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Excerpt from The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle
A Closeup Look at a Tropical Storm
The Quonset Huts we used as barracks were located north of the main hangar. Those huts reminded me of my stay at San Diego’s North Island and the only detail missing in that picture was the dense morning fog.
Our barracks talk was spiked with a lot of humor, most of it coming out of our Mississippi jester, a guy named Farrell. That fellow could comment and make a joke about almost anything. Sex and perversion seemed to be his specialties and any mention in that area would set Farrell off telling a string of jokes on the subject and his side-splitting humor would have everyone within earshot laughing his ass off. The only ones annoyed by the laughter were the poker players in the back of the room. Every now and then when the laughter got too raucous an irate player would yell, “Hey you guys knock it off I can’t concentrate on the cards.” A quick retort usually came in the form of, “Stick it in your ear.” Or, “Piss off.”
Other than routine training and test flights that followed an engine change five out of our six-plane squadron could usually be found parked on the apron in front of the hangar and control tower.
I had just gotten to the barracks when someone poked his head inside the door and yelled, “Ok. Anybody in here on the regular rotation duty roster hit the deck and make your way to the plane. We’ve got a rumble out in the Western Caribbean.”
Bill Hurley grabbed his gear and as he headed to the door called to me and said, “See you in about a dozen hours, Thomas.”
“Have a good trip,” I said as he gave a high sign and strode out the door.
The rumble Bill and his crew flew out to observe was the second event of the season, and so dubbed Tropical Storm II, which never attained winds of much more than 50 mph. It developed from a depression in the Western Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula. The storm proceeded at a slow pace toward the northwest and made landfall in South Texas in an area between Brownsville and South Padre Island late on July 21st where it was immediately downgraded to a tropical depression. It continued to soak the area with rains overnight before petering out the following morning.
Our crew had an early morning call the day our regular rotation was posted on the board. It would be a routine observation flight, and according to our briefing we would be flying southeast crossing the lower Bahamas near Turk Island then north of Puerto Rico to the vicinity of Guadeloupe where we would reverse course and return by way of Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic, across Port Au-Prince, Haiti, the eastern tip of Cuba near Guantanamo Bay and back to Miami. Those were the thoughts going through my mind as we taxied out to the runway and turned into takeoff position.
First Pilot Lt. Robert Engles headed our crew, Co Pilot Lt (jg) Alvin Shepherd, Navigator Lt. Bert Bassett, Plane Captain Aviation Machinist Mate 1st Class Hal Jackson, and Radioman 2nd Class Al Primrose and I was First Mech.
The skipper pushed down on the brake pedals, moved the throttles forward. Then as he backed off the brakes, we started to move slowly down the runway. With full fuel tanks the plane struggled at first before it began to take a life of its own and roll effortlessly down the runway.
This was my first flight in quite a while that I wasn’t designated as plane captain. Of course on these long-range flights they needed someone in a more senior position either first class or chief to be designated as plane captain. I could care less about the ranking and what was going through my mind was a complete rehash of the check off list. Had I done everything I could to make the flight safe?
Once we got up to speed the plane lifted off the runway. Moments later the skipper called out to the co-pilot, “Gear up.”
The landing gear folded into place and once we got into a routine climb attitude I made my way aft for the post takeoff inspection. I moved along the catwalk through the bomb bay and stopped beside the starboard waist hatch. I glanced down at the clear blue Atlantic waters just as the skippers voice crackled into my earphones. “Gentlemen, I have just been informed that we should scrap our briefing information, then take a more south by southeast direction and head toward the St. George’s Island and Granada. Seems there’s a tropical storm cooking up in the Eastern Caribbean.”
Hot dang, I thought as I made my way back to the flight deck. I looked around and could see excitement in the eyes of the rest of the crew. Finally it looked like all of our practice runs were about to pay off.
Immediately after Bassett set our new course heading Lt. Engles picked up his mike and said, “Put on your oxygen masks, we’re going up top and see if, at that altitude, we’re able to spot anything with the radar.”
When we reached 20,000 feet I looked out the waist hatch and the sea looked white with only an occasional plot of blue water mixed in. I had no doubt that the sea was roiling. The sky above was bright blue and was broken only by a few scattered cirrus clouds four or five thousand feet above our present altitude. My thoughts turned to the storm itself. Something I had read within the last week or two was how old time sea captains had figured out ways to judge the location of a storm center and then maneuver his ship out of harms way. Of course what we were doing was just the opposite. We had reached the altitude of about 29, 000 feet when all of a sudden the skipper got on the horn and said, “We’ll begin descending, since we haven’t spotted anything on the radar. Think we’ll go down and take a closer look at the waves and swells and see if they can tell us anything.”
I chuckled; the old man must have read the same thing I did. Sometime in the last day or two I read that waves and strong swells travel ahead of a storm and give a kind of warning that can’t be spotted from high altitudes. I glanced at my watch and walked forward to talk to Jackson. As soon as I approached he said, “Tom I think it’s time to transfer some fuel out of the belly tanks into the mains.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said as I turned toward the cockpit, the skipper looked back at me then pointed forward and toward a buildup of cumulonimbus clouds in the distance. Then he smiled and glanced at the co-pilot. “Looks like we’re getting into the neighborhood.” Then he turned to me and asked, “What were you going to say, Tom?”
“Jackson thinks it’s about time to top off the main tanks. Transfer some fuel out of the belly tanks and unless you have a different opinion we’d like to take care of it right away.”
“Ok by me,” the skipper said as he turned to the copilot, “Shep keep an eye on the fuel gauges.”
I immediately walked back and stood beside Jackson at the instrument panel and opened up the transfer process. When we finished the job I returned to the cockpit and reported, “According to our gauges the mains are just about to capacity.”
Shep gave me thumbs up and smiled. “Good going, guys we didn’t get so much as a cough.”
The clouds were still far in the distance, but were boiling skyward. I took the opportunity to make another inspection of the interior and also looked out at the engines for any possible oil leaks. When I got to the waist hatches I took a pair of binoculars and looked down at the ocean. And even with my limited knowledge of oceanography I could tell that something was brewing somewhere in the distance and it probably wouldn’t be too long before we’d have a fix on that storm.
The skipper made another announcement telling us to put on our oxygen masks that we were going up top again and see if we could get a better look from above. By the time we got close to the storm we had reached an altitude near 28, 000 feet and were, in fact, above the storm. I’m not sure exactly what I expected to see, but this first storm didn’t fulfill my expectations. Maybe I was looking for swirling clouds that were well defined. We could see the swirling motion of the winds all right but there were so many clouds obscuring the main body that we never got a look at the center or eye to the storm. However, there was no doubt that the Tropical Storm we were looking down on had the potential of turning into a full-blown hurricane.
We spent almost an hour doing observation and taking instrument readings and measurements, plotting the exact location and direction the storm was moving in before Lt Engle announced, “Fellows we’ve done about all we can do out here so we’re heading home.”

The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle – Amazon book page Click Here

Tom's Books and Blogs:
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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