Chapter 5 of The Hurricane Hunters by Ivan Rao Tannehill Chapter 5. Radio Helps Then Hinders Make it clear that I would veto the bill again. FDR In the 1930s there was a strange turn of affairs in hurricane hunting. It had long been the purpose to keep ships out of trouble, first by giving the mariner a law of storms, and then by sending warnings by radio. One morning in August 1932, an indignant citizen came into a weather bureau office on the Gulf Coast, and wanted to know where the hurricane was. The weatherman told him that there were no ship reports in the area, but the center seemed to be somewhere in the central Gulf. What's the matter with the radio reports from boats? He asked. Because of the warnings we issued yesterday, all the ships got out of the area, and apparently there are no ships close enough this morning to do any good, the weatherman explained. Say, what kind of a deal is this? demanded the citizen. The only way we can tell where the center is located is to get radio reports from boats out there, and you fellas chase all the boats away from the storm. Well, that's our business, replied the weather bureau man in astonishment. We are required by law to give warnings to shipping. I don't see it. I'm going to write to my congressman and the White House, if necessary, to get this straightened out. What we ought to do is send the boats out there to give reports when we need them. It was the final declaration by the citizen who had one time been a shipmaster himself, and he did write to Congress and the White House. Others joined him. The argument over legislation began. Long before the use of radio on shipboard, the location, intensity and movement of hurricanes over the Atlantic, Caribbean and Tagulf, and along the coasts and between the islands in the West Indies had been judged by careful observation of the wind, sea and sky. In the latter part of the 19th century, the storm hunters had become quite expert at it. Among the best were the Jesuits in the West Indies and in the Far East. They watched the high clouds moving out in advance of the tropical storm, the sea swells that are stirred up by the big winds and travel rapidly ahead, and finally, as the storm center drew near, they studied the winds in the outer edges when they began to be felt locally. One of the pioneers in this work in the West Indies was Father Benito Vignes at Havana. He began giving out warnings as early as 1875 and by the end of the century was an authority on the precursory signs of hurricanes, both for land observers and for men on shipboard. By that time, many of the weather bureau men along the coast had become experts and after the Spanish War, they began work on the islands in the West Indies. Observations from the islands came in by cable and from the American coast they came by telegraph. In some areas this information served very well, but far from land in the open Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf, there was not much to go on. Along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the last resort before putting up the red flags with black centers was the experienced observer who had an unobstructed view of the open sea. Even with the best of such reports there was always a question as to whether it was a storm with its center far out or a small storm with its center close by. This fact, plus the rate of forward motion of the storm, could make a vital difference. The big, slow-moving storm gave plenty of warning, but a small, fast-moving one brought destructive winds and tides almost as soon as the warnings could be sent out and the flags hoisted. Aside from these indications, there was also the behavior of tropical storms in different parts of the season. They had average tracks by months, showing how storms have moved both in direction and speed, and much other information on their normal behavior. But all too often, hurricanes took an erratic course and now and then the center of a big one described a loop or a track shaped like a hairpin. A few of the storm hunters thought the upper air current, a steering current, controlled the hurricane's path. The most obvious influence of this kind is the general air circulation over the Atlantic, the large, anti-cyclone, nearly always centered over the ocean, near the Azores, but often extending westward to Bermuda, or even to the American mainland. In the central regions of the Atlantic high, the modern sailor, unlike his predecessor in the sailing ship, is delighted by combs or gentle breezes and fair weather. On its northern edge, storms pass from America to Europe, stirring the northern regions of the ocean. On its southern edge, we find the trade winds reaching down into the tropics and turning westward towards the West Indies and the Bahamas. A chart of these prevailing winds gives a fairly good indication of the ocean currents. Some of the surface waters are cold, some warm, and where they wander through the tropics as equatorial currents or countercurrents, they are hot, and other things being favorable, we find a birthplace of storms. In some other tropical regions, the waters are cold, and no hurricanes form there. Near the equator, the earth is girdled by a belt of heat, combs, oppressive humidity, and persistent showers. This belt is called the doldrums. The trade winds of the northern hemisphere reach to its northern edge, while the trades below the equator brush its southern margin. Cropical storms form now and then in and along the doldrum belt at certain seasons, just why no one knows, for there are hundreds of days when everything seems right for a cyclone, but nothing happens except showers and the miserable sultriness of the torrid atmosphere. Stripped to his waist, the sailor sits on his bunk at night without the slightest exertion, while perspiration descends in rivulets from his head and shoulders. Nothing seems capable of making any appreciable change in this monotonous regime, but eight or ten times a year on the Atlantic in summer or autumn, a storm rears its head in this oppressive atmosphere. Its winds turn against the motions of the hands of a clock, seemingly geared to the edges of the vast fair weather whirlwind centered in mid-ocean. Around the southern and western margins of this great whirl, the storm moves majestically, gaining in power, which it takes in some manner from the heat and humidity, a power which would drain the energies of a thousand atom bombs. The crowning clouds push to enormous heights and deploy ahead of the monster, a foreboding of destruction in its path. Here is one of the great mysteries of the sea. Its heated surface lets loose great quantities of moisture which somehow feed the monster, that we know, but what sets it off is almost as much of a mystery as it was in the time of Columbus. Until lately, the investigators trying to study the hurricane in motion across the earth were as handicapped as if they had been stricken blind and dumb when its great cloud shield enveloped them. The darkening scud and rain shut off all view of the upper regions by day and left them in utter darkness by night. No word came from ships caught in its upwards tentacles until long afterward and when the survivors had to come into port. Balloons tracing its winds disappeared in the clouds and were carried away. A method of following them above the clouds could have helped in the understanding of the upper regions in the same way that reports from sailing ships had helped in the study of the surface winds. This was the situation at the end of the Spanish War, but a new era was opening. As the century came to a close, Marconi was getting ready to span the far reaches of the Atlantic with his wireless apparatus. Already the miracle of the telephone carrying the human voice by wire had become a practical reality with more than a million subscribers in the United States, but it was not destined to be used across the ocean for many years. Even that accomplishment would not have afforded much help to the storm hunters. They had tried trans-oceanic messages for weather reporting when submarine cables were laid across the Atlantic. Some weathermen thought at first that it would be possible to pick up reports of storms on the American coast and allowing a certain number of days for them to cross the Atlantic to predict their arrival in Europe. This failed to work, for many storms die or merge with others en route, and so many new disturbances are born in mid-Atlantic that it is necessary to have reports every day from all parts of the ocean to tell when storms are likely to approach European shores. In 1900, Marconi was building a long-distance transmitting station in England, and readable signals had been sent over a span of 200 miles. No one then could foresee the strange roles that this remarkable invention would play in storm hunting, but it was obvious that messages could be sent across long distances between ships at sea and from ship to shore. Already, wireless had been used successfully between British war vessels on maneuvers. Actually, it was destined to be a powerful ally of the men who searched for hurricanes and reported their progress, but eventually this trend reversed itself and radio was the cause of tropical storms being found and then lost again in critical circumstances. The spread of wireless across the oceans began when the American people still had vividly in mind the most terrible hurricane disaster in the history of the United States. It had been shocked by news of a tidal wave which had virtually destroyed Galveston, Texas on the night of September 8, 1900 and killed more than 6,000 of its citizens. Really, it was not a tidal wave, but a West Indian hurricane of almost irresistible force which had raised the tide to heights never known before and then topped it with an enormous storm wave as the center struck the low lying island. There was good reason to expect a disaster of this kind. A number of bad hurricanes had hit Galveston in the 19th century. The first of which we have any reliable record struck the island in 1818 when it was nothing more than a rendezvous for pirates, principally the notorious Jean Lafitte. It is known that he was in full possession there in 1817 and it was rumored that he and his pirate crews were caught in the hurricane of 1818 and had four of their vessels sunk or driven on shore. All along the Texas coast the inhabitants always have worried about hurricanes and they have plenty of reason. Whole settlements have been destroyed by wind and wave. One case deserves special mention. After the middle of the century there had been a thriving town named Indianola in the coastal region southwest of Galveston. The town gave promise then of being the principal competitor of the island city for the commerce of the state of Texas. But in September 1875 a West Indian hurricane took a slow westward course through the Caribbean Sea in the Gulf of Mexico and struck the coast near Indianola. Vicious winds prostrated the buildings while enormous waves swept through the streets bringing a large share of the population. Courageous citizens rebuilt the town and for more than ten years it prospered. Then in August 1886 a bigger hurricane ravaged the town and the countryside and literally wiped the place out of existence. The survivors deserted the site and after a few days nothing was left to mark the spot except sand, bushes and the wrecks of houses and garages. A litter of personal property and a great many dead animals. After the hurricane of 1875 the Signal Corps had established a weather station at Indianola and in the storm of 1886 the building fell in overturning a lamp in the office and setting fire to the fallen timbers. The observer tried to escape but was drowned in the street. Both of these hurricanes caused much damage at Galveston for the island was caught in the dangerous sector on the right of the center in both cases and it was natural that when on September 8, 1900 the winds began to increase and the tide rose above the ordinary marks at Galveston the citizens became alarmed expecting a repetition of the