11. TRICKS OF THE TRADE
A gallant barque with magic virtue graced,
Swift at our will with every wind to fly;
So that no changes of the shifting sky,
No stormy terrors of the watery waste,
Might bar our course,
—Dante
After two years of probing tropical storms by air, nearly everybody connected with the operation agreed that it was hazardous. But most of the men who were active in it had one main idea. As soon as the winds, rain, clouds, seas, and calm center of the average hurricane had been thoroughly mapped, a standard method should be devised for flying into the center and getting the vitally needed weather information en route with the least possible danger to the craft and crew. They thought of something like a football team, each man highly trained in a definite job, with faultless teamwork, and all members of the crew on the alert every moment.
Courses of instruction were organized. In all of them one fact became abundantly clear in the first two years. No two hurricanes are exactly alike. All of them are big compared with thunderstorms and tornadoes, but some are much larger than others. The recco crew may run into one in the uncertain stages of formation and at other times they may be nosing into an old storm with strange and unsymmetrical parts. Of certain elements they were reasonably sure—all these storms have clouds, rain, squalls, and central low pressure, with strong winds spiraling more or less regularly in a direction against the motions of the hands of a clock.
With these thoughts in mind, the instructors tried to devise methods that would prevent accidents. “What do you mean, accidents?” asked a junior weather officer at one of the conferences. “The whole thing is just one big accident, if you ask me. There’s only one rule that’s any good. Just be careful and don’t fall in the ocean!” As a matter of fact, most of the rules had that one vital thought in mind, but there were different ways of doing it.