parents took him to the fair grounds at Macon to see Eugene Ely fly in
an early Wright-type biplane. The wind was not right for a flight.
Pilots were cautious in those days and Ely didn't go up. Joe and his
parents were looking at the plane when his father remarked, "You know,
some day they will be carrying passengers in these things." His mother
answered, "Don't be silly, Hubert, you might as well try to fly to the
moon." Joe had a vague idea at the time that he would like to fly when
he grew up. Long afterward, he did. He says, "Many times in the nineteen
thirties I captained an Eastern Airlines plane over Macon and looked
down on the old fair grounds and recalled the thrill I had on seeing my
first airplane and the remarks of my mother and father."
After his father died in 1914, Joe attended Woodberry Forest School in
Orange, Virginia, for three years and then went for two years to Culver
Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, graduating from there in 1920. In
the meantime, his mother had moved to Atlanta and he continued his
education for two years at Georgia Tech, and one year at Oglethorpe
University. Nothing he did would take flying out of his mind and he
finally gained admission to the Flying Cadets. After going through both
Brooks and Kelly Fields as Cadet Captain, he was graduated in 1928, the
happiest year of his life. Later, while flying for Eastern Airlines, he
got a law degree from the University of Miami.
With basic training of the kind that young Duckworth received as a
Cadet, he was not fitted to fly into a hurricane or into any sort of
really bad weather. Military operations at that time were strictly
visual or "contact." The problem was not how to get through bad
weather--thunderstorms, low overcast, fog, for example--but how to keep
out of it. There were few flight instruments, and there was no
instrument flying training. At that time, dirigibles were thought by
many leaders in aeronautics to have the best passenger-carrying
possibilities for the future. Steel had just replaced wood in fuselages
and airplanes in general had earned the description "heavier-than air."
On the other hand, the world had been electrified by Lindbergh's flight
to Paris in 1927 and other "stunt" flights became numerous. Another
thrilling piece of news was Admiral Byrd's flight to the South Pole in
1929.
Trial freight-carrying runs were being flown by the Ford Motor Company
from Detroit to Chicago and from Detroit to Buffalo, and Joe heard that
a young man could get tri-motor flight time as a co-pilot two days a
week, provided he worked four days in the factory. Duckworth headed for
Detroit. After getting on the job with Ford, he had his first serious
run-in with clear ice, or freezing rain. The plane barely made South
Bend Airport, coming in at high speed with a load of ice on the wings.
Fifteen years later, the pilot on instruments would have climbed quickly
into the warmer air at higher levels and then worked his way down to
destination, but instrument flying was unknown at the time.
In the spring of 1929, Joe went with the Curtis Wright Flying Service as
their first instructor, at Grosse Ile, near Detroit. They were starting
out to set up a nation-wide chain of bases with the idea of teaching
everyone to fly. The plan was successful at first and in the fall Joe
opened a branch at Atlanta, just as the stock market broke wide open.
The slump in business that followed in 1930 caused general failure in
the flying services. In December, Joe saw that the Atlanta branch was
going out of business, and he went to work as a pilot for Eastern Air
Transport, now Eastern Airlines, and remained with the company for ten
years. At first he flew mail planes with parachutes but no passengers.
Even then there was no such thing as flying the weather. On his first
mail flight, he got some pointed advice from the operations manager. He
told Joe to be "sure to be on the look out for a reflection of the
revolving radio beacon on the cloud ceiling and the moment you see such
an apparition, you must get down immediately in an emergency field. If
you let the overcast close down on you, you are strictly out of luck."
Airplanes were a long way then from being equipped to fly into
hurricanes.