big blows of 1875 and 1886 which were still being mentioned in August and September every year it became rough and gusty northeast winds tugged at the palm trees and oleanders but on September 8 the wind kept on rising and the tide crept above any previous records the weather observers feared the worse and dispatched a telegram to Washington telling about the heavy storm swells flooding the lower parts of the city and adding such high water with opposing winds never seen before it was not altogether unexpected beginning on September 4 the hurricane had been tracked across Cuba and into the gulf toward the Texas coast but this rise of the sea was more than the observers had bargained for by noon the wind and sea were much worse the fall of the barometer was ominous and the signal corps observers two brothers named Isaac and Joel Klein took turns going out to the beach and reporting to Washington at 4 p.m. all communications failed Isaac found the water waist deep around his home and the wreckage of beach homes battered by waves was flying through the streets at 6 30 Joe who had to come to the south into the city to view the gulf joined his brother and found the water neck deep in the streets and roofs of houses and timbers flying overhead after being tossed into the air by giant waves as the peril grew 50 neighbors gathered for refuge in the Klein home because it was stronger than others in that part of the city at 6 30 in the weather office one of the assistant observers Joe Blagdon looked first at the steep downward curve on the recording barometer and then noticed that the wind register had failed as the gale rose to 100 miles an hour to repair the gauge he climbed to the roof and crawled out holding on tightly in the gusts and edging forward in the lulls reaching the instrument support he saw that the wind gauge had been blown away so he crawled down from the roof after taking one brief horrified look over the stricken city there was no longer any island just buildings protruding from the gulf with the mainland miles away down the street filled with surging water the spire of a church bent in the wind and then let go as the tower collapsed the side of a brick building crumbled as each terrible gust held sway for a few moments the air was full of debris the top story of a brick building was sheared off the scene was like that caused by the destructive blast at the center of a tornado but instead of the minute or two of the twister darkness under low racing storm clouds swiftly closed over the city in the deafening roar of giant winds and the crash of broken buildings the frightened observers saw that the right front sector of the hurricane was bearing down on the island out at the beach block after block of houses high raised to keep them above the tide marks of previous storms had been swept into the center of the city and were being used as battering rams to destroy succeeding blocks until a great pile of wreckage held against the mountainous waves after an hour or two that seemed like an eternity the hurricane center began crossing the western end of the island and the city on the eastern end was swept by enormous seas which brought the water level to 20 feet behind the dam of wrecked houses everything floated into many frame buildings or what was left of them being carried out into the gulf the climb house disintegrated and more than 30 people in it drowned among them Isaac's wife the others drifted on wreckage rising and falling with huge waves and trying desperately to hold timbers between them and the wind to ward off flying boards slate and shingles one woman seeing her home going down in the water fastened her baby to the roof by hammering a big nail through one of his wrists he survived how many drowned or were killed in that awful night was never known the estimates finally rose above 6,000 doubts about the number was due to the presence of many summer visitors at the beaches and besides there was no accurate check on the missing partly because the cemetery was washed out recently buried dead were confused with the bodies of storm victims the aftermath was horrible beyond description Galveston had been on the right edge of the hurricane center if the city had been equally close to the center on the left side the destruction of wind and wave would have been bad but nothing like that actually experienced on the left side that is left when looking forward along the line of progress the side would have fallen rapidly as the center passed and the gales would have lacked the peak velocities so damaging to brick buildings and other structures which had withstood previous hurricanes here was a sharp challenge to the storm hunters to tell in advance how devastating the hurricane might be they would have to be able to predict its path with sufficient accuracy to say with some assurance whether the center would pass to the left or the right of a coastal city this case shows how hard it was to make predictions without radio during the approach of the Galveston hurricane the storm hunters knew the position of its center only when it crossed Cuba and again when it struck the Texas coast while it was in the Gulf weather reports from coastal points indicated that there was a hurricane outside moving westward but the winds, clouds tides and waves at those points would have been about the same with a big storm far out over the water as with a small storm close to land soon after the Galveston disaster there was a growing hope that wireless messages from ships at sea would provide this vital information in time for adequate warnings progress in the use of wireless at sea really was fast although it seemed very slow to the storm hunters at the time the ocean weather report to the weather bureau was received from the steamship New York in the western Atlantic on December 3 1905 it was not until August 26 1909 that a vessel at sea reported from the inside of a hurricane it was the steamship Cartigo near the coast of Yucatan the master estimated the winds at 100 miles an hour this big storm struck the Mexican coast on August 28 drowned 1500 people and created alarming tides and very rough seas all along the Texas coast thousands of people at Galveston and at many other points between there and Brownsville stood on the Gulf front and watched the tremendous waves breaking on the beaches gradually the number of weather reports by radio increased and the work of the storm hunters improved on and enemy submarines stopped the messages from ships temporarily but after 1919 weather maps were extended over the oceans other countries cooperated in the exchange of messages and the centers of storms were spotted even when far out of range of the nearest coast or island cautionary warnings were sent to vessels in the line of advance by this means the service of the storm hunters was of extreme value in the safety of life and property of float as well as on shore by 1930 another trouble had developed serious proportions as a consequence of this efficiency in the issuance of warnings vessel master soon learned that it was dangerous to be caught in the predicted path of a hurricane and when a warning was received by radio they steamed out of the line of peril as quickly as possible thus as the storm advanced fewer and fewer ships were in a position to make useful reports and in a day or two the hurricane was said to be lost that is there were too few reports to spot the center accurately or in some cases there were no reports at all the storm hunters could only place it vaguely somewhere in a large ocean area when it is impossible to track the center of the hurricane accurately it is impossible also to issue accurate warnings in 1926 a hurricane crossed the Atlantic from the Cape Verde islands to the Bahamas and threatened southern Florida after it left the latter islands weather reports from ships became scarce and the center was too close to the coast for safety when the hurricane warnings were issued although everybody in southern Florida knew that there was a severe storm outside more than 100 lives were lost in Miami and property damage reached 100 million dollars in 1928 another big hurricane started in the vicinity of the Cape Verde swept across the Atlantic and devastated Puerto Rico and parts of southern Florida loss of life was placed at 300 in Puerto Rico and at 2000 in Florida in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee in these years and up to 1932 several hurricanes were lost in the Gulf of Mexico and citizens of the coastal areas began making demands for a storm patrol they wanted the U.S. Coast Guard to send cutters out to search for disturbances or explore their interiors and send information by radio to the weather bureau there was opposition from the forecasters they didn't know what they would do with the cutters if they had enough ship reports to know where to send the cutters they would not need the ladders reports and if they had no reports they would not know where to send the vessels besides it was the government's business to keep ships out of storms not to send them deliberately into danger the season of 1933 established an all-time record of 21 tropical storms in the West Indian region many of them reached the Gulf States or the South Atlantic coast and the controversy about sending ships into hurricanes was resumed resulting in legislation containing the authority but President Roosevelt vetoed it by 1937 the criticism of the warnings and the arguments about Coast Guard cutters began again this time it involved senators and congressmen from Gulf States and finally the White House was embroiled in August 1937 a delegation of citizens came to Washington and brought their complaints direct to the White House the president arranged a conference so that the storm hunters Coast Guard officials and others could explain again why vessels should not go out into the Gulf of Mexico to get data when the presence was suspected actually ships were being saved by the warnings which kept them out of danger and the criticism was based on fear of hurricanes rather than any deficiency of the warnings with respect to the coastal areas when the conference was held at the White House the president was busy with other matters and James Roosevelt presided the president had given him a note to the effect that he should receive the delegation in a most pleasant manner but that it would be dangerous and fruitless to try to send Coast Guard vessels into hurricanes the president's note to his son said in part make it clear that I would veto the bill again and that instead of a hurricane patrol the safest and cheapest thing would be a study of hurricanes from all of the given points on land and around the Gulf of Mexico this might involve sending special study groups to points in Mexico such as Tampico, Valprezio, Tahutpec, Yuclatán, Campeche and also to the west end of Cuba and possibly to some of the smaller islands in the region what the congressmen and others in Texas want is study and information and it is my thought that this can be done more cheaply and much more safely on land instead of sending a ship into the middle of a hurricane the delegation gathered in an outer office at the White House it happened that the Coast Guard had a new commandant, Admiral Wesh who had not been advised of the views of the White House the Coast Guard and the Weather Bureau in the few minutes before the conference started there was no opportunity to inform the admiral for he was engaged in conversation with a group of senators and congressmen as soon as the conferees were assembled James Roosevelt called on the admiral to speak first to the amazement of all present he endorsed the idea in full and promised to send cutters out in the Gulf whenever a request was received from the Weather Bureau nobody knew what to do next so James adjourned the conference and after everybody had shaken hands and departed he went back to his father to explain what had happened thus began a brief period of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico with Coast Guard cutters