Part 21

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.

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.