There was a gusty cross wind and there were scattered clouds at one thousand feet. The plane then reported that it would pass over at one thousand feet and get lined up, but almost immediately said to disregard the last message. One-half mile away, the flaps were raised, the landing gear was let down, and power was applied on the three remaining engines. The plane made a left turn which became steeper and altitude was lost rapidly until the left wing hit the water. This was a quarter of a mile offshore. Fire broke out as the plane hit the water and rescue boats rushed to the scene. Only three men escaped, two of them miraculously through a hole in the fuselage, as was determined by a Bermuda diver who went down sixty feet in the water to examine the wreckage. The other man, captain of the aircraft, was pulled out but died later in the hospital. It was the two radar men who were fortunately in a position to get out through the hole in the fuselage and both survived.
In this incident at Bermuda the plane was not being affected by a storm. It is an amazing fact, in consideration of the very large number of weather missions flown by the Air Force after World War II, that their first plane to be lost while on reconnaissance in a tropical storm was in 1952. On November 1, a B-29 left Guam to fly into a typhoon called Wilma. The crew of the superfort was instructed to penetrate the storm, report by radio, land at Clark Field in the Philippines, and be prepared to fly through the typhoon again on the following morning. The same day, however, radio contact was lost. Seventeen rescue planes and numerous surface vessels searched the typhoon-torn waters near Samar Island for survivors without success. Natives on the island of Leyte reported that a four-engined plane was seen flying low in that vicinity but the report could not be verified.
The squadron to which this plane was assigned had made more than five hundred reconnaissance flights into typhoons between June 1, 1947, and the date on which it was lost.
Lieutenant A. N. Fowler, an experienced Navy pilot, was the man who said that a hurricane flight was like going over Niagara Falls in a telephone booth. Describing one of his most dangerous trips, he told a newspaperman:
“I have seen the hurricane-swept sea on many occasions, but it never fails to impress me in exactly the same way. It would be sheer turmoil, like a furious blizzard. While experiencing the jarring turbulence, the heat and drumming of torrential rain which seeps in by the gallon and tastes salty, the inside of a hurricane can be like a bad dream. Like having been swallowed by an epileptic whale, or going over Niagara Falls in a telephone booth.”
On a less serious note but illustrative of the unexpected, there is the tale of the Navy crew and the hot water. They took off in a Privateer to fly into the center of a hurricane, each member of the crew having been assigned certain specific duties, as is always the case on these missions. The radar operator, among other jobs, was given the coffee detail. After a considerable period of moderate to heavy turbulence, with heavy rain leaking into the plane until everybody was thoroughly soaked, they broke into the clear in the eye of the hurricane, about twenty-five miles in diameter. The weather officer was busy with the coding of his latest observation, the radio operator was sending two messages that had accumulated, and the navigator was figuring the position of the eye and computing a double drift for wind. The co-pilot had the controls and was flying around the eye, preparatory to a descent as soon as the coffee had gone around.
The pilot called for coffee. The radar man dragged out two jugs, both still hot, and began to pour. He threw the first cupful under his seat and poured one from the other jug. Then he saw that he had brought two jugs of hot water and no coffee. “What the heck!” exclaimed the weather officer. “Why, you poor ——!” The navigator’s words were scathing. He said that, according to the Bible, Noah was tossed overboard for less reason.
From the very beginning of reconnaissance, these missions have been co-ordinated according to instructions issued by a trio who serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also on the Air Co-ordinating Committee. Today the men are Brigadier General Thomas Moorman of the Air Force, Captain J. C. S. McKillip of the Navy, and Dr. Francis W. Reichelderfer, Chief of the Weather Bureau. There have been no serious accidents on the Atlantic side when planes actually were in hurricanes and there was no confusion in assigning planes until September, 1947. The men on the Committee at that time were Brigadier General Donald Yates and Captain H. T. Orville, in addition to Dr. Reichelderfer. They co-ordinated many operations in addition to hurricane reconnaissance and all had had long experience in aviation. Dr. Reichelderfer was formerly in charge of weather operations in the Navy, after long experience at sea and in the air. He was weather officer for Hindenberg on his flight around the world in a dirigible.
On September 18, 1947, the committee was surprised and alarmed by a report of reconnaissance. An Air Force plane out of Bermuda flew into a big hurricane which was moving west-northwest to the south of Bermuda and, after a rough time in the outer parts of the storm, finally found its way into the eye. Immediately they saw a Navy Privateer flying around in the center, also on reconnaissance, and they got right out of the eye and returned to base. There they made an official protest that there is not sufficient room for two planes in the center of the same hurricane. New instructions for co-ordination were issued immediately to all concerned. It is not surprising that this has happened on at least two other occasions, once with two Air Force planes and on another occasion with a commercial airliner.
In 1953 there was another bad accident, but not directly in a hurricane area. It resulted from a moderate hurricane named Dolly, which came from the vicinity of Puerto Rico on September 8 and moved toward Bermuda with increasing intensity. On the tenth, aircraft in the center estimated the highest winds at more than one hundred miles an hour, but on the eleventh it weakened and passed directly over Bermuda. There were strong gales at Bermuda, although the storm was diminishing in force so fast that no serious damage resulted.