during the next two seasons the Weather Bureau forecasters notified the Coast Guard when observations were needed in each instance a cutter left poured in accordance with the agreement but as soon as the vessel was in the open Gulf the master was in supreme command and he would not deliberately put his ship and crew in jeopardy cutters went out in a few cases but most of the disturbances to be reconnoitered were crossing the southern Gulf out of range of merchant men on routes to Gulf ports in sailing directly toward the center under these conditions the Coast Guard commander would have been traveling into the most dangerous sector and the distance he could make good in a day in rough water would not have been much larger than the normal travel of a tropical storm certainly not a safe margin I rate citizens complained to Washington first that the Weather Bureau refused to call on the Coast Guard for observations and second that the Coast Guard refused to carry out the Weather Bureau's instructions after two or three years no special information of any particular value was obtained and the scheme was forgotten in accordance with the ideas expressed by President Roosevelt but without any support from Congress some study groups and other special arrangements secured useful results on coasts and islands but it was obvious after 1940 that automatic instruments for exploration of the upper atmosphere and reconnaissance by aircraft offered the best prospects for improvement in the service the most destructive hurricane during this period devastated large areas of Long Island and New England in September 1938 taking 600 lives and destroying property valued at about a third of a billion dollars this event aroused general criticism of the storm hunters for two reasons first this disturbance while it was in the West Indies and during its course as far as Hatteras behaved like others of great intensity but from that point northward motion was without precedent during the day when it passed into New England its progressive motion exceeded 50 miles an hour hence little time remained for the issue of warnings after its increased rapidity of motion was detected second the people were absorbed in news of negotiations in Europe to prevent the outbreak of a world war and storm news on the radio was largely suppressed to make more reports of the European crisis here it might be said that the storm hunters lost another battle but it is probable that the loss of life in this hurricane would have exceeded that at Galveston in 1900 if there had been no real improvement in the warning service in the meantime Chapter 6 of the Hurricane Hunters by Ivan Ray Tannehill this Libervox recording is in the public domain Chapter 6 the Eye of the Hurricane the whirlwind's heart of peace Tennyson after the White House conference in 1937 about sending ships into hurricanes some of the weather bureau forecasters expressed the idea that the best method of tracking the hurricanes would be by airplane what they had in mind was flying around the edge of the hurricane and getting three or more bearings from which the location of the center could be accurately estimated nothing came of the idea at the time but after World War II broke out in Europe the talk about use of planes increased it was the weather bureau's plan to contract with commercial flyers to go out and get the observations on request from the forecasters but no one seriously considered sending planes but knew what would happen to the plane there was no very definite information as to what the flyer would encounter in the upper layers in the region around the center of course it was known that at the surface of the earth or the sea there was a small comb area in the center and oddity in the weather for no other kind of large storm has such a center the tornado may have but it is a very small storm with a hurricane it's arriving twisting funnel at the vortex is hollow according to the testimony of a few men who have looked up into it and lived to tell about it in the tropical storm however nothing was known about the central winds in the upper levels there was no proof that strong winds did not blow outward from the center up there and a plane would be thrown into the ring of powerful winds around the eye the only way to find out was to fly into it and have a look but there was no one at the moment who wanted to venture into it on the outer fringes of the hurricane where light gusty winds blew across deep ocean waters stirred at the surface by giant sea swells the hurricane hunters were fairly well satisfied with their findings in the middle regions where deluges of rain slanted through raging winds and low flying clouds the grim fact was that they knew amazingly little about what was going on in the upper layers their balloons sent up to explore the racing winds above were lost in thick clouds before they had risen more than a few hundred feet on beyond somewhere in that last inner third of the whirlwind the increasing gales rose to a deadly peak and torrents of rain merged with the spin drift of mountainous wave crests to blot out the view of the observer within this whirling ring of air and water lay the vortex when the mariner entered sometime slowly but more often suddenly the wind and rain ceased and usually there would be no violence except the rise and fall of the sea surface like a boiling pot on a scale which was huge in fact but small in proportion to the extent of the storm itself the entire whirling body of air would likely be bigger than the state of Ohio the calm central region might be the size of the city of Columbus here in this inner third were the mysteries where could all this air go streaming so violently around and in toward that mysterious center but never getting there it must go up the storm hunters argued for what else could produce all this tremendous rainfall if not the upward rush of moist air to be cooled in the upper levels and then why no rain or wind in the central region some argue that the air must descend in the vortex growing warmer and dry in descent but why the descent and finally if the air was moving upward in all this vast area outside the calm center what finally became of it the storm hunters were unable to answer these questions they could render a service of enormous value if they could track the storm and predict its movement but they knew that the only sure way to track a hurricane over the ocean was to find its center and follow it persistently and accurately from day to day tests had shown that it was not practical to send the ships into the storm to find its center and report ships couldn't move fast enough if the storm hunters had known enough about it they might have concluded that a plane could enter the storm in the least dangerous sector and find its way swiftly to the calm center through some upper level without being hurled into the angry sea if it reached the center of the vortex usually called the eye of the hurricane the navigator might be able to see the sky and the sun by day the stars by night here the pilot might be able to figure out his position as an ocean going vessel does on some occasions and that would be the location of the storm to be placed on the charts of the storm hunters in the weather office but nobody took it seriously until after the United States got into the second world war when the request for funds to hire commercial flyers in hurricane emergencies was presented to the Bureau of the budget and the miners asked why the weather bureau didn't try to get the cooperation of the army and navy why couldn't they have their pilots carry out the flights as needed there was some talk about it in 1942 but at that time there were no experienced army or navy pilots to spare naturally the military pilots who thought about flying into the eyes of hurricanes wanted to know what it was like in the upper levels and in the center the pilots who expected to go on bombing missions to Germany thought it might be more dangerous flying into the vortex of a hurricane than over an enemy stronghold with the air full of flak and Nazi fighters rising on all sides nobody looked upon the assignment with any enthusiasm one discouraging fact was that the reports of shipmasters who had been in the eyes of hurricanes didn't agree very well few of them had the ability to decide what they saw and those who had the ability told a story that was not reassuring for example one of the first was the master of the ship Idaho caught in the China sea in September 1869 as a typhoon struck with little of the precious sea room needed to maneuver the ship soon was obliged to lie to and take it afterward when by some miracle the ship had made its way to shore the master calmly described his experiences while they were fresh with one wild unearthly soul-chilling shriek the wind suddenly dropped to a calm and those who had been in the seas before knew that we were in the terrible vortex of the typhoon the dreaded center of the whirlwind till then the sea had been beaten down by the wind and only boarded the vessel when she became completely unmanageable but now the waters leave from all restraint rose in their own might ghastly gleams of lightning revealed them piled up on every side in rough pyramidal masses mountain high the revolving circle of wind which everywhere enclosed them causing them to boil and tumble as though they were being stirred in some mighty cauldron the ship no longer blown over on her side rolled and pitched and was tossed about like a cork the sea rose toppled over and fell with crushing force upon her decks once she shipped immense bodies of water over both bows both quarters and the starboard gangway at the same moment her beams opened fore and aft both above and below men were pitched about the decks and many of them injured at twenty minutes before eight o'clock the vessel entered the vortex at twenty minutes past nine o'clock it had passed and the hurricane returned blowing with renewed violence from the north bearing to the west the ship was now only an unmanageable wreck for many years the classic case was the obliging typhoon that moved across the Philippines with its center passing directly over the fully equipped weather observatory in Manila it happened on October 20 1882 the wind which came ahead of the center was of destructive violence reaching above a hundred and twenty miles an hour in a final mad rush from the west northwest before the calm set in it was not an absolute calm there were alternate gusts and lulls the way the winds acted led the observer to think that the center was about sixteen miles in diameter he said the most striking thing about it was the sudden change in temperature and humidity the temperature jumped from 75 degrees to 88 degrees the air was saturated at 75 degrees but the humidity dropped from 100% to 53% in the center and then rose to 100% again as the center passed when the wind finally ceased at the beginning of the calm and the sun came out many people opened their windows but they slammed them shot right away because the hot dry air seemed to burn the skin for more than 50 years after this there were arguments about the reasons for these changes in temperature and humidity some scientists claimed that they were caused merely by the heating of the sun in a clear sky and that the air which preceded and followed the center was cooled and saturated by the rain some of the Jesuit scientists in Manila did not agree one weatherman showed for example that if they took air at 75 degrees and 100% humidity and heated it to 88 degrees the humidity would fall only to about 61% and that the air at Manila at that time of the year had never had such a low humidity 53% even when the sun was shining the conclusion was that the air descends in the eye of the tropical storm at least they were convinced that it descended in the Manila typhoon when air descends it is compressed coming into lower levels where the pressure is higher this compression causes its temperature to rise and the air then has a bigger capacity for moisture in other words