Part 27

"By the time the plane had returned to Bermuda it was evident that Dolly was bearing down upon the island itself and that everything had to be evacuated. All of the planes were flown out to the mainland and the buildings battened down for the big blow. I spent most of the time in the weather station with my eyes glued to the radar scope. As the storm approached, and the winds rose, one rain band after another passed over the station, each with evidence of a little more curvature than the preceding band.

"Finally, the scope indicated a circle with a five-mile area free of any radar echoes. It was bearing down directly upon Kindley Field. Oddly enough the pressure had not begun to fall and the wind was holding steady. Another odd thing was that during the reconnaissance the eye had been twenty-five miles in diameter. However, this eye was only four to five miles in diameter. The eye arrived, the rain stopped and then resumed as the eye passed over the station, yet the pressure only leveled off briefly and the wind only subsided slightly without shifting. We had been tricked! This was not the real McCoy, it was a false eye. Subsequently, two other false eyes appeared on the radar scope and we had about decided that the storm had no organized central circulation left when the real thing finally showed up on the scope, still twenty-five miles in diameter."

In the reconnaissance of Hurricane Dolly, many feet of radar pictures were made of the spiral bands of the storm. When it became clear that all planes would have to be flown to the mainland because of the approach of Dolly to Bermuda, the film pack used on the reconnaissance was left in the plane so that additional pictures could be made on the flight back to the mainland. Not only was this done, but also an additional eye dropsonde was obtained during the trip to the mainland. It was agreed that as soon as the plane returned to Bermuda after the storm had passed, the film and additional records would be mailed to Washington.

On its flight from the mainland while returning to Bermuda, the plane exploded in mid-air 150 miles off the coast, near Savannah, Georgia. It had the records, the radar film, the dropsondes taken in the eye, and other data. In this case, the No. 4 engine had "run away," throwing its prop, which struck Engine No. 3, and the latter exploded. The plane fell out of control. Eight of the crew were rescued but none of the records or data of the reconnaissance was saved. This plane, however, was not on a storm mission at the time.

The unexpected appearance of a small eye on the radar scope is not uncommon. The Navy's instruction to its crews says: "During the final minutes of the run-in, radar may prove to be more of a hindrance than a help. There can be a number of open spots close to the true eye which might appear as eyes on the radar screen. You should not chase these false eyes!"

Out in the Pacific, the typhoon chasers say: "False eyes are often found in weak storms and care must be taken not to confuse them with the true eye of the typhoon. On the radar scope they may present an appearance much like the true eye but will not remain on the scope for any length of time. By continually scanning the suspected eye with several sweeps, the radar observer will see that the false eyes are surrounded by fuzzy cloud formations rather than a heavy ring of cloud characteristic of the eye."

When Hurricane Carol of 1954 was approaching the New England Coast, the last penetration was made by a Navy plane with Lieutenant Commander R. W. Westover as pilot and Lieutenant C. W. Hines as co-pilot. On the way into the storm circulation, Hines was telling Westover about his family's experience in the New England hurricane of 1938. The family residence was on Cape God. It was blown into the water and drifted until it lodged against a bridge, obstructing navigation. Finally, it was necessary to dynamite the wrecked house to clear the channel. The Hines family rebuilt their home and took out hurricane insurance. They carried the insurance until June 1, 1954, and then let it lapse.

As the recco plane flew into the center of Carol on August 30, the crew was watching a Moore-McCormack ship in the stormy seas below and sympathizing with the people on board who were suffering such rotten weather, but Hines was saving his sympathy for his family on Cape Cod. He was sure that Carol was going to blow their home into the water again, and afterward he learned that it did.

Although Carol of 1954 received a great deal of publicity because of death and destruction in New England, Westover, who also flew into Hurricane Carol of 1953, says that it was a much more violent hurricane than the one in 1954. The first Carol was so bad that only one low-level penetration was attempted. His crew recorded pressure 929 millibars in the center--about 26.80 inches--and they recorded 87½° drift. But fortunately the earlier Carol remained out at sea throughout its course.

Hurricane Hazel, later in 1954, gave another Navy pilot, Lieutenant Maxey P. Watson, an experience of the same kind that Lieutenant Hines had. The storm was approaching the coast of South Carolina when Watson flew his plane into it and he saw the center passing inland not far from the town of Conway, which was his home.

Hazel was responsible for other unexpected incidents here and there during its ravages from the Caribbean to the northeastern part of the United States. One case was on a Navy plane commanded by Lieutenant G. J. Rehe. Watson was the pilot on this trip, also. They took off from Puerto Rico and flew into the storm as it was turning northward and passing out of the Caribbean.

Up to that time, Hazel was not much of a storm. Westover flew into it after it passed Grenada and found that it was not a well-organized cyclone. Rehe had gone into it on the first penetration and reported winds of eighty-five knots. Westover found the area almost cloudless but ninety-knot winds in one area. However, after its northward motion began, it was a very dangerous wind system, which was responsible for the only injury to a Navy crewman in their many flights into this particular hurricane.

