Weather Service were mentioned in a report by Robert Simpson, a Weather
Bureau meteorologist, who flew with the Air Force into "Hurricane
George" in 1947. This was a big storm which appeared first over the
ocean to the eastward of the Lesser Antilles. The squadron assigned to
the job had been moved to Kindley Field, at Bermuda. Simpson saw
Lieutenant Colonel Robert David, who was in command, and arranged for
the flight in one of the new planes piloted by an experienced officer,
Lieutenant Mack Eastburn.
Hurricane George, so-called by the Air Force boys, although such names
were not then official, moved slowly and menacingly across the Atlantic,
north of Puerto Rico, and headed toward Florida. Simpson was in it
several times with the Air Force. On the first flight, they were in an
old B-29 which had too many hours on the engines and had been a bad
actor on previous missions, but this time it behaved like a lady and
they picked up a great deal of useful information. On the next trip they
had a new plane. Here is a part of Simpson's story:
"Success is a marvelous stimulant. While we had every right to be near
exhaustion after our thirteen trying hours this first day in 'Hurricane
George,' we did not get to bed early that night. There was too much to
tell, and too much to discuss concerning the flight scheduled to leave
early the next morning. This second flight promised to be even more
lucrative of results than the first, for we were scheduled to fly in the
newest plane in the squadron. It had only 100 hours or so in the air and
contained many new features the other planes didn't have. Moreover it
had bomb bay tanks and could leave the ground with nearly eight thousand
five hundred gallons of gasoline.
"There were a few changes in the crew but Eastburn was the pilot again
on the second flight. The takeoff was scheduled for 6:30 A.M. The storm
was in a critical position as far as warnings were concerned, and the
Miami office was anxious to get information as early as possible upon
which to base a warning for the East Coast. 'George' was located over
the eastern Bahamas and was moving slowly westward, a distinct threat to
the entire Eastern Seaboard but immediately to the Florida coast."
The first hint of what was in store for the hurricane hunters that day
turned up as they completed their briefing at the ship and prepared to
board the plane. The engineer, in a last-minute checkup, found a
hydraulic leak and there was a delay of a little more than an hour
before that could be repaired. Finally they pulled away from the line
and out to the end of the runway. Number 4 engine was too hot. There was
another delay while further checks were made into the power plant.
Finally they were off--all one hundred thirty-five thousand pounds. This
was to have been a very long flight and every available bit of gasoline
storage had been utilized.
The plan on this day was once again to make a try for data near the top
of the storm, to verify and expand the startling information gained the
preceding day. This plane had de-icer boots and they were not concerned
about the rime ice that might tend to accumulate, as it had the day
before. First, they were anxious to get certain data from a low-level
flight, and to learn how effectively the radar could be used for
navigating a large plane like the B-29 near the center of the storm.
They went out at ten thousand feet again but continued to a point about
eighty miles north of the storm at this elevation. By this time they had
crossed about four of the spiral rain bands (the spiraling arms of the
"octopus"). Here the plane turned downwind parallel to another of the
rain bands and flew through the corridor to within viewing distance of
the eye. They gradually descended as the base of the middle-level clouds
lowered near the storm center. Leveling off at seven thousand five
hundred feet, they were in and out of clouds with horizontal visibility
low much of the time. However, there was scarcely a thirty-second period
when the crew were unable to see the sea surface below. Navigation at
this stage was entirely by radar. Again the amazing thing was the lack
of turbulence throughout this flight. This was a really big storm. They
were flying at only seven thousand five hundred feet through one of the
most violent sectors, only twenty to thirty miles from the eye itself,
yet they encountered nothing that could be described as important as
moderate turbulence. Simpson's early experience in hurricane flying in
1945 in a C-47 had been repeated. They were flying in comfort under
conditions which gave them a command of all the information needed to
report the position and intensity of the storm. Simpson remarked: "What
a difference this is from the battering flights at five hundred feet in
the B-17's which have been standard operating procedure ('SOP') with the
squadron until this season!"
The fascination of flying in comfort so near the storm center tempted
them to continue this exploration of reconnaissance tactics somewhat
longer. However, there were many other important things to be done on
this flight and there was no time to waste. They picked their way across
one of the bands to an outer "corridor" and retreated to a point about
150 miles from the center and once again began to climb. Perhaps in the
fascination of traveling so close to the eye in such comfort they had
become complacent. In any case, the events which followed in fast
succession left no room for further complacency. They had climbed no
higher than twelve thousand feet when someone spoke on the interphone
with a bit of a quiver in his voice, "I smell gasoline." The hatches
were opened and the plane vented hurriedly. Eastburn went aft to
investigate and returned with a worried look on his face. He spoke to
the engineer, who scrambled through the tube (connecting the fore and
the aft sections of the plane) on the double. It was not until after he
returned, about twenty minutes later, that the rest of the crew learned
that they had developed a very serious gasoline leak in one of the hoses
connecting the bomb bay tanks. Nearly a thousand gallons of gasoline had
been streamed through the bomb bay doors. The engineer had completed the
repair satisfactorily and, after a brief consultation with the plane
commander, the crew consented to go ahead with the project.