the air becomes warmer and drier there is no agreement on this question certainly in some cases the air is not warmer and drier in the center in later years typhoon centers passed over other observatories and had various effects however one struck Formosa on September 16, 1912 and the calm center passed over the observatory long after the sun had gone down in this case the temperature jumped from 35 degrees to 94 degrees and this could not be explained by the direct heat of the sun but there were different results in other cases and in one instance the temperature fell a little all of these observations were confined to ground level and what the observer could see from there or from shipboard where he was being bounced around by violent seas and sometimes was thoroughly drenched breaking over the decks one example was the Idaho in the typhoon in 1869 a half century later two British destroyers were trapped in the same region by an unheralded typhoon setting out for Shanghai in the early morning they rounded the Shantung Promontory and headed across the Yellow Sea at 15 knots with sunlight gleaming on the water ahead the weather looked favorable with a thermometer high wind light but it failed to stay that way very long by 10 o'clock there was a strong wind on the port beam blowing gustily from the east and an ominous rising sea reducing speed to 11 knots the commander of the destroyer in the lead called the X found by dead reckoning that he was only about 8 miles from land and although he was running almost parallel to the coast and beginning to look dangerous he had to make a decision as to his future course among other disturbing factors was the design of the ships these destroyers were of a new type with a large forecastle which made it likely that they would drag their anchors if they tried to lie too in a sheltered place on that exposed coast the two ships held their course by noon the visibility had dropped to less than a mile the commander feared that he would be unable to identify any land he might see through the increasing gloom and concluded that his chances of finding a safe shelter among the rock bound islands along the coast was fast becoming nil so he signaled to the other destroyer to head fast for the open sea in the next hour the wind and sea mounted rapidly and he was certain that they were being overtaken by the dangerous sector of the typhoon now they were in real trouble his first lieutenant was the last of his officers out of school so the commander asked him about the law of storms and the proper course under the circumstances according to the latest books which the lieutenant had studied they should have steamed toward the northwest but this would have thrown them into a lee shore the commander decided that there was no choice except to hold a course and run the chance of going into the dreaded center of the typhoon so they got busy doubly securing all movable gear and seeing that all was snug for a frightening trip into the unknown the commander was annoyed not so much by the battering the ship was taking as by the cheerful attitude of the lieutenant who seemed to be looking forward to this new experience in this miserable situation they fought heavy gales towering seas for hours the other destroyer had been lost from view but now appeared close on their beam she assumed strange attitudes in the growing darkness at times the commander said she would be poised on the crest of a great wave her four part high above the sea and her keel visible up to the conning tower the after part also high in the roaring wind leaving her propellers racing far out of the water then she would take a dive and an intervening wave would blot out this merry picture and then to our relief as the wave passed a mast would appear waving on the other side and then we would catch sight of her funnels and finally her hull still above water as darkness closed in the crew of the X were glad they could no longer see the other destroyer for made them vividly conscious that their own little ship was going through equally dangerous contortions during this time the destroyer X had suffered much damage the upper deck had been swept clear much water was getting below and the pumps were choked the commander was weary from holding on to the bridge and trying to keep his balance the crew was frightened more than ever by the increasing power of the storm and the considerable approach of the unknown horrors of the center the awful night passed in this terrifying manner with the barometer steadily going lower and the quarter master straining to keep the craft on course with powerful winds full in his face and drenched by spray he managed to hold the ship most of the time and made the best use of her high bows when he failed and allowed the ship to get a few points off course the steep waves threw her on her beam ends and came crashing along the upper decks making it a tough job to get her back with her nose against the elements and the high bows as a sort of shield against the brutal sea besides the compass light had been beaten out and in the darkness of the storm he had no way of judging the direction except by the crash of the wind and water in his face in a storm like this the crew think that they are probably on their last voyage they can feel tremendous masses of water strike with immense force and after the shock the vessel shivering as though the hull had given way leaving them on the verge of diving toward the bottom of the sea sometimes the axe was mostly out of the water they could sense it in the darkness and then she took what they called a belly flopper and every man felt sick the end had come and after a moment fearing just the opposite that it would not be the end after all and they would have to take more of the same now the lieutenant crawled out from below and by a series of lurches between gusts pulled himself to the side of his commander things look better, he shouted the barometer is up a little but soon after that he found he had made an error he had read it an inch too high actually it had dropped almost an inch in three hours showing that the center must now be drawing near shortly the rain ceased and the wind dropped at 7am they were passing into the vortex the ocean now presented a fantastic spectacle they could see for several miles a cauldron of steep towering cones of water with spray at the crests a brightening sky over a chaotic sea some of these columns of water would clash together on different courses and produce a weird effect the wind became light and a few tired birds sought haven on deck this scene lasted only 10 to 20 minutes and then the dreaded squalls ahead of the opposite semicircle of the typhoon began to hit the vessel by 7 20am the full force of the most vicious gales was bringing new miseries to the exhausted crew after three hours the typhoon began to abate and the commander was feeling a little easier about his damaged ship until one of the officers reported that they had sprung a leak the compartment containing the four magazines was flooded and soon filled up so the destroyer went her way the commander reported with her nose down her tail in the air she made it to the mouth of the Yangtze at 11am up the river a distance they found their companion destroyer its commander had been much impressed by the blue sky and calm at the vortex also by the large number of birds mostly kingfishers that came on board examination of the acts showed that a part of the bottom had been battered in shearing the rivets and the seams after thinking about his good fortune in coming through the typhoon the commander wrote in his report when I recall which I can without any trouble those awful belly floppers the craft took and realized by inspection in dock what amount of holding power a countersunk rivet can possibly have in a three sixteenth of an inch plate I wonder that I am now actually the commander of the X had escaped the worst of it if he had missed the vortex and had passed through the right edge where the forward drive of the typhoon was added to the force of the violent inner world he might not have lived to tell the story many others have failed under similar circumstances Shanghai suffered severely from this typhoon a flood in the river and on a low lying island drowned five thousand Chinese all these accounts agreed on one thing the ring of gales around the center some were more violent than others but the ring was always there on the eye of the hurricane however there was less agreement a strange case was the experience on the American Steinship Windrush in October 1930 off the west coast of Mexico she was caught in a violent hurricane and the master suddenly saw that the ship had passed into the vortex the second officer in his report said from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. we were in a calm spot with no wind and smooth sea and the sun was shining there have been similar instances of vessels in the vortex of hurricanes without much disturbance of the sea but these are exceptions most of them have reported confused cross seas described as pyramidal or tumultuous in November 1932 the master of the British Steinship Femius on a voyage from Savannah to the Panama Canal was so unfortunate as to become entangled in the outer circulation of a late season hurricane moving westward in the Caribbean sea it turned sharply northward and the Femius was trapped by the ring of fierce gales in the central region pulled through an arc of 70 degrees while the gusts came with such force that the funnel was blown away the master put the wind at 200 miles an hour hatches were blown overboard like match wood, derricks and life bolts were wrecked and the upper and lower bridges were blown in the ship was rendered helpless and was carried with the hurricane in an unmanageable condition twice the Femius drifted into the vortex with high confused seas and light winds the second time the vessel was besieged by hundreds of birds they took refuge in every part of the ship but lived only a few hours driving toward the coast of Cuba the hurricane ravaged the town of Santa Cruz del Sur hurling a tremendous storm wave across all the low ground engulfing the town and drowning 2500 persons out of a population of 4000 the Femius was left behind in a helpless condition and was taken in tow by a salvage steamer the width of the eye of a hurricane commonly varies from a few miles to 20 or 25 the smallest known was entered by a fishing boat the Seagull in the Gulf of Mexico on July 27, 1936 the master Leon Davis was fishing a few miles east of Aransas Pass Texas when he became involved in a small hurricane suddenly Captain Davis said the wind died down the sun shone brightly and the rain ceased for a space of about a mile and a half a clear circular area prevailed the dense curtain of rain was seen all around the edge of the circle and the roar of the wind was heard in the distance on the other hand one of the largest eyes yet known extended a bigger hurricane in October 1944 it blasted its way across Cuba and entered Florida on the west coast near Tampa as it near Jacksonville the calm center was stretched out to the remarkable distance of about 70 miles this was a kind of freak some of the storm hunters thought that it had been distorted and finally drawn into an elongated area by its passage over the western end of Cuba all of the available records of this kind were consulted in due time by the men who were assigned to the perilous duty of flying military planes into the vortices of hurricanes in the West Indies and into typhoon centers in the Pacific but one of the best of these reports of weather and sea conditions observed on many ships caught at the same time in the central region of a big typhoon was not available until long after it happened the Japanese kept it secret for 17 years the reason for keeping the data secret was the fact that while on grand maneuvers the R.E.D. Imperial Japanese fleet was outmaneuvered by a pair of typhoons and was caught in the center of one of them and severely damaged it happened in 1935 and was