What little was known at that time about the temperature, pressure, and
humidity in the upper air was secured by kites sent up daily at a few
places. They were box kites, carrying recording instruments and flown by
steel piano wire. Observers let them rise and pulled them in by reels
and, after examining the records, sent the data to the weather
forecasters. This was a slow process and, besides, it was becoming
dangerous around airports where the data were needed most. A long piano
wire in the sky was a serious hazard for aircraft. After 1931 this
method was abandoned, and pilots under contract to the Weather Bureau
attached weather-recording instruments to their planes and ascended to a
height of three miles or a little higher, and on return gave the records
to the weather observer, who worked them up and wired the results to the
forecasters. Army and Navy pilots carried out similar missions at
military bases. This plan worked fairly well. The flights were made
early in the morning but when the weather was bad and the data would
have been most useful, the planes were obliged to remain on the ground.
Gradually, beginning about 1932, airline pilots began more and more
intentional flights "on instruments," that is, operating in clouds
without visual reference to ground or horizon. Reliability of schedules
was an economic necessity. Navigation by radio was becoming more of a
commonplace and, by experiment and self-teaching, by 1940 airlines were
flying almost all kinds of en route weather, including thunderstorms.
In 1940, Joe's thoughts turned to the Army Air Corps, in which he held a
reserve commission as Major. It looked as though war might come to the
United States, so in November of that year he resigned from Eastern to
enter active duty--probably the first airline pilot to do so. Assigned
to the Training Command, he never got overseas--but what he did in
teaching instrument flying throughout the Air Corps is still
acknowledged and appreciated by thousands of wartime pilots. He received
literally hundreds of letters expressing their gratitude, some of them
declaring that the training they had received had literally saved their
lives on many occasions.
Joe found a serious lack of instrument flight training in the Air Corps,
due to the frenzied expansion of training for War. And, as Joe said,
"You couldn't call off the war when the weather was bad!" He set out to
make his wartime mission the remedying of this situation, and the record
will show he did a monumental job. Cutting "red tape" wherever possible,
experimenting, lecturing, and writing a whole new system of instrument
flying training, he and his chosen assistants culminated two years of
intensive effort by establishing an instrument flying instructors school
at Bryan, Texas, in February of 1943. During the next two years, the
school provided over ten thousand highly qualified instructors to the
Army Air Forces, and attained a solid reputation which is not forgotten
today. Joe's instructors flew all types of weather--anywhere--and at the
same time piled up a safety record unheard of at the time. The manuals
they developed are still, in principle, the standard of today's Air
Force.
Joe's school taught, through novel and thorough techniques, two things.
First, that there is no weather, except practically zero-zero landing
conditions, that cannot be flown by the competent instrument pilot, with
proper equipment. Second, that the safety _and_ utility of both military
and commercial flight depend almost wholly on the competence of the
pilot in instrument flying.
Thus it came about that the first flight into a hurricane center was not
the result of a sudden notion but of years of intensive training in
flying the weather, including storms, and the flyer who did it was
probably the most expert in the world at getting safely through all
kinds of weather. Looking at it from this point of view, it is not
strange that there was a rather amusing sequel to this story, involving
the other instructors at Bryan, Texas. But first we come to the story of
the history-making flight by Colonel Duckworth.
Early on the morning of July 27, 1943, Joe came out to have breakfast at
the field. The sky at Bryan was absolutely clear and it did not seem to
promise any kind of weather that would try the mettle of men whose
business it was to fly in stormy conditions. Someone at the table said
he had seen a report that a hurricane was approaching Galveston. Joe was
immediately attentive. Sitting opposite him was a young and enthusiastic
navigator, the only one at the field, Lieutenant Ralph O'Hair.
Thinking again about the fact that no one had flown a hurricane and that
it ought to be easy because of the circular flow, Joe suggested to
Ralph: "Let's go down and get an AT-6 and penetrate the center, just for
fun." He said it would be "for fun" because he felt sure that higher
headquarters probably would not approve the risk of the aircraft and
highly trained personnel for an official flight. There were three or
four newly arrived B-25's at the field but Duckworth had not had the
time to check out in one of them and therefore could not fly a B-25 (a
twin-engine airplane) without going through some formalities. Use of the
AT-6, of course, involved the danger that its one engine might quit
inside the hurricane and they would be in trouble.
