“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 203 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 204 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 205 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 206 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 207 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.
The radio operator, of course, is fully occupied and seldom has much time to see what is going on in the weather. He has two main troubles. One is static. When it is bad, all he can do is send a message blind and ask the ground station to wait. This may last for an hour or more. Various devices are used to reduce static interference but without complete success. As soon as the plane starts bouncing around, he has difficulty keying the message, not only because his body is shaking and swaying, but because it produces variations in the transmitter voltage and, on very high frequency, a drop below a certain critical voltage is likely to render the equipment inoperative.
To overcome a little of the trouble from turbulence, some radio operators in the early days tried strapping one arm to 208 the desk, but one radio man, having just experienced a rough flight, said in his report that his arm didn’t do a very good job unless he was there! Besides, he needed the arm to hold on with. More recently, it has been necessary to carry two radio men, and in fact this has become standard practice in most areas in the last year or two. It is very seldom that communications fail entirely but a plane on a storm-hunting mission that was out of contact with the ground station for much over an hour usually returned to base. Some aircraft on storm missions carry extra receivers and transmitters.
One navigator interviewed said that he is as busy as a one-armed paper hanger. He keeps track of the position of the plane by dead reckoning and by loran, which is “long range navigation,” accomplished by receiving pulsed signals from pairs of radio stations on coasts or islands. It works well in the center of the storm, not so well elsewhere; in some parts of the hurricane belt, loran coverage has been poor. If it fails, the plane may go out to a point where the navigator can get a good fix by loran and do the dead reckoning from the center to this point.
Every few minutes, the navigator writes in his log a note about drift, compass heading, indicated air speed and time, and when it is rough bumps his head on the eye piece of the drift meter, the radar or something else. He takes double drift readings to get the speed of the strongest winds, figures the diameter of the eye and the exact location of the aircraft while in the eye, and passes this information to the weather officer or aerologist for his report. The duties are so numerous that the Navy usually carries two navigators “to produce pinpoint accuracy with limited celestial or electronic aids while being buffeted by one hundred-knot winds.” Two are required largely because of frequent changes in heading and the nature of the winds in the Navy low-level style of 209 reconnaissance. The Air Force uses two on daily weather reconnaissance and sometimes on storm missions.
In many respects, the weather officer, or “flight aerologist” as they call him in the Navy, is the key man on the mission. The plane is out for a series of weather reports and it is up to him to decide which is the best way to get what he wants. Within the limits of operational safety, his decisions are accepted. It is his job to keep track of the weather in every detail. He has a complicated form containing many columns in which he enters figures taken from code tables to fit the various elements—flying conditions, time, location, kinds of clouds, heights of cloud bases and tops, direction and distance of unusual phenomena, rain, turbulence, temperature, pressure, altitude, and every other conceivable detail that might be of use to the forecaster on shore. If he put this in plain language, the message would be as long as a man’s arm and the radio operator might never get it off. There is an international code in figures for this purpose which makes it possible to put a very large amount of data in a brief message. And this is a continuous operation. Hardly does the aerologist get one message into the hands of the radio operator until he begins another one. It is his job to keep the pilot informed of the correct altitude. The weatherman is seated right out in front where the oncoming weather beats a terrific hubbub against the Plexiglas.
The radar operator may be one of the navigators. He keeps his eye on the scope. Many queer shapes come and go as the plane speeds along and the radar man has to know how to interpret them. He keeps the weather officer informed. Also, it may be his job to help the navigator guide the pilot around places where turbulence is likely to be excessive. Now and then, he or another crew member releases a dropsonde to get temperature, pressure, and humidity in the air between the plane and the sea.
210
The photographer has his troubles. Conditions are far from favorable and oftentimes impossible for taking pictures. One of his important jobs, and one that has been done exceedingly well by Navy photographers in the squadron headquartered at Jacksonville, is to get photos of the sea surface in winds of various forces from eight knots up to one hundred thirty knots. These photos are extremely useful in estimating the force of the wind by watching the effects on the sea.
In addition, there is an engineer. He looks after the overall operation of the plane and watches the many instruments on the panel. Usually he is a man of long experience who has worked up from crew chief. He adjusts power to fit the fuel load. If an engine catches on fire, he knows how to put it out. If a bail-out is imminent, he is the man on the job. Sitting behind the second pilot, he has his restless eyes concentrated on the mechanical equipment. All of these men on the plane work as a team, any of them being ready to help somebody else in an emergency, and alert and resourceful to take quick action when the unexpected happens, and it often does.
The crews are usually organized as follows: The senior pilot is in command—in the Navy he has the title of “Plane Commander” and the other pilot is the “Co-Pilot.” In the Air Force the man in charge is the “Aircraft Commander” and his assistant is “Pilot.” In any case, both of these men are heavily engaged in keeping the aircraft under control when the weather is rough. The pilots, together with two other men, the engineer and the crew chief, keep the plane in the air, though these latter two jobs may be combined, in which case the crew chief has an assistant—a flight mechanic.
Under the crew chief, or crew captain, there is one exceedingly important duty—watching the engines. On each 211 side a man looks constantly for signs of trouble—oil leaks, fire, or whatever. These two men are sometimes called “scanners.” White smoke or black smoke, as the case may be, on issuing from an engine signals a dire emergency. It may be only one or two minutes from incipient fire to explosion, and action must be immediate to put the fire out or correct other troubles. It is a very definite strain on the scanners to be alert every instant on a long flight, and various members of the crew may be rotated on these jobs. On routine daily reconnaissance in non-hurricane weather, the Air Force flights are long and some of the men feel decided relief on taking a hurricane mission, which is rougher but usually much shorter.
With this training and organization of the crews, most of the emergencies are met quickly and efficiently. Now and then, the unexpected happens, however, as is evident in the following instances.
In September, 1947, a number of missions by the Navy and Air Force had secured data in Hurricane George and the big storm was headed ominously toward Florida. An Air Force crew was in it on September 16 and had been in trouble. There were gasoline leaks, several fires, and engines acting up. They decided it was an emergency and set course for MacDill Field. Everything went well until they approached the field for a landing. There, in the middle of the runway, sat a big turkey buzzard. In the twinkling of an eye, when they were only fifty feet away, the great bird took off and smashed into the leading edge of the right wing. The impact made a sizable dent and the wing dipped. After six tries, the pilot skillfully got the plane down without an accident but the crew was more upset by this bird than by the average hurricane.
Sometimes the unexpected leads to disaster. One of the most unfortunate of these incidents occurred at Bermuda in 212 1949. There was a report of a disturbance in the western Caribbean on November 3. It was late in the season, but a few very bad hurricanes have struck in this region in November, so the forecasters at Miami asked for reconnaissance and the request was passed to the Air Force at Kindley Field, in Bermuda. It was afternoon when the message came. A B-29 with a crew of thirteen men was cleared for a flight through the storm area and thence to Ramey Air Force Base, in Puerto Rico, where they were to spend the night.
The plane took off at 6:17 P.M., Bermuda time, climbed to ten thousand feet and leveled off. Almost immediately the crew saw an oil leak in the No. 1 engine and it was feathered. The radio operator got in touch with the tower and airways and the aircraft commander prepared to return to the field. The pilot brought the plane over the island and reported at four thousand feet, descending. But just at that time a Pan American Stratocruiser was cleared to land. The B-29 circled and reported at one thousand five hundred feet at a distance of seven miles west of the island. Next the plane was four miles out, coming straight in at one thousand feet and was cleared to land on Runway 12.
There was a gusty cro............