not reported for publication in America until 1952 just how this happened is not altogether clear it was in the middle of September 1935 when the first typhoon appeared northwest of the island of Saipan it increased in fury as it moved slowly toward Japan on the 25th it crossed western Honshu and roared into the sea of Japan headed northeastward in the direction of the Japanese fleet soon after this it dissipated before a weekend however another typhoon had formed near Saipan and started toward Japan it turned more to the northward than the first typhoon and missed Japan altogether as it approached Honshu late on the 25th the R.E.D. Imperial fleet was passing through this rate of Shuguru into the Pacific squarely in front of the typhoon center the logical explanation for this apparent blunder is that the commanders wanted more sea room than was at hand in the northeast sea of Japan to maneuver in the first typhoon and hoped to get well out in the open Pacific before they could be cornered by the second one but it turned northeastward and went faster and farther out in the Pacific than they had expected in fact its forward motion was more than 40 miles an hour in these last hours before its furious winds surrounded the fleet it was a bad calculation for the naval commanders and perhaps for the weather forecasters among the latter H. Arakawa one of the foremost typhoon students in Japan was then on the staff of forecasters in the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo he was in part responsible for the predictions in 1952 he made the report which was published by the U.S. Weather Bureau early in 1953 taking the view of the weatherman Arakawa said that although the damage to the fleet was unfortunate there was fortunately a magnificent collection of reports from the central region of the typhoon for scientific study the fleet was caught in the central part of the big storm on the 26th of September among the ships involved many of them damaged were destroyers cruisers aircraft carriers a seaplane carrier mine layers transport ships submarines torpedo boats and a submarine depot ship the fleet suffered damage mostly from the tremendous waves in the right rear quadrant of the typhoon here the rapid forward motion of the storm was added to the wind circulation and the seas were driven to excessive heights in his report Arakawa had a footnote the boughs of two destroyers Hatsuyuki and Yujiri were broken off as a result of excessive storm waves and many officers and sailors were lost in the calm center the clouds broke and faint sunlight came through the diameter of the eye was 9 or 10 miles to the right of the eye some of the waves measured more than 60 feet in height the maximum roll of the ships in this area the total angle from port to starboard reached 75 degrees on some of the ships the wind was steadily above 80 miles an hour the gusts were not measured but probably went as high as 125 miles an hour many of the ships took frequent observations while in the typhoon and the data would have been extremely valuable if released to the storm hunters at that time but when the report was published in 1953 a great deal of new data had been obtained by airplane both at the surface where Arakawa's observations were confined and at higher levels it was a little more than nine years after this Japanese incident when the US third fleet was caught in a typhoon east of the Philippines and suffered at least as much damage as the Japanese in 1935 one fact is clear for many years the storm hunters had been gathering information about hurricane and typhoon centers from observations on land and sea but they knew very little of what went on there in the upper air World War II brought a new era End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Hurricane Hunters by Ivan Ray Tannehill this liver box recording is in the public domain Chapter 7 First Flight into the Vortex Whirlwinds are most violent near their centers Euripides After the war broke out in Europe in 1939 the job of finding and predicting hurricanes became steadily more difficult ships of countries at war ceased to report weather by radio and fewer vessels of neutral nations dared to risk submarine attack after Pearl Harbor the American merchant marine also stopped their weather messages and the oceans were blanked out on the weather maps already the British had been confronted by the lack of weather reports from the Atlantic and the seas surrounding the British Isles and this was extremely serious in their fight against Nazi air power notwithstanding the alarming scarcity of planes for military purposes the British were forced to send aircraft on routine weather missions they usually flew a track in the shape of a triangle for example one leg of the triangle northwestward until well out at sea a second leg southward across the ocean about an equal distance and the last leg back to home base other triangles were flown over Europe and back and over the North Sea as time went on the pilots of these observation planes gained much experience in flying the weather including some fairly bad storms but no one had occasion to fly into a hurricane there was a good deal of talk about the situation in the United States in 1942 however because of the danger that the West Indian region might become a theater of war if the Nazi armies gained control of West Africa and attack the United States by air across Brazil and the Caribbean with this threat from the southeast the United States took action which was a repetition of the events during the Spanish war in 1898 military weather stations were set up in the West Indies and aircraft were prepared to fly weather missions in the area at the same time the United States was getting ready to ferry planes across the South Atlantic via the Caribbean the South American coast and Ascension Island it was very definitely evident early in 1942 that hurricanes might play a critical role if the West Indies became a theater of war by 1943 however there were two surprising turns of affairs the allies invaded Africa late in 1942 and the first flight into a hurricane center unscheduled and unauthorized came in 1943 the first to fly into the vortex of a hurricane was Joseph B. Duckworth a veteran pilot of the scheduled airlines who was at the time a colonel in the Army Air Corps Reserve in command of the instrument flying instructor school at Brian Texas it was one of those rare combinations of circumstances by which the man with the necessary skill experience daring and inclination happened to be at the right place at the right time with the full appreciation of the danger he flew a single engine airplane deliberately into the hurricane and proceeded on a direct heading into the calm center looked around and flew back to Brian spotting his weather officer he bundled him into the back seat and duplicated the feet immediately Joe Duckworth was born in Savannah, Georgia on September 8, 1902 which incidentally was the anniversary date of the terrible Galveston disaster of 1900 and it was a hurricane at Galveston into which he flew in 1943 Joe's mother was Mary Haynes a Savannah girl his father, Ubert Duckworth was a naturalized Englishman who had been sent to the states to take over the American cotton offices of Joe's grandfather after whom he was named when Joe was two years of age at Macon, Georgia where his father was vice president of the bibb manufacturing company Joe's first memory of anything connected with aviation was when his parents took him to the fairgrounds at Macon to see Eugene Ealy fly in an early right type by plane the wind was not right for a flight pilots were cautious in those days and Ealy didn't go up Joe and his parents were looking at the plane when his father remarked you know, someday they will be carrying passengers in these things his mother answered oh, don't be silly, Ubert you might as well try to fly to the moon Joe had a vague idea at the time that he would like to fly when he grew up long afterward he did he says many times in the 1930s I captain and eastern airlines plane over Macon and looked down on the old fairgrounds and recalled the thrill I had on seeing my first airplane and the remarks of my mother and father after his father died in 1914 Joe attended Woodbury Forest school in Orange, Virginia for three years and then went for two years to Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana graduating from there in 1920 in the meantime his mother had moved to Atlanta and he continued his education for two years at Georgia Tech and one year at Oglethorpe University nothing he did would take flying out of his mind and he finally gained admission to the flying cadets after going through both Brooks and Kelly Fields as cadet captain he was graduated in 1928 the happiest year of his life later when flying for eastern airlines he got a law degree from the University of Miami with basic training of the kind that young Duckworth received as a cadet he was not fitted to fly into a hurricane or into any sort of really bad weather military operations at that time were strictly visual or contact the problem was not how to get through bad weather thunderstorms low overcast fog for example but how to keep out of it there were few flight instruments and there was no instrument flying training at that time dirigibles were thought by many leaders in aeronautics to have the best passenger carrying possibilities for the future steel had just replaced wood in fuselages and airplanes in general had earned the description heavier than air on the other hand the world had been electrified by Lindbergh's flight to Paris in 1927 and other stunt flights became numerous another thrilling piece of news was Admiral Bird's flight to the South Pole in 1929 trial freight carrying runs were being flown by the Ford Motor Company from Detroit to Chicago and from Detroit to Buffalo and Joe heard that a young man could get tri-motor flight time as a co-pilot two days a week provided he worked four days in the factory Duckworth headed for Detroit after getting on the job with Ford he had his first serious run in with clear ice or freezing rain the plane barely made south bend airport coming in at high speed with a load of ice on the wings 15 years later the pilot on instruments would have climbed quickly into the warmer air at higher levels and then worked his way down to destination but instrument flying was unknown at the time in the spring of 1929 Joe went with the Kurdist right flying service as their first instructor at Joe's Isle near Detroit they were starting out to set up a nationwide chain of bases with the idea of teaching everyone to fly the plan was successful at first and in the fall Joe opened a branch in Atlanta just as the stock market broke wide open the slump in business that followed in 1930 caused general failure in the flying services in December Joe saw that the Atlanta branch was going out of business Joe worked as a pilot for eastern air transport now eastern airlines and remained with the company for 10 years at first he flew mail planes with parachutes but no passengers even then there was no such thing as flying the weather on his first mail flight he got some pointed advice from the operations manager he told Joe to be sure to be on the lookout for a reflection of the revolving radio beacon on the cloud ceiling and the moment you see such an apparition you must get down immediately in an emergency field if you let the overcast close down on you you are strictly out of luck airplanes were a long way then from being equipped to fly into hurricanes what little was known at that time about the temperature pressure and humidity in the upper air was secured by kites sent up daily at a few places they were box kites carrying recording instruments and flown by steel piano wire observers let them rise and pulled them in by reels and after examining the records sent the data to the weather forecasters this was a slow process and besides it was becoming dangerous around airports where the data were needed most a long piano wire in the sky was a