When Hurricane Carol of 1954 was approaching the New England Coast, the last penetration was made by a Navy plane with Lieutenant Commander R. W. Westover as pilot and Lieutenant C. W. Hines as co-pilot. On the way into the storm circulation, Hines was telling Westover about his family’s experience in the New England hurricane of 1938. The family residence was on Cape God. It was blown into the water and drifted until it lodged against a bridge, obstructing navigation. Finally, it was necessary to dynamite the wrecked house to clear the channel. The Hines family rebuilt their home and took out hurricane insurance. They carried the insurance until June 1, 1954, and then let it lapse.
As the recco plane flew into the center of Carol on August 30, the crew was watching a Moore-McCormack ship in the stormy seas below and sympathizing with the people on board who were suffering such rotten weather, but Hines was saving his sympathy for his family on Cape Cod. He was sure that Carol was going to blow their home into the water again, and afterward he learned that it did.
Although Carol of 1954 received a great deal of publicity because of death and destruction in New England, Westover, who also flew into Hurricane Carol of 1953, says that it was a much more violent hurricane than the one in 1954. The first Carol was so bad that only one low-level penetration was attempted. His crew recorded pressure 929 millibars in the center—about 26.80 inches—and they recorded 87½° drift. But fortunately the earlier Carol remained out at sea throughout its course.
Hurricane Hazel, later in 1954, gave another Navy pilot, Lieutenant Maxey P. Watson, an experience of the same kind that Lieutenant Hines had. The storm was approaching the coast of South Carolina when Watson flew his plane into it and he saw the center passing inland not far from the town of Conway, which was his home.
Hazel was responsible for other unexpected incidents here and there during its ravages from the Caribbean to the northeastern part of the United States. One case was on a Navy plane commanded by Lieutenant G. J. Rehe. Watson was the pilot on this trip, also. They took off from Puerto Rico and flew into the storm as it was turning northward and passing out of the Caribbean.
Up to that time, Hazel was not much of a storm. Westover flew into it after it passed Grenada and found that it was not a well-organized cyclone. Rehe had gone into it on the first penetration and reported winds of eighty-five knots. Westover found the area almost cloudless but ninety-knot winds in one area. However, after its northward motion began, it was a very dangerous wind system, which was responsible for the only injury to a Navy crewman in their many flights into this particular hurricane.
Because of the severe turbulence that had developed quickly in Hazel, all the crew members on this flight were fastened in with safety belts, as is usual in such cases, but the photographer wanted to get up and take a picture. So he got out of his safety belt and had another crew member unfasten himself and hold him while he took the picture. In the sudden very violent turbulence, both were thrown against the overhead. On his descent, the photographer caught his arm between the cables and the fuselage and broke his shoulder blade. The other crewman was knocked unconscious.
Out in the Pacific, an Air Force pilot, Captain Leo S. Bielinski, had an experience which induced him to go to great lengths of experiment and ingenuity in an effort to find an easier way to track typhoons and hurricanes. It was in May, 1950, when a typhoon called Doris was growing to maturity while near the island of Truk and showed signs of changing its path, threatening the base at Guam. On May 8, an RB-29, under the command of Captain Cunningham, was sent out to penetrate the storm. Bielinski went along.
At that time Leo had a fine wrist watch in which he took much pride. A man in uniform has few things that are different from the other men, but Leo secured an expression of individuality through a wrist watch. He bought a very special one for a hundred dollars and admits that he frequently looked at it when he really didn’t care what time it was.
On this first trip into Doris, everything went smoothly. The crew members were instructed to land at Iwo Jima, when another plane would take over. But before landing they found that the hydraulic system needed repairs. Cunningham brought the plane down skillfully and they worked all night making repairs with parts salvaged from another plane on the field. The plans were changed and they were assigned to the next mission. The next morning they were airborne again for another penetration. This confirmed the northwest movement of Doris, which would take the most violent winds away from Guam, so they returned to Iwo Jima, well worn-out by two successive flights and thinking about a little rest, when Commander Cunningham received the following message: “Unable to get relief; request you make afternoon fix.” So the same crew turned around and started the third mission. The other two flights into this storm had been uneventful, they were tired, and Leo didn’t bother to fasten his safety belt.