"We climbed to twenty thousand feet," said Simpson in his report. "I was
seated on the jump-seat between the radar operator and the engineer,
looking through the tube. I saw from the tube a wisp of smoke drifting
lazily toward the aft section. I do not recall my exact reaction but I
am sure I was not a picture of composure when I called this to the
engineer's attention. Nor did he stop to check with the plane commander
before demonstrating that he also was a handy man with a fire
extinguisher. The cause was a simple thing. As we climbed, the engineer
had turned on the cabin heater, the insulation of which was a bit too
thin in the tube so that the padding in the tube began to smolder.
Perhaps this wasn't a very important item but it didn't contribute to
the peace of mind of any of the crew, especially when it was remembered
that only a few minutes earlier the bomb bay gas tank immediately
beneath that tube had been leaking like a sieve. Again the plane
commander checked with the crew. Again, but with noticeable hesitation,
it was agreed that we would proceed with the project. Higher and higher
we climbed. This time we reached the forty thousand feet mark with the
base of the high cirrostratus still above us. So we leveled out, trimmed
our tabs and set our course for the storm center. This time we were
determined to descend from forty thousand feet in the eye to get a
sounding there and then return home at low levels.
"We soon reached the base of the cirrostratus and entered the clouds.
The de-icers were working. Again the data began to roll in along the
same pattern as observed the previous day--at least for several minutes,
until the interphone was filled with the excited voice of the right
scanner with a spine-tingling report to the commander, 'Black smoke and
flame coming from number 4.' At the same time the plane began to throb,
roll and yaw. In less time than it takes to say it, the 'boys' in the
front compartment of this B-29 became _mature men_--wise, efficient,
stout-hearted men, each with a job to do and each one doing it with
calculated deliberateness, yet speedily. There was grim determination
here but no evidence of emotion. This magnificent tribute to topnotch
training had an exhilarating effect upon me and tempered to some extent
the abashment which I could not help feeling as a result of my
helplessness in this situation, and the fear which clutched my heart.
"We were lucky! The single carbon dioxide charge released by the
engineer extinguished the fire in the engine. Number 4 was feathered and
began to cool but our troubles were far from over. The engineer had
manuals and technical orders spread out on all sides of him and was
working feverishly to restore some power to number 4, as the indicated
air speed dwindled from 168 to 166 to 164 or 5, hovering precariously
above the deadly stallout at 163. We were only a few miles from north of
the center by this time but no one had recorded the data. We were too
busy worrying. The pilot was in the process of putting the plane into a
long glide to increase the air speed, when the left scanner claimed the
interphone circuit with, 'Black smoke and flame coming from number 1.'
This time we _were_ in real trouble. However, the engineer had
anticipated further difficulty and was ready again. It was only a matter
of seconds before the fire was out and some semblance of power had been
returned to number 1. But we were still five hundred miles from the
nearest land and very near the center of a granddaddy of hurricanes. So
we declared an emergency and headed for MacDill Field."
Altogether, this was an ironical turn of affairs. An old plane had acted
like a lady the day before and now a new one had frightened the crew
with its mechanical troubles, but the newer methods of hurricane
hunting, the "tricks of the trade," had fortunately taken some of the
danger out of the storm itself. Otherwise the mechanical troubles might
have combined with the weather to spell disaster.
_12._ TRAILING THE TERRIBLE TYPHOON
"_The workshop of Nature in her wildest mood._"
--Deppermann
So far as anyone knows, the most furious of the typhoons of the Pacific
are no bigger or more violent than the worst of the huge hurricanes of
the Atlantic and the West Indies. They belong to the same death-dealing
breed of storms, but the typhoons come from the bigger ocean; they sweep
majestically across these vast waters toward the world's largest
continent; and to the south and southeast lies a longer stretch of hot
tropical seas than anywhere else on earth. Perhaps it is the enormous
extent of the environment that explains the fact that in the average
year there are three or four times as many Pacific typhoons as there are
West Indian hurricanes. The greater excess of energy generated in this
enormous Pacific storm region by hot sun on slow-moving waters is
evidently released by a more frequent rather than a more violent
dissolution of the stability of the atmosphere.
But there is something about typhoons that causes the people to look
upon them with even greater terror than in the case of hurricanes.
Likewise, the storm hunters tackle the job of tracking them with less
confidence. Typhoons come from greater distances. Their points of origin
may be scattered over a wider area. Much more often than is the case
with hurricanes, there may be two or more at the same time. In their
paths of devastation they fan out over a bigger and more populous part
of the world. It takes more planes, more men and longer flights to keep
up with typhoons than with hurricanes.
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.