serious hazard for aircraft after 1931 this method was abandoned and pilots under contract to the weather bureau attached weather recording instruments to their planes and ascended to a height of three miles or a little higher and on return gave the records to the weather observer who worked them up and wired the results to the forecasters army and navy pilots carried out similar missions at military bases this plan worked fairly well the flights were made early in the morning but when the weather was bad and the data would have been most useful the planes were obliged to remain on the ground gradually beginning about 1932 airline pilots began more and more intentional flights on instruments that is operating in clouds without visual reference to ground or horizon reliability of schedules was an economic necessity navigation by radio was becoming more of a commonplace and by experiment and self teaching by 1940 airlines were flying almost all kinds of on-route weather including thunderstorms in 1940 Joe's thoughts turned to the army Air Corps in which he held a reserve commission as major it looked as though war might come to the United States so in November of that year he resigned from Eastern to enter active duty probably the first airline pilot to do so assigned to the training command he never got overseas but what he did in teaching instrument flying throughout the Air Corps is still acknowledged and appreciated by thousands of wartime pilots he received literally hundreds of letters expressing their gratitude some of them declaring that the training they had received had literally saved lives on many occasions Joe found a serious lack of instrument flight training in the Air Corps due to the frenzied expansion of training for war and as Joe said you couldn't call off the war when the weather was bad he set out to make his wartime mission the remedying of this situation and the record will show he did a monumental job cutting red tape wherever possible experimenting lecturing and writing a whole new system of instrument flying training he and his Joe's and assistants culminated two years of intensive effort by establishing an instrument flying instructor school at Bryan, Texas in February of 1943 during the next two years the school provided over 10,000 highly qualified instructors to the Army Air Forces and attained a solid reputation which is not forgotten today Joe's instructors flew all types of weather anywhere and at the same time piled up a safety record unheard of at the time the manuals they developed are still in principle the standard of today's Air Force Joe's school taught through novel and thorough techniques two things first that there is no weather except practically 00 landing conditions that cannot be flown by the instrument pilot with proper equipment second that the safety and utility of both military and commercial flight depend almost wholly on the competence of the pilot in instrument flying thus it came about that the first flight into a hurricane center was not the result of a sudden notion but of years of intensive training in flying the weather including storms and the flyer who did was probably the most expert in the world at getting safely through all kinds of weather looking at it from this point of view it is not strange that there was a rather amusing sequel to this story involving the other instructors at Bryan, Texas but first we come to the story of the history making flight by Colonel Duckworth early in the morning of July 27 1943 Joe came out to have breakfast at the field the sky at Bryan was absolutely clear and it did not seem to promise any kind of weather that would try the metal of men whose business it was to fly in stormy conditions someone at the table said he had seen a report that a hurricane was approaching Galveston Joe was immediately attentive sitting opposite him was a young and enthusiastic navigator the only one at the field Lieutenant Ralph O'Hare thinking again about the fact that no one had flown a hurricane and that it ought to be easy because of the circular flow Joe suggested to Ralph let's go down and get an AT6 and penetrate the center just for fun he said it would be for fun because he felt sure that higher headquarters probably would not approve the risk of the aircraft and highly trained personnel for an official flight had newly arrived B-25s at the field but Duckworth had not had time to check out in one of them and therefore could not fly a B-25 a twin engine airplane without going through some formalities use of the AT6 of course involved the danger that is one engine might quit inside the hurricane and they would be in trouble Lieutenant O'Hare was quite willing enthusiastic in fact and the pair gathered such information as was available about the hurricane and made ready for the flight they took off in the AT6 shortly afternoon the data on the storm had been rather meager two days before forecaster W. R. Stevens at New Orleans had deduced from the charts that a tropical storm was forming in the Gulf to the southward he drew his conclusion almost solely from upper air data coastal stations for no ships were reporting from the Gulf on the 26th Stevens had correctly tracked it westward toward Galveston quite a feat in view of the lack of observations and warnings had been issued in advance on the morning of the 27th this small but intense hurricane was moving inland on the Texas coast a short distance north of Galveston and by early afternoon the winds were blowing 80 to 100 miles an hour on Galveston Bay and in Chambers County to the eastward of the bay Houston and Galveston were in the western or less dangerous semicircle a favorable condition for the flight from Brian to Houston soon after leaving Brian the venturesome airmen were in the clouds on the outer rim of the storm with scud and choppy air and shortly after they ran into rain precipitation static began to give them trouble in communications but there was no other serious difficulty as they approached Houston at the air smoothed out the static leaked off the plane and the radio was quiet and the overcast grew darker they called Houston the airways radio operator was surprised when they said their destination was Galveston do you know there is a hurricane at Galveston the operator asked yes we do said O'Hare we intend to fly into the thing well please report back every little while the operator requested let me know what happens evidently he wanted to be able to say what became of the plane if they went down in the storm at this point Joe's mind began to run back over some of the lectures the flight instructor had given and recall they had stressed the fact that a pilot should always have an out even if it meant taking to a parachute he wondered what it would be like to use a parachute in a hurricane they were flying at a height of 4,000 to 9,000 feet as they approached the center the air became choppier again and he said afterward that they were being tossed about like a stick and a dog's mouth without much chance of getting away from the grip of the storm on the radio ranges at Houston and Galveston they flew over the latter and then turned northward suddenly they broke out of the dark overcast and rain and entered brighter clouds almost immediately they could see high walls of white cumulus all around the central area in the center and below them the ground and above the sky quite clearly the plane was in the calm center the ground below was not surely identified but it seemed to be open country somewhere between Galveston and Houston they descended in an effort to get their position more clearly but the air became rougher as their altitude decreased this led Duckworth to the conclusion that the eye of the hurricane was like a leaning cone the lower part probably being restricted and retarded by the frictional drag of land over which the storm was passing they flew around in the center a while and then took a compass course for Brian once out of the center the plane went through in reverse the conditions the flyers had experienced on the way in arriving at the airfield at Brian in clear weather when they got out of the plane the weather officer, Lt. William Jones Burdick came up and said he was very disappointed and made this important flight Duckworth said ok hop in and we'll go back through and have another look so he and the weather officer flew into the calm center again and looked around a while the weather officer kept a log from which the following excerpts are taken beginning with their entry into dense clouds on the way into the hurricane the time given here is 24 hour clock subtract 1200 to get time p.m. by central standard 1715 heavy rain strong rain static 1716 rain continues but static only moderate some crash static intermittently 1720 getting darker cloud more dense rain very heavy turbulence light rain static building up blocking out Galveston radio range intermittently 1725 turbulence light to moderate rain very heavy 1728 altitude 7300 feet free air temperature 46 degrees cloud getting somewhat lighter 1730 rain less heavy cloud much lighter ground visible through breaks surface wind apparently south southeast 1735 crossed east leg of Galveston range and changed course 330 degrees 1740 now flying in thick cloud turbulence smooth to light 1743 turbulence moderate 1744 turbulence moderate to severe 1745 cited clear space ahead and to the left 1746 now flying in eye of storm ground clearly visible sun shining through upper clouds to the west circling to establish position surface wind south 1753 still circling altitude 5000 feet temperature 73 degrees 1800 headed west for Houston cloud very dense rain light turbulence moderate intermittent precipitation static 1805 apparently in a thunderstorm altitude 5500 feet heavy rain turbulence moderate to severe free air temperature now 46 degrees 1815 changed heading to 10 degrees rain light to moderate turbulence light 1825 headed 330 degrees rain very light turbulence almost smooth apparently flying between thick cloud layers 1835 altitude 5500 feet broken stratocumulus clouds below high overcast of autostratus above 1836 breaking out into the open with high autostratus deck above 1900 landed at Brian sky clear to the northwest one sequel to this story was Duckworth's discovery a year later that after these flights into the center instructors and supervisors who were checked out in B-25s had sneaked out and flown the same hurricane they were afraid to tell him about it at the time for they did not have permission to do it but he accidentally learned about it the next year when he overheard some of them talking about their trip into the storm altogether Joe did not consider his flights into the hurricane to be as dangerous as some of his other weather flights only two things worried him at the time the heavy precipitation static and the possibility that heavy rain might cause the engine to quit afterwards when pilots began to fly hurricanes as regular missions the effect of torrential rain in lowering engine temperatures proved to be a real hazard and they had to take special precautions on this account considering his hurricane penetration a routine weather flight at the time Joe thought nothing more about it until he read a story in a Sunday paper several weeks later then he had a telephone call from Brigadier General Luke Smith at Randolph Field who asked him to come down and surprised him by saying that he knew of the incident at Randolph the general said that Joe was being recommended for the distinguished flying cross this never went through but later Joe did receive there were several amazing features about these flights into the vortex first they justified Duckworth's unswerving confidence in his ability to fly safely through a hurricane second at the level of high flights there was a remarkable absence of violent updrafts or turbulence third they showed that quiet air in the center extended at least two heights of a mile to a mile and a half levels the air in the center was much warmer than the air in the surrounding region of cloud rain and