Lieutenant O'Hair was quite willing--enthusiastic in fact--and the pair
gathered such information as was available about the hurricane and made
ready for the flight. They took off in the AT-6 shortly after noon. The
data on the storm had been rather meagre. Two days before, Forecaster W.
R. Stevens at New Orleans had deduced from the charts that a tropical
storm was forming in the Gulf to the southward. He drew his conclusion
almost solely from upper air data at coastal stations, for no ships were
reporting from the Gulf. On the twenty-sixth, Stevens had correctly
tracked it westward toward Galveston (quite a feat in view of the lack
of observations) and warnings had been issued in advance.
On the morning of the twenty-seventh, this small but intense hurricane
was moving inland on the Texas Coast, a short distance north of
Galveston, and by early afternoon the winds were blowing eighty to one
hundred miles an hour on Galveston Bay and in Chambers County, to the
eastward of the Bay. Houston and Galveston were in the western or less
dangerous semicircle, a favorable condition for the flight from Bryan to
Houston. Soon after leaving Bryan, the venturesome airmen were in the
clouds on the outer rim of the storm--with scud and choppy air--and
shortly after they ran into rain. Precipitation static began to give
them trouble in communications but there was no other serious
difficulty.
As they approached Houston, the air smoothed out, the static leaked off
the plane, the radio was quiet, and the overcast grew darker. They
called Houston. The airways radio operator was surprised when they said
their destination was Galveston.
"Do you know there is a hurricane at Galveston?" the operator asked.
"Yes, we do," said O'Hair. "We intend to fly into the thing."
"Well, please report back every little while," the operator requested.
"Let me know what happens." Evidently, he wanted to be able to say what
became of the plane if they went down in the storm.
At this point Joe's mind began to run back over some of the lectures the
flight instructor had given and recall how they had stressed the fact
that a pilot should always have an "out," even if it meant taking to a
parachute. He wondered what it would be like to use a parachute in a
hurricane. They were flying at a height of four thousand to nine
thousand feet.
As they approached the center, the air became choppier again and he said
afterward that they were "being tossed about like a stick in a dog's
mouth," without much chance of getting away from the grip of the storm.
Checking on the radio ranges at Houston and Galveston, they flew over
the latter and then turned northward. Suddenly, they broke out of the
dark overcast and rain and entered brighter clouds. Almost immediately,
they could see high walls of white cumulus all around the circular area
in the center and, below them, the ground and above the sky quite
clearly. The plane was in the calm center. The ground below was not
surely identified but it seemed to be open country, somewhere between
Galveston and Houston. They descended in an effort to get their position
more clearly but the air became rougher as their altitude decreased.
This led Duckworth to the conclusion that the eye of the hurricane was
like a "leaning cone," the lower part probably being restricted and
retarded by the frictional drag of the land over which the storm was
passing. They flew around in the center a while and then took a compass
course for Bryan.
Once out of the center, the plane went through, in reverse, the
conditions the fliers had experienced on the way in, arriving at the air
field at Bryan in clear weather. When they got out of the plane, the
weather officer, Lieutenant William Jones-Burdick, came up and said he
was very disappointed that he had not made this important flight.
Duckworth said, "OK, hop in and we'll go back through and have another
look." So he and the weather officer flew into the calm center again and
looked around a while. The weather officer kept a log from which the
following excerpts are taken, beginning with their entry into dense
clouds on the way into the hurricane. The time given here is
twenty-four-hour clock. Subtract 1200 to get time (P.M.) by Central
Standard.
1715 Heavy rain, strong rain static.
1716 Rain continues but static only moderate. Some crash static
intermittently.
1720 Getting darker, cloud more dense, rain very heavy,
turbulence light. Rain static building up, blocking out
Galveston radio range intermittently.
1725 Turbulence light to moderate, rain very heavy.
1728 Altitude 7300'. Free air temperature 46°, cloud getting
somewhat lighter.
1730 Rain less heavy, cloud much lighter, ground visible through
breaks. Surface wind apparently South Southeast.
1735 Crossed east leg of Galveston range and changed course to
330°.
