Part 9

Lieutenant O'Hair 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 AT-6 shortly after noon. The data on the storm had been rather meagre. 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 at coastal stations, for no ships were reporting from the Gulf. On the twenty-sixth, 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 twenty-seventh, 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 eighty to one hundred 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 Bryan to Houston. Soon after leaving Bryan, 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, the air smoothed out, the static leaked off the plane, 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'Hair. "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 how 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 four thousand to nine thousand feet.

As they approached the center, the air became choppier again and he said afterward that they were "being tossed about like a stick in a dog's mouth," without much chance of getting away from the grip of the storm. Checking 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 circular 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 the land over which the storm was passing. They flew around in the center a while and then took a compass course for Bryan.

Once out of the center, the plane went through, in reverse, the conditions the fliers had experienced on the way in, arriving at the air field at Bryan in clear weather. When they got out of the plane, the weather officer, Lieutenant William Jones-Burdick, came up and said he was very disappointed that he had not 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 twenty-four-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'. Free air temperature 46°, 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 to 330°. 1740 Now flying in thick cloud. Turbulence smooth to light. 1743 Turbulence moderate. 1744 Turbulence moderate to severe. 1745 Sighted 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', temperature 73°. 1800 Headed west for Houston. Cloud very dense, rain light, turbulence moderate, intermittent precipitation static. 1805 Apparently in a thunderstorm. Altitude 5500'. Heavy rain, turbulence moderate to severe. Free air temperature now 46°. 1815 Changed heading to 10°. Rain light to moderate. Turbulence light. 1825 Headed 330°. Rain very light, turbulence almost smooth. Apparently flying between thick cloud layers. 1835 Altitude 5500'. Broken stratocumulus clouds below, high overcast of altostratus above. 1836 Breaking out into the open with high altostratus deck above. 1900 Landed at Bryan. Sky clear to the northwest.

One sequel to this story was Duckworth's discovery, a year later, that after these flights into the center, some of his instructors and supervisors who were checked out in B-25's 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 trips 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. Afterward, 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 the Air Medal.

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 up drafts or turbulence; third, they showed that quiet air in the center extended at least to heights of a mile to a mile and a half, and that at those levels the air in the center was much warmer than the air in the surrounding region of cloud, rain, and high winds. Joe is 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 think anybody would ever care or know about it!"

This demonstration was followed by an increasing 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 into the western semicircle and then into the center or eye from the southwest quadrant.

_8._ THE HAMMER AND THE HIGHWAY

_Bellowing, there groan'd a noise As of a sea in tempest torn By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hades With 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 in this region 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 sixty-penny nail was known as a "Burrwood finishing nail." The town of Burrwood, 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 ten or twenty 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 thundershower and they were likely to flee inland in great numbers whenever there was a rumor of a hurricane. Here they became refugees, to be fed and sheltered by the Red Cross and local welfare organizations. By the middle thirties, 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 by the Weather Bureau, 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 fifty thousand persons were systematically evacuated from the threatened region and though every house was damaged in many towns, only eight 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 coast line. 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 eighty-mile wind is four times as destructive as a forty-mile wind. A 120-mile wind is nine 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 glassed 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 pressures 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 home owners 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 eighty miles an hour, say, the gusts are 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 eye, 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 thirties, the hurricane forecasts for the entire susceptible region were still being made in Washington, having been begun 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 Halifax. Ship's weather messages came by radio to coastal stations on the Atlantic and Gulf, and from there to Washington by telegraph. Twice a day these reports were put on maps and isobars, and pressure centers (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 the elements 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 where the bulge of the earth near 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 that are 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 an 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 day by day 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 involve 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 who came down to 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 teletypewriters 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 early and get out 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 the fitful northeast breezes. In time there are lofty, thin clouds, spreading across the sky in wisps or "mares' tails" 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 into 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.

Also, 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 and 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, with thick, low-flying 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.