high winds Joe was sorry now he did not organize his flight to get better scientific data he believes his air temperature gauge probably was inaccurate but as he says it was just a lark I didn't know anybody would ever care or know about it this demonstration was followed by a number of penetrations by aircraft into the eyes of tropical storms not all of which by any means were as uneventful as the flights by Duckworth and his fellow officers after years of experience the military services involved in flying hurricanes developed a technique which was essentially the same as that used by Duckworth in this first flight that is penetrate and then into the center or eye from the southwest quadrant end of chapter 7 chapter 8 of The Hurricane Hunters by Ivan Ray Tannehill this liber box recording is in the public domain chapter 8 the hammer and the highway bellowing their groaned a noise as of a sea and tempest torn by warring winds the stormy blast of Hades restless fury drives the spirits on Dante during the first half of the present century there was a tremendous growth in population, industry, truck farming citrus growing, boating and aviation on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts of the United States this brought new worries to the hurricane hunters and forecasters by the beginning of the century most of the older cities and port towns had been hit repeatedly by tropical blasts. Insecure buildings had been eliminated from bitter experience the natives knew what to do when a storm threatened they had built houses and other structures to withstand hurricane winds placing nearly all of them above the highest storm tides within their memories down in the hurricane belt of Texas and Louisiana a 60 penny nail was known as Burwood Finishing Nail the town of Burwood at the water's edge on the southern tip of Louisiana had no frame buildings that had survived its ravaging winds and overwhelming tides except those which were put together with spikes driven through heavy timbers learning to deal with hurricanes takes a lot of time most places on these coasts have a really bad tropical storm about once in 10 or 20 years and so it happened that while the population was increasing rapidly in the years from 1920 to 1940 many thousands of flimsy buildings were constructed in the intervals between hurricanes too many were built near the sea where they would be wrecked by the first big storm wave to build near the water is tempting in a hot climate and so it happened that after 1920 widespread destruction of property and great loss of life attended the first violent blow in many of these rapidly growing communities newcomers and there were many didn't know what to do to protect life and property after the first calamity they were alarmed by the winds which came with every local thunder shower and they were likely to flee inland and great numbers whenever there was a rumor of a hurricane here they became refugees and they would be fed and sheltered by the Red Cross and local welfare organizations by the middle 30s this had become a heavy burden on all concerned to get things under control local chapters of the Red Cross were formed and other civic leaders joined in seeing that precautions were taken when required and panics were averted at times when no storm was known to exist but when warnings were issued coastal towns were almost deserted the greatest organized mass exodus from shore areas in advance of a tropical storm occurred in Texas in 1942 on August 30 a big hurricane with a tremendous storm wave struck the coast between Corpus Christi and Galveston it had been tracked across the Caribbean and Gulf and ample warnings had been issued more than 10 persons were systematically evacuated from the threatened region and though every house was damaged in many towns only 8 lives were lost all of this brought heavy pressure on the hurricane hunters and forecasters to be more accurate in the warnings to pinpoint the area to be seriously affected and to defer the hoist of the black centered red hurricane flags until those responsible were reasonably sure of the path the storm would take across the coastline thus the warnings actually became more precise but in some instances the time available for protective action was correspondingly reduced precautionary measures must be carefully planned the force of the wind on a surface placed squarely across the flow of air increases roughly with the square of the wind speed for this reason it is a good approximation to say that an 80 mile wind is 4 times as destructive as a 40 mile wind a 120 mile wind is 9 times as destructive in order to lessen property damage residents of Florida and other states in the hurricane belt prepared wooden frames which could be quickly nailed over windows and other glass openings these devices proved to be very effective in some cases it was a dramatic fact that if two houses were located side by side the one with protective covers on windows and other openings escaped serious damage while the other house soon lost a window pane and then the roof went off as powerful gusts built up strong pressures within the building at the same time that this protection was applied on the windward side openings on the leeward side away from the wind helped to reduce any pressure that built up in the interior as these experiences became common after 1930 wood and metal awnings were manufactured so that they could be lowered quickly into position to protect windows of residences business houses stocked wooden frames that could be fastened in place quickly to prevent wholesale damage to plate glass windows many other measures were taken hastily when the emergency warnings were sent out one for example was a check by homeowners to make sure that they had tools and timbers ready to brace doors and windows from the inside if they began to give way under the terrific force of hurricane gusts they had learned that with a wind averaging 80 miles an hour say the gusts were likely to go as high as 120 miles an hour and it is in these brief violent blasts so characteristic of the hurricane that the major part of the wind damage occurs in addition the experienced citizen prepares for hours when water lights and electric refrigeration will fail he knows too that these storms have a central region or I where it is calm or nearly so and he does not make the often fatal mistake of assuming that the storm is over when the calm suddenly succeeds the roaring gales he wisely remains indoors and closes the openings on the other side of the house for the first great gusts will come from a direction nearly opposite that of the most violent winds which preceded the center in the early 30s the hurricane forecast for the entire susceptible region were still being made in Washington having been there in 1878 weather reports were coming in season from observers at land stations in the West Indies mostly by cable from many places the cable messages went to Washington via alifax ships weather messages came by radio to coastal stations on the Atlantic and Gulf and from there to Washington by telegram twice a day these reports were put on maps and isobars and pressure highs and lows were drawn in general the same system is used today arrows show the direction and force of the wind at each of many points also the barometer reading temperature cloud data and other facts are entered conditions in the upper air are shown at a few places where balloon soundings are made as the map takes shape it begins to show the vast sweep of winds across the southern United States Mexico Central America and all the region in and around the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic in these southern regions the trade winds coming from the northeast and turning westward across the islands and the Caribbean bring good weather to the edge of the belt of doldrums this is the lazy climate of the tropics in the vast spaces here the equator seems to give things the appearance of a view through a magnifying glass in the distant scene islands are set off by glistening clouds hanging from mountain tops white towers of thundery clouds push upward here and there over the sea in startling contrast to the blue of the sky and water nature seems to be at peace but the trained weather observer may see and measure things disturbing to the weather forecasters when put together on a weather map of regions extending far beyond any single observer's horizon here and there in this atmosphere that seems so peaceful and eddy forms and drifts westward in the grand sweep of the upper air across these southern latitudes these temporary swirls in the atmosphere some of which are called easterly waves are marked by a wave-like form drifting from the east the wind turns a little the barometer falls slightly the clouds increase temporarily but nothing serious happens and the eddy passes as better weather resumes this goes on day after day and week after week but during the hurricane season the storm hunters are always on the alert all this work of charting the weather and week by week is not wasted if no hurricane develops planes take off every day from southern and eastern airports carrying passengers to Bermuda, Nassau, Trinidad Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico and Central and South America the crews stop at the weather office to pick up reports of wind and weather for their routes and at destination the weather over these vast expanses of water surface is reported and predicted also for ships at sea and when a storm begins to develop ships and planes are among the first to be notified sooner or later one of these swirling waves shows a definite center of low pressure with winds blowing counterclockwise around it now the modern drama of the hurricane begins in the region where these ominous winds are charted radio messages from headquarters ask for reports from ships every hour if possible and weather offices on islands are asked to make special balloon soundings of the upper air and send reports at frequent intervals warnings go out to vessels in the path of the storm as it picks up force alert storm hunters in Cuba and other countries are contacted to discuss the prospects to furnish more frequent reports and to assist in warning the populations on the islands on the coast of the United States excitement is in the air conversations in the street offices stores homes everywhere turn to the incipient hurricane and become more insistent as the big winds draw nearer and finally the hour comes when precautions are necessary by this time business in the threatened area is at a standstill the situation is like that during world series baseball games and almost as dramatic as that which follows a declaration of war few people have their minds on business at this point the reports of storm hunters and the decisions of forecasters involved the immediate plans of hundreds of thousands of people large costs for protection of property and the safety of human life along shore and in small craft on the water some of the men and women of the weather and radio offices this morning know now that they will not go home tonight there will be an increasing volume of weather reports the rattle of teletype riders will become more insistent the radio receivers will be guarded by alert men growing weary toward morning planes will be evacuated from airports in the threatened region and flown back into the interior and the businessman will go home without the frames he uses to board up the windows when a hurricane is predicted the navy may take battleships and cruisers out of a threatened harbor so that their officers will have room to maneuver under these dramatic conditions the hurricane comes toward land with good weather in advance sunny by day and clear at night the native fears the telltale booming of the surf and feels concerned about northeast breezes in time there are lofty thin clouds spreading across the sky in wisps or mairstales of cirrus composed of ice crystals in the high cold atmosphere far above the heated surface of the subtropics a thin veil