1740 Now flying in thick cloud. Turbulence smooth to light.
1743 Turbulence moderate.
1744 Turbulence moderate to severe.
1745 Sighted clear space ahead and to the left.
1746 Now flying in "eye" of storm. Ground clearly visible, sun
shining through upper clouds to the west. Circling to
establish position. Surface wind South.
1753 Still circling. Altitude 5000', temperature 73°.
1800 Headed west for Houston. Cloud very dense, rain light,
turbulence moderate, intermittent precipitation static.
1805 Apparently in a thunderstorm. Altitude 5500'. Heavy rain,
turbulence moderate to severe. Free air temperature now 46°.
1815 Changed heading to 10°. Rain light to moderate. Turbulence
light.
1825 Headed 330°. Rain very light, turbulence almost smooth.
Apparently flying between thick cloud layers.
1835 Altitude 5500'. Broken stratocumulus clouds below, high
overcast of altostratus above.
1836 Breaking out into the open with high altostratus deck above.
1900 Landed at Bryan. Sky clear to the northwest.
One sequel to this story was Duckworth's discovery, a year later, that
after these flights into the center, some of his instructors and
supervisors who were checked out in B-25's had sneaked out and flown the
same hurricane! They were afraid to tell him about it at the time, for
they did not have permission to do it, but he accidentally learned about
it the next year, when he overheard some of them talking about their
trips into the storm.
Altogether, Joe did not consider his flights into the hurricane to be as
dangerous as some of his other weather flights. Only two things worried
him at the time, the heavy precipitation static and the possibility that
heavy rain might cause the engine to quit. Afterward, when pilots began
to fly hurricanes as regular missions, the effect of torrential rain in
lowering engine temperatures proved to be a real hazard and they had to
take special precautions on this account.
Considering his hurricane penetration a routine weather flight at the
time, Joe thought nothing more about it until he read a story in a
Sunday paper, several weeks later. Then he had a telephone call from
Brigadier General Luke Smith, at Randolph Field, who asked him to come
down, and surprised him by saying that he knew of the incident. At
Randolph, the General said that Joe was being recommended for the
Distinguished Flying Cross. This never went through but later Joe did
receive the Air Medal.
There were several amazing features about these flights into the vortex.
First, they justified Duckworth's unswerving confidence in his ability
to fly safely through a hurricane; second, at the level of high flights
there was a remarkable absence of violent up drafts or turbulence;
third, they showed that quiet air in the center extended at least to
heights of a mile to a mile and a half, and that at those levels the air
in the center was much warmer than the air in the surrounding region of
cloud, rain, and high winds. Joe is sorry now he did not organize his
flight to get better scientific data. He believes his air temperature
gauge probably was inaccurate. But, as he says, "It was just a lark--I
didn't think anybody would ever care or know about it!"
This demonstration was followed by an increasing number of penetrations
by aircraft into the eyes of tropical storms, not all of which, by any
means, were as uneventful as the flights by Duckworth and his fellow
officers. After years of experience, the military services involved in
flying hurricanes developed a technique which was essentially the same
as that used by Duckworth in this first flight; that is, penetrate into
the western semicircle and then into the center or eye from the
southwest quadrant.
_8._ THE HAMMER AND THE HIGHWAY
_Bellowing, there groan'd a noise
As of a sea in tempest torn
By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hades
With restless fury drives the spirits on._
--Dante
During the first half of the present century there was a tremendous
growth in population, industry, truck-farming, citrus-growing, boating,
and aviation on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts of the United States.
This brought new worries to the hurricane hunters and forecasters.
By the beginning of the century, most of the older cities and port towns
in this region had been hit repeatedly by tropical blasts. Insecure
buildings had been eliminated. From bitter experience, the natives knew
what to do when a storm threatened. They had built houses and other
structures to withstand hurricane winds, placing nearly all of them
above the highest storm tides within their memories. Down in the
hurricane belt of Texas and Louisiana, a sixty-penny nail was known as a
"Burrwood finishing nail." The town of Burrwood, at the water's edge on
the southern tip of Louisiana, had no frame buildings that had survived
its ravaging winds and overwhelming tides except those which were put
together with spikes driven through heavy timbers.
