. Maintenance crew goes to work on B-29 after return from hurricane mission. City docks at Miami after passage of Kappler's Hurricane in September, 1945. Positions of crew members in B-29 on hurricane mission. Part of scope showing typhoon by radar. Looking down into the eye of Hurricane Edna on September 7, 1954. Looking down at the central region of Typhoon Marge in 1951. Weather officer in nose of aircraft talking to pilot and radar operator. The engineer in a B-29 on hurricane reconnaissance. The two scanners ready to signal engine trouble the instant it shows up. The new plane (B-50) to be used by the Air Force for hurricane reconnaissance.

THE HURRICANE HUNTERS

1. MONSTERS OF THE WORLD OF STORMS

The hollow winds begin to blow, The clouds look black, the glass is low. --E. Darwin

A stiff breeze, now and then with a hard gust, swept rain across the Navy airfield. The place was gloomy and deserted, except for one Privateer standing behind the air station, all other planes having been evacuated the night before. A tall young airman came out of a building down at the other side of the field. He looked nervously at the blackening morning sky as another squall came by, hurried over to the plane and stood between it and the protecting station. In a few minutes, eight men followed him. They climbed aboard the craft. The tall airman was last, taking a final look at the sky over his shoulder as he crawled in. The roots of his hair felt electrified, his spine tingled and his knees turned to rubber. In a few moments the plane took off into the darkening sky.

In those anxious moments as he had glanced upward at the wind-torn clouds with driving rain in his face, many thoughts passed through his mind. In training for this job he had read about aircraft carriers having their flight decks torn up by typhoons, about battered destroyers sunk by hurricanes, big freight ships tossed out on dry land, upper stories of brick buildings sliced off, timbers driven endways through the tough trunks of palm trees. The idea of sending a plane into one of these monsters seemed fantastic. He could imagine the wings being torn off and see vividly in his mind the broken craft rocketing downward into the foam of gale-swept waters far below. He leaned over on the radio table and muttered a prayer, hoping that God could hear him above the tumult of winds, seas and engines. To most of the men this was "old stuff." Flying into hurricanes had been going on for two years. To him it was a strange adventure.

He was the radio man and this was to be his first flight into a hurricane. And it would be no practice ride. This was a bad storm, getting too close to the coast to suit him. He had been told that after nightfall its center would strike inland and there would be widespread damage and some loss of life. He tried to remember other things they had told him in the briefing session and some of the instructions he had been reading for three days now. Well, such is life, he thought. His father had been the master of an oil tanker for the last fifteen years. He had told his growing son a lot about these big storms of the Caribbean. What would his father say now when he learned that his son was one of the men assigned to the job of flying into them? His thoughts were interrupted by violent agitation of the plane and the roar of the wind. The navigator said something about the turbulence.

He remembered asking one of the men what it would be like in the hurricane, and the fellow laughed and said, "Like going over Niagara Falls in a telephone booth." He recalled the burly fellow who pointed to the map and told them where the center of the hurricane was located and how to get to it. In answer to his last question, one of the men had told him that all he had to do was hold on for dear life with both hands until the weather officer handed him a message for the forecast office and then he should send it as quickly as possible, without being thrown on his ear. Now the plane was bumping along in the overcast and the rain had become torrential. The wind was on the port quarter and water was coming through the nose and flooding the crawlway. It was pouring on him from above somewhere. Rivers were running down his back.

He asked the weather officer what he thought about it, and he replied, "Oh, this is the usual thing. Sometimes it gets a good deal worse." Well, he thought it was getting a lot worse. Maybe the pilot and co-pilot could see but he could see nothing outside the plane. He hit his head on something, a hard crack, and he started to feel sick. Finally, he put his head down on the edge of the table and began to lose his breakfast.

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