forms over the sky at the end of the day red rays of the lowering sun cast a weird crimson color to the cloud veil reflecting a scarlet hue over the landscape and the sea for a few minutes the earth seems to be on fire to the visitor it is a beautiful sunset to the native it is alarming and in some parts of the caribbean it is terrifying as an omen of the displeasure of the storm gods in these dramatic situations the head forecaster makes his decision so during these nervous hours representatives of the red cross begin arriving on the scene at the same time crews assigned to duties of repairing telephone telegraph and power lines are sent to the threatened area by their respective companies as soon as the storm has passed these men will be ready to go to work at this juncture it is probable that strange things will happen against the stream of refugees moving away from the coast there are always a few adventurers who come from more distant places to see the full fury of a great hurricane roaring inland from the sea at first they thrill to the crash of tremendous waves breaking on the coast and hurling spray high into the screaming winds but when the rain comes in torrents striking with the force of pebbles and beach structures begin to collapse they give up their components to wind and sea the curious spectator has had enough hurriedly he seeks refuge and begins to wonder fearfully if it will get worse it does he soon realizes that what he has seen is only the beginning as the full force of the blast strikes a coastal city the scene goes beyond the power of words to describe darkness envelops everything clouds and heavy rain acting like a dense fog to cut down on visibility the air fills with debris and with the roar of the winds and the crash of falling buildings power lines go down and until the current can be cut off electric flashes throw a weird diffuse light on the growing chaos in the lulls the shrieks of fire apparatus and ambulances are heard until the streets become impassable most of these great storms move forward rather slowly often only ten to twelve miles an hour a boy on a bicycle could keep ahead of the whirling gales if the road took him in the right direction automobiles carrying news reporters and curious people travel the highways far enough in advance to avoid falling debris listening to the radio broadcasts from the weather office to learn of the progress of the storm of all places the most dangerous are on the immediate coast and on islands near the coast where the combination of wind and wave is almost irresistible but even here an occasional citizen chooses to remain in spite of the warnings and when he finally decides to leave it may be too late to get out and no one can reach him there have been many instances of men being carried to sea clinging to floating objects and after describing a wide arc under the driving force of the rotary winds being thrown ashore miles away from home but in other cases people are trapped and drowned in the rising waters in 1919 at Corpus Christi warnings were issued while many residents were at their noon meal on a Sunday many delayed to finish eating while the only road to higher ground was being rapidly flooded of these 175 were drowned the native knows all of the preliminary signs well enough and it is not necessary to urge him to take precautions after the moment when the ominous gusts of the first winds of the storm are felt he has been in these situations before and has looked out to see palm trees bent far over and the rain beginning to blot out the view as the fingers of the gale seem to begin searching his walls and roof for a weak spot many prefer not to stay and watch they board up their windows and doors and go back to a safer place in the interior and so this is the time when the sound of the hammer is heard and streams of refugees are seen on the highways in the early thirties and in the hurricane states caused an annoying shortage of communications in storm emergencies for many years the Washington forecasters had sent warnings by telegraph and the men in weather offices along southern coast had talked to each other by telephone to exchange notes and opinions but there were frequent delays and failures after 1930 because when a hurricane approached the coast the lines became congested with telephone calls and telegraph messages between relatives and friends worrying about the dangers and by residents making arrangements for evacuation in addition to emergency calls of many other kinds in 1935 the weather bureau found a very good answer to the communication shortage in emergencies a teletype rider line called the hurricane circuit running around the gulf coast of florida was leased on july 1 with machines in all weather offices another line was installed between miami and washington and eventually extended to new york and boston no matter how congested the public lines became the weather offices were able to exchange messages and reports without any delay at the same time three hurricane forecast offices were established in the region at Jacksonville New Orleans and San Juan after that time the washington office issued forecasts and warnings of hurricanes only when they came northward to about 35 degrees north latitude and from there to block island where the boston office took over the first violent tropical storm to strike the coast of the united states after the hurricane circuit was set up came across the florida keys on labor day 1935 it was spotted in ship reports and by observations from turks island on august 31 as a small storm it moved westward not far from the north coast of cuba on september 1 and turned to the northwest on september 2 having developed tremendous violence this hurricane is worth noting for its central pressure 26.35 inches was the lowest ever recorded in a tropical storm at sea level on land anywhere in the world the average pressure at sea level is about 29.90 inches the biggest tropical storms have central pressures below 28.00 inches but very rarely as low as 27.00 inches the strongest winds around the center of the labor hurricane probably exceeded 200 miles an hour about 700 veterans of world war one were in relief camps at the point where the center struck a train was sent from miami to the keys to evacuate the veterans ahead of the storm but it was delayed and it was wrecked and thrown off the tracks as the veterans were being put aboard the loss of life among veterans and natives on the keys in the immediate area was nearly 400 there was much criticism in the press in 1936 a committee in congress carried on a long investigation of the circumstances which led to the establishment of the relief camps in such a vulnerable position the failure of the camp authorities to act on warnings from the weather bureau and the delay of the rescue train there was much talk in the committee of increasing the weather bureau's appropriations to enable it to give earlier warnings but nothing came of it the new teletype rider circuit served well after this violent hurricane crossed the keys it went through the eastern Gulf and then passed over western Florida and overland to Norfolk in spite of intense public excitement communications between weather offices were maintained without serious interruption this improved service continued in the years that followed radio circuits to the West Indies and a teletype rider circuit to Cuba by cable helped to bring the reports promptly and at frequent intervals and emergencies in this modern drama of fear and violence the hurricane warning has become the signal that may cause desperate actions by hundreds of thousands of people colossal costs are entailed in the movement of populations in exposed places and in the protection of property and interruption of business now in this emergency a civil service employee not used to making decisions involving large sums of money finds himself in a position from which he has no escape he has to make up his mind to issue the warning or not to issue it if he fails to get it out in time there will be much loss of life and property and avoided if he issues the warning and the hurricane turns away from the coast or loses force very large costs will have been entailed without apparent justification in either case he will be subjected to a lot of criticism the hurricane hunter and forecaster who stepped into this responsible position at a critical time was Grady Norton born in Alabama in 1895 Grady joined the bureau shortly before World War I then became a meteorologist in the army after taking training at A&M College of Texas where a weather school was established early in 1918 but he had no wish to be a forecaster or to send out warnings of hurricanes nevertheless the people in Washington were unable to get out of their minds the fact that whenever Norton made forecast for practice his rating was very high especially for the southeastern part of the country the bureau encouraged him at every opportunity because he was one of those who were born with the knack of making good weather predictions which is an art rather than a science even in its present state of development then in 1928 Grady went on a motor trip and arrived in southern Florida just after the Palm Beach hurricane had struck Lake Okeechobee killing more than 2,000 people he saw the devastation the mass burials the suffering and determined to do something about it by 1930 he was at New Orleans getting experience in forecasting Gulf Hurricanes after five years the hurricane teletype and the centers at Jacksonville and New Orleans were established and Grady was put in charge of hurricane forecasting at Jacksonville there and later at Miami his name Grady Norton coming over the radio became familiar and reassuring to almost every householder in the region for twenty hurricane seasons he took the brunt of it in almost countless emergencies in some instances he made to broadcast steadily and continuously every two hours or oftener for two days or more without rest his microphone having direct connections to more than twenty Florida radio stations and by powerful short wave hookups to small towns all over the state as the hurricane threatened areas beyond Florida he continued the issue of bulletins warnings and advices in the last ten years of this service he was warned by his physician to turn a good deal of the responsibility over to his assistance but the public wanted to know his personal decisions in 1954 after Hurricanes Carroll and Edna had devastated sections of the northeast with resultant serious criticism of the bureau in regard to the former a fast moving blow that allowed a very limited time for precautions Norton died on the job while tracking Hurricane Hazel through the Caribbean a tall thin sandy haired southerner Norton had a slow calm way of talking that put him in the public mind at the top of the list of hurricane hunters of his generation and it was generally conceited that to his efforts were to be credited in a large degree the advances in hurricane forecasting in the years after 1935 but the outstanding progress was gained from the use of aircraft to reconnoiter hurricanes in which Norton was the most important part in Grady Norton's place the bureau put Gordon Dunn who was an associate of Norton's at Jacksonville when the service began and who had more recently been in charge of the forecast center at Chicago by the end of 1942 it was plain that the weather offices of the army and Navy would have to join with the weather bureau in hunting and predicting hurricanes would work best at Miami for the 1943 storm season the weather bureau moved its forecast office from Jacksonville to Miami with Norton in charge and the military agencies assigned liaison officers there for the purpose of coordinating the weather reports received and the warnings issued all the experts felt that military aircraft would have to be used to get the reports in August 1943 the news of Colonel Duckworth's successful flight into the center of the Texas hurricane was the decisive factor reconnaissance began in 1944 End of chapter 8