Part 25

"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."

Finally, in 1954, the so-called "hairy hop" was projected into the living rooms of people all over the country. When Hurricane Edna was headed up the coast toward New England, Edward R. Murrow and a camera crew of the Columbia Broadcasting System flew to Bermuda, and the Air Force succeeded in getting the entire group--Murrow, three assistants and one thousand five hundred pounds of camera equipment--in the front of the plane. While everybody on the crew held his breath and Murrow used up all the matches aboard and wore out the flint on a lighter, the big plane was skillfully piloted through the squall bands and pushed over into the center. The cameras ground away and Murrow asked endless questions. The eye was magnificent, called a storybook setup, clear blue skies above, the center being twenty miles in diameter, with cloud walls rising to about 30,000 feet on all sides. The return was as skillful as the entrance, through the squall bands, out from under the storm clouds and back home above blue waters and in the sunshine. The film brought to television viewers some idea of the majesty and power of a great storm.

Murrow described their passage into the eye of the storm in these words:

"The navigator (Captain Ed Vrable) asked for a turn to the left, and in a couple of minutes the B-29 began to shudder. The co-pilot said: 'I think we're in it.' The pilot said: 'We're going up,' although every control was set to take us down. Something lifted us about three hundred feet, then the pilot said: 'We're going down,' although he was doing everything humanly possible to take us up. Edna was in control of the aircraft. We were on an even keel but being staggered by short sharp blows.

"Then we hit something with a bang that was audible above the roar of the motors; a solid sheet of water. Seconds later brilliant sunshine hit us like a hammer; someone shouted: 'There she is,' and we were in the eye. Calm air, calm, flat sea below; a great amphitheater, round as a dollar, with white clouds sloping up to twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand feet. The water looked like a blue Alpine lake with snow-clad mountains coming right down to the water's edge. A great bowl of sunshine.

"The eye of a hurricane is an excellent place to reflect upon the puniness of man and his works. If an adequate definition of humility is ever written, it's likely to be done in the eye of a hurricane."

The Air Force man who made the arrangements for this broadcast, Major William C. Anderson, said that this relatively smooth flight was the best possible testimonial to the progress the hurricane hunters had made in flying these big storms, for Edna was no weakling. But he worried about it day and night until the flight was finished, for many strange things can happen. When Murrow and his crew were safely back in New York, Anderson turned in for his first good night's rest in two weeks, duly thankful that it hadn't turned out to be a "hairy hop."

14. THE UNEXPECTED

"There is not sufficient room for two airplanes in the eye of the same hurricane." --Report to Joint Chiefs of Staff

Twenty-five years before men began flying into hurricanes, it was the main purpose of the aviator to keep out of storms of all kinds. If he ventured any distance out over the ocean in a "heavier-than-air" machine, he expected to see ships guarding the route, to pick him up if he fell in the water. In 1919, when the Navy had planes ready to fly across the Atlantic, they had a "fleet" of ten destroyers and five battleships stationed along the line of flight from Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, to Portugal via the Azores, to furnish weather reports that would help the pilot to avoid headwinds, stormy weather and rough seas, and to take part in rescue operations in case of accident.

Three airplanes, the NC-1, 3 and 4, used in this flight were designed and built through the joint efforts of the Navy and the Curtiss Aeroplane Company. These four-engined seaplanes, the largest built up to that time, exceeded the present-day Douglas DC-3 airplane in size and weight. Although sufficient fuel could be carried for a sixteen-hour flight, cruising airspeed was but eighty miles an hour. During the winter months of 1918 to 1919, plans were made by the Navy, in co-operation with the Weather Bureau, for securing as complete and widely distributed weather reports as possible for the Atlantic area immediately prior to and during the flight. Through international co-operation, observations were available from Iceland, Western Europe, Canada, and Bermuda.

From this network of reports, it was possible to draw fairly complete weather maps and to follow in detail the various weather changes which might affect the flight. There were several special features that required consideration. For example, because of the heavy gasoline loads aboard the planes, it was necessary that the wind at Trepassey Bay be within certain rather narrow limits, strong enough to enable them to get off the water, but not so vigorous as to damage the hulls or cause them to upset. Similarly, the planes would need the help of a moderate westerly wind in order to reach the Azores on the first leg of the flight, but an excessive wind would cause rough seas, making an emergency landing extremely hazardous. Thus the problem was to select a day on which reasonably favorable conditions would be encountered, and to get the planes away as early as possible, to minimize the cost of maintaining the fleet at their positions. After four days of careful analysis and waiting, the Weather Bureau representative at Trepassey issued the following weather outlook on the afternoon of May 16, 1919:

"Reports received indicate good conditions for flight over the western part of the course as far as Destroyer No. 12 (about six hundred miles out). Winds will be nearly parallel to the course and will yield actual assistance of about twenty miles per hour at flying levels. Over the course east of Destroyer No. 12 the winds, under the influence of the Azores high, recently developed, will be light, but mostly from a southwesterly direction. They will not yield any material assistance.

