Gathering Hurricane Hunters 1945

This Week
Hurricane Watch and Updates
Jacksonville, Florida 1945
Facts about Tropical Storms and Hurricanes:

Hurricane Watch Saturday, October 9, 2010 am PDT

Rain laden Otto has grown from a disorganized system that dropped double digit inches of rain on the northeast Caribbean islands to what is presently a Category 1 Hurricane. Fortunately for those rain weary islands Otto is heading away from them and out to sea. Should it maintain it's current heading the Azores might be a target by the middle of next week.
In the meantime there is a low pressure area in the western Caribbean that appears capable of creating some tropical mischief within the next several days.
We'll keep an eye on it and announce any future development..tb

Squadron VB-4 OTU-2 Jacksonville, Florida early 1945:
All things being equal I should be on board a carrier heading into the South Pacific. Well, they’re not always equal nor fair either. Records got all bollixed up in San Diego and instead of shipping out with my mates I was sent to Jacksonville, Florida. And I wasn’t even assigned to a Navy base. No, I’m stationed at the Jacksonville Municipal Airport, for crying out loud.
Of course there was good reason for the Navy to choose Jacksonville Municipal, it has long runways and that fit the needs of our heavy bomber patrol outfit. I won’t even hazard a guess as to how this diverse group of guys wound up in Squadron VB-4 Operational Training Unit 2. Most of our personnel were back from the war in the Pacific. Some had seen action at Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Coral Sea. A couple of guys had physically jumped from the deck of the sinking Aircraft Carrier Lexington. Most enlisted personnel had been trained in carrier-based operations as aircrewmen or line maintenance. They had worked on single engine aircraft like the TBF Avenger torpedo bomber, Douglas Dauntless dive-bomber, and fighters such as the F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair.
Our squadron’s aircraft was made up of four engine B-24 Liberators using the Navy designation PB4Y-1 and a single tail version of the Liberator called the PB4Y-2 Privateer. Maintenance facilities consisted of one main hangar, a wide concrete apron and dozens of individual parking areas called boon-docks. Living quarters for enlisted personnel and officers were regular barracks built among a sprawling pine forest.
As an aviation machinist mate and certified air crewman my first duties with the squadron was working in a line maintenance crew and doing routine engine repair. The first hurdle a new guy had to jump was chasing back to the hangar for a couple of spare parts and a skyhook. Of course the skyhook didn’t exist and pretty soon you’d figure it was a ruse and you had become the butt of a joke.
At the time I joined the squadron the war was still raging in Europe and the Pacific with German U-Boats prowling off our Atlantic Coast. And while our squadron’s mission was to train crews in long-range patrol activities, a secondary mission was to keep an eye out for German submarines.
From the time I checked into the squadron I wanted to put in some flight time. In order to qualify for flight pay (flight skins) an air crewman needed to put in a minimum of four hours flight time per month. Of course the frugal Navy used that time to train men for their specific duties. As an aviation machinist mate my flight training was to prepare me for the job of plane captain. The plane captain is charged with pre-flight inspection of the aircraft along with in flight duties and once you got back to base, a post flight inspection. There was a long checklist you had to follow, but in general it consisted of going over maintenance reports, a visual inspection of the plane, confirming the amount of fuel on board and reporting the results to the first pilot. It was most important to be consistent and go over every item on the checklist in careful detail. Once I had gone through the required training period and was thoroughly checked out in both the Liberator and Privateer my name was placed in the instructor’s pool. I was never sure why, because I was outranked by most aviation mechanics in the squadron.
While in the air the plane captain would move around the craft checking gauges, temperatures and pressures. For long-range flights careful attention had to be paid to fuel onboard – where it was stored and when necessary transferred from one tank to another.
The easiest way to get on the skipper’s shit list was to screw up on fuel transfer and starve an engine or two. The transfer procedure was actually quite simple, if you went by the book. If you didn’t it could be a problem. I chose to go by the book.
(To be continued)

Facts About Tropical Storms and Hurricanes:
Beginning next week we are going to present some facts about hurricanes, high and low pressure systems, cloud formations, water and air temperature and how these parts of a weather system all come together in order to spawn a tropical depression that may or may not grow into a tropical storm and possibly a hurricane. These facts will be presented in lay terms so we can all understand. It is my intention to get as many of you hooked on hurricanes as I can. Some of the information you store away in your memory bank might one day save your life. tb

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels Tungee's Gold, The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Www.tombarnes39.com
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