Learning to deal with hurricanes takes a lot of time. Most places on
these coasts have a really bad tropical storm about once in ten or
twenty years. And so it happened that while the population was
increasing rapidly in the years from 1920 to 1940, many thousands of
flimsy buildings were constructed in the intervals between hurricanes.
Too many were built near the sea, where they would be wrecked by the
first big storm wave. To build near the water is tempting in a hot
climate. And so it happened that after 1920, widespread destruction of
property and great loss of life attended the first violent blow in many
of these rapidly growing communities.
Newcomers--and there were many--didn't know what to do to protect life
and property. After the first calamity, they were alarmed by the winds
which came with every local thundershower and they were likely to flee
inland in great numbers whenever there was a rumor of a hurricane. Here
they became refugees, to be fed and sheltered by the Red Cross and local
welfare organizations. By the middle thirties, this had become a heavy
burden on all concerned. To get things under control, local chapters of
the Red Cross were formed and other civic leaders joined in seeing that
precautions were taken when required, and panics were averted at times
when no storm was known to exist. But when warnings were issued by the
Weather Bureau, coastal towns were almost deserted. The greatest
organized mass exodus from shore areas in advance of a tropical storm
occurred in Texas, in 1942. On August 30, a big hurricane with a
tremendous storm wave struck the coast between Corpus Christi and
Galveston. It had been tracked across the Caribbean and Gulf, and ample
warnings had been issued. More than fifty thousand persons were
systematically evacuated from the threatened region and though every
house was damaged in many towns, only eight lives were lost.
All of this brought heavy pressure on the hurricane hunters and
forecasters to be more accurate in the warnings, to "pinpoint" the area
to be seriously affected, and to defer the hoist of the black-centered
red hurricane flags until those responsible were reasonably sure of the
path the storm would take across the coast line. Thus, the warnings
actually became more precise, but in some instances the time available
for protective action was correspondingly reduced.
Precautionary measures must be carefully planned. The force of the wind
on a surface placed squarely across the flow of air increases roughly
with the square of the wind speed. For this reason, it is a good
approximation to say that an eighty-mile wind is four times as
destructive as a forty-mile wind. A 120-mile wind is nine times as
destructive. In order to lessen property damage, residents of Florida
and other states in the hurricane belt prepared wooden frames which
could be quickly nailed over windows and other glassed openings. These
devices proved to be very effective. In some cases it was a dramatic
fact that, if two houses were located side by side, the one with
protective covers on windows and other openings escaped serious damage
while the other house soon lost a window pane and then the roof went off
as powerful gusts built up strong pressures within the building. At the
same time that this protection was applied on the windward side,
openings on the leeward side (away from the wind) helped to reduce any
pressures that built up in the interior.
As these experiences became common after 1930, wood and metal awnings
were manufactured so that they could be lowered quickly into position to
protect windows of residences. Business houses stocked wooden frames
that could be fastened in place quickly to prevent wholesale damage to
plate glass windows.
Many other measures were taken hastily when the emergency warnings were
sent out. One, for example, was a check by home owners to make sure that
they had tools and timbers ready to brace doors and windows from the
inside if they began to give way under the terrific force of hurricane
gusts. They had learned that with a wind averaging eighty miles an hour,
say, the gusts are likely to go as high as 120 miles an hour and it is
in these brief violent blasts, so characteristic of the hurricane, that
the major part of the wind damage occurs.
In addition, the experienced citizen prepares for hours when water,
lights, and electric refrigeration will fail. He knows, too, that these
storms have a central region, or eye, where it is calm or nearly so, and
he does not make the often-fatal mistake of assuming that the storm is
over when the calm suddenly succeeds the roaring gales. He wisely
remains indoors and closes the openings on the other side of the house,
for the first great gusts will come from a direction nearly opposite
that of the most violent winds which preceded the center.