Much of this fascinating work is done by the Air Weather Service of the Air Force on routine daily flights, whether or not there is a tropical storm to be studied. As an example, they have made daily flights from Alaska to the North Pole and back, to keep tabs on the strange weather up there. In this way, there—and in other parts of the world—they get weather daily from places on land and sea where there are no weather stations, no merchant ships to report, and no people to act as weather observers. These flights are named after some bird common to the region. The North Pole flight is called “Ptarmigan”; others are called “Vulture,” “Gull,” etc. Special flights into tropical storms in the Atlantic and Caribbean are called “Duck” missions.
Some of these improvements in the hurricane-hunting methods of the Air 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.