Because of the severe turbulence that had developed quickly in Hazel, all the crew members on this flight were fastened in with safety belts, as is usual in such cases, but the photographer wanted to get up and take a picture. So he got out of his safety belt and had another crew member unfasten himself and hold him while he took the picture. In the sudden very violent turbulence, both were thrown against the overhead. On his descent, the photographer caught his arm between the cables and the fuselage and broke his shoulder blade. The other crewman was knocked unconscious.

Out in the Pacific, an Air Force pilot, Captain Leo S. Bielinski, had an experience which induced him to go to great lengths of experiment and ingenuity in an effort to find an easier way to track typhoons and hurricanes. It was in May, 1950, when a typhoon called Doris was growing to maturity while near the island of Truk and showed signs of changing its path, threatening the base at Guam. On May 8, an RB-29, under the command of Captain Cunningham, was sent out to penetrate the storm. Bielinski went along.

At that time Leo had a fine wrist watch in which he took much pride. A man in uniform has few things that are different from the other men, but Leo secured an expression of individuality through a wrist watch. He bought a very special one for a hundred dollars and admits that he frequently looked at it when he really didn't care what time it was.

On this first trip into Doris, everything went smoothly. The crew members were instructed to land at Iwo Jima, when another plane would take over. But before landing they found that the hydraulic system needed repairs. Cunningham brought the plane down skillfully and they worked all night making repairs with parts salvaged from another plane on the field. The plans were changed and they were assigned to the next mission. The next morning they were airborne again for another penetration. This confirmed the northwest movement of Doris, which would take the most violent winds away from Guam, so they returned to Iwo Jima, well worn-out by two successive flights and thinking about a little rest, when Commander Cunningham received the following message: "Unable to get relief; request you make afternoon fix." So the same crew turned around and started the third mission. The other two flights into this storm had been uneventful, they were tired, and Leo didn't bother to fasten his safety belt.

Wham! Suddenly he found himself floating in the air around the cockpit. Before he could get his bearings, he was thrown violently against a bulkhead and slowly came to the realization that the bits of junk dangling in his face were the remains of his hundred-dollar wrist watch. This bothered Bielinski more than a broken arm or a twisted vertebrae. He started studying typhoons with a determination to find a better way to keep track of them. The results are described in Chapter 17.

In other ways the unexpected can be serious. One experience is cited by Captain Ed Vrable, who was navigator on a flight into a hurricane in 1953. After a careful approach, the aircraft suddenly popped into the eye, but it was only about eight miles in diameter. It was not easy to circle a superfortress in this small eye. At one point, the turning arc was a little too broad and the aircraft edged out into the winds on the border. It was instantly tossed back into the eye, almost upside down, and he had the worst fright of his career in the reconnaissance business. But the pilots made a skillful descent until they managed to get the plane into the correct attitude and finished the flight.

In Hurricane Edna, in 1954, a crew of hunters in a WB-29, in command of Captain Charles C. Whitney, had an unexpected duty. They had spent part of the morning and the afternoon of September 14 in the eye of the hurricane. They flew in tight little circles, dodging the wing-shuddering winds on the periphery. Because the Weather Bureau forecasters were afraid of a repetition of a sudden speed-up like that of Hurricane Carol two weeks before, they had asked for a continuous watch. Captain Whitney and his crew were in there for nine hours.

And then, with gas getting low, they ran into the unexpected. Some eleven hours after take-off from Bermuda, the aircraft picked up a radio message that the Nantucket lightship, torn from her moorings by terrific winds, was adrift and at Edna's mercy. The WB-29 plunged into 145-mile-an-hour winds in search of the vessel.

Picking up the lightship by radar, the weather plane shepherded the hopelessly lost ship, remaining overhead until a Coast Guard rescue plane arrived.

Waves seventy feet high seemed to toss the stricken vessel into the air to meet the low-flying aircraft pressed down by Edna's raging winds. It felt, the crew said later, as if the plane were dancing on her tail.

With the arrival of the relief plane, the WB-29 turned landward. After sixteen hours in the air, and with the gas gauge hitting the low side of the dial, the weather plane made a landing at Dover, Delaware.

According to the Air Force, "This flight was one of the most dramatic missions in peacetime Air Force history."

15. FIGHTING HAIL AND HURRICANES

"I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain And laugh as I pass in thunder." --Hebert

At first thought, most people would say that fighting hail has nothing to do with hunting hurricanes, but in one instance it did. It is an interesting story which shows how men will take risks in trying to control the weather. The story ends with one man giving up his life in a sensational adventure with a mysterious conclusion.

Destructive storms are not very frequent in any one place but most people are under the impression that they are. They are apt to remember bad weather and forget about the good. Losses of life and property and failures of plans and business enterprises are caused by storms or the wrong kind of weather and such things are impressed on their memories. When rain is needed, it may fail altogether or come in such quantities that fields and roads are washed out and there are floods in the rivers. A thunderstorm brings rain but sometimes hail comes with it, destroying crops and damaging property.