"Weather will be clear and fine from Trepassey to Destroyer No. 8 (about four hundred miles out); partly cloudy thence to the Azores, with the likelihood of occasional showers. Such showers, however, if they occur, will be from clouds at low altitudes, and it should be possible to fly above them.

"All in all, the conditions are as nearly favorable as they are likely to be for some time."

It is a strange fact that the Weather Bureau forecaster on this flight was Willis Gregg, who became Chief of the Weather Bureau in 1934, and the Navy forecaster for the same flight was Ensign Francis Reichelderfer, who became the Chief of the Bureau in 1938 after Gregg's death.

In accordance with this advice, the three planes departed that evening and flew the first leg of the flight almost uneventfully until the NC-1 and 3 attempted to land on the water near the Azores due to very low clouds. Upon landing, although both crews were picked up by near-by ships, heavy seas damaged the planes to the extent that they could not continue the flight. Fortunately, however, the NC-4 was able to make a safe landing in a sheltered bay, and after a week's delay, awaiting favorable weather, continued from the Azores alone, arriving at Lisbon, Portugal, on May 27.

No one at that time would have believed it possible for this situation to be reversed. Instead of waiting to be sure that the weather is favorable, planes now assigned to hurricane hunting wait to be sure the weather out there somewhere is decidedly unfavorable before they take off in that direction. But even in hurricane hunting the unexpected happens and, as in the old days, the crews are intensively trained and all precautions are taken so that they are not likely to be caught by surprise in an emergency. In a period of years there are hundreds of missions into dozens of tropical storms and, unfortunately, a few have met with disaster. So the intensive training goes on without interruption.

It seems strange but it is a fact that some men fly into hurricanes and typhoons without seeing much of what is going on outside the plane. They are too busy with their jobs to spend time looking around. In the first year some of them learn more about these big storms before and after missions than they do while flying. There are lists of reading matter to be consulted, including books and papers on tropical storms, and there are hints, suggestions, advice and warnings based on the experiences of other men. Also, they read the reports that usually are gathered from the members of other crews after their flights are finished. At the end of the season, all these pieces of information may be assembled in a squadron report, with recommendations. New men are expected to study this material. Before each flight, the crew gathers in front of a large map for a "briefing." Here an experienced weather officer shows them a weather map, points out the location and movement of the storm center at the last report, and indicates the route that seems most favorable for an approach to the storm area and for the dash into its center.

Most of this training is aimed at the development of crews that will be ready for any emergency--for the "unexpected," so far as that can be realized. Their performance in recent years shows that this special training enables them to survive most of the frightening experiences which probably would be disastrous to crews on less spectacular types of missions.

Usually there has been separate training for the men most concerned with each of several jobs--weather, hurricane reconnaissance, engineering, communications, navigation, photography, radar and maintenance. Before departure, the ground maintenance men see that the plane is in good working order and that the equipment is operating properly. At the beginning of each season, for example, some of the Navy maintenance men get the city to turn the fire hose at high pressure into the front of the plane, to see how it reacts. The effects of torrential rains in high winds of the storm are simulated in this manner. After every flight, the plane needs very thorough examination. One of the troubles is that salt air at high speed causes rapid corrosion. Salt may accumulate around the engines. Also, severe turbulence causes damage to the plane.

After the take-off, the pilot and co-pilot can see what is ahead most of the time, but for considerable intervals they are on instruments, or, as they say in the Navy, "on the gauges." They see nothing or very little of what is ahead of the plane in such cases and, the sea surface being hidden from view, they are uncertain as to their altitude until the weather officer, or aerologist, gives them a reading from the radar altimeter. Sometimes in darkness a pilot has had the bright lights turned on so that a flash of lightning will not leave him completely blinded at a time when he must know what the instruments show because of the violent turbulence that may be experienced when there is lightning. Then, too, they always have in mind that there may suddenly be torrential rain that will lower the cylinder head temperatures to a dangerous level. They must accelerate and heat the engines without traveling too fast. The landing gear is dropped to catch the wind. By using a richer mixture to feed the engines, the cooling effect may be lessened. It is always necessary to be on the alert. Altogether, it is just as important, and oftentimes more so, for the men to see the gauges than to see the weather.

Although the Air Force and Navy have different methods of flying into tropical storms, there are certain dangers that are common to both systems. Ahead of time, the pilots and others make a last-minute check to see that the crew are prepared. They also check instruments, lights, pitot and carbureter heat, safety belts, power settings, emergency equipment, current for communications and radar, and other things. In flight, the pilot does not use the throttle unnecessarily, but chiefly to maintain air speed. Actually it may be said that there are three pilots. The third one, sometimes known as "George," is the auto-pilot, which may do most of the flying, except in rough weather and in landing and take-off. Keeping the plane on course on a long flight would be very tiring otherwise. The limits of air speed vary. In the B-29's, which have been used generally for Air Force hunting, the limits are between 190 and 290 miles an hour, roughly. Air-speed readings may be affected by heavy rain. Also, increased humidity of the air will result in an increase in fuel consumption. There are numerous other items on the list of things that may cause trouble. But the pilots are highly competent and thoroughly trained and experienced before being put on the hurricane detail.