By evening the winds were subsiding and a check showed that owing to such preparations as they had been able to make and the constant struggle of all on the island to prevent disaster, not a single life was lost and no one was seriously injured. Wake Island, however, was a shambles, and there was very little food not contaminated and practically no drinking water. The water distillation plant had been destroyed.
But soon one of the Air Force B-29 planes ordinarily used in typhoon reconnaissance flew in from Kwajalein and brought three hundred gallons of water in GI cans lashed to the bomb bays and two tons of rations for distribution to the battered and hungry people of Wake Island. Before long, the little island was back in business, serving the big planes on the way from Hawaii to the Far East.
13. GUEST ON A HAIRY HOP
“On the rushing of the wings of the wind. It is indeed a knowledge which must be felt to be in its very essence full of the soul of the beautiful.” —Ruskin
A hurricane flight which proves to be rougher than usual is known among the hunters as a “hairy hop.” It is an amazing fact that there are men who want to come down to the airfield when a big storm is imminent and “thumb a ride.” Mostly, they are newspaper reporters, magazine writers, photographers, civilian weathermen, and radio and television people. Usually they are accommodated, if they have made arrangements in advance. Some of these rides have been quiet, like a sightseer’s trip over a city, while others have been “hairy.”
One of the first newspapermen to take a ride into a full-fledged hurricane was Milt Sosin of the Miami Daily News. In 1944, Milt read about men of the Army and Navy who were just beginning to fly into hurricanes and he became obsessed with the wish to go along. When he asked for permission, the editor said “No” in a very positive tone. He could see no point in having a good staff correspondent dropped in the ocean during a wild ride in a hurricane. Sosin insisted and he was told to see the managing editor. He did and there was another argument. Sosin told him, “If I don’t, somebody else will and we’ll be scooped.” Reluctantly, the managing editor gave permission. But when Sosin asked the immigration authorities, they said “No. You have no passport, and you don’t know what country you may fall in.” They refused. Sosin hung around and argued. He pointed out that if the plane went down at sea, he wouldn’t need any passport to the place he was going, and they finally agreed.
Milt Sosin got his wish in full measure on September 13, 1944, in the Great Atlantic Hurricane which had developed a fury seldom attained, even in the worst of these tropical giants. It had crossed the northern Bahamas and was headed northwestward on a broad arc that was to bring its death-dealing winds to New Jersey, Long Island and New England. Already we have told the story of Army and Navy planes probing this big storm, including the pioneering trip by Colonel Wood and others of the Washington weather staff. At the end of this trip, Sosin was glad to be back on land and vowed, “Never again!” But, somehow, he still had the urge to see these storms from the inside and afterward was a frequent guest of the Navy and Air Force.
One of Sosin’s most interesting trips was on September 14, 1947, in a B-17. They took off from Miami. Al Topel, also from the Miami Daily News, went along to take pictures, and Fred Clampitt, news editor of Radio Station WIOD, was the other guest. The big hurricane was roaring toward the Bahamas with steadily increasing fury and the people of Florida were worried—and for good reason, for three days later it raked the state from east to west, killing more than fifty people and causing destruction estimated in excess of one hundred million dollars. By many observers it was eventually rated as the most violent hurricane between 1944 and 1949.
They ran into it east of the Bahamas. As the plane burrowed its way through the seething blasts, Sosin wrote in his shaking notebook:
“This airplane feels as if it’s cracking up. Ominous crashes in the aft compartment accompany every sickening lurch and dive as, buffeted by 140-mile-an-hour winds and sucked into powerful downdrafts, the huge bomber bores through to the core of the storm.”