Hurricanes Typhoons and Memories

I am sitting here watching CNN and the news about the hurricane. I hope and pray those who chose not to evacuate can survive the storm. It brings back a lot of memories. The way-back time machine is working today. Those of you who served with me on Guam remember flying, tracking and penetrating typhoons with winds of 120 knots which converts to 138 miles per hour.

The ride was bumpy; we were strapped into the seats at the radar consoles and changing altitudes at rates that defied gravity was par for the event.

One typhoon we tracked took us into Japan. We followed it and gave plenty of warning to fleet weather service, which relayed the news to Japan, but for some reason there were several thousand who died in the storm. I do not know if they did not evacuate or if there was just nowhere for them to go.

I do not remember which typhoon it was, but I remember we had a full crew compliment of 31 souls on board because we were following a major typhoon and would eventually land many miles away. Cal and I were the only two left when Cal happened to be next to the third to last crewman who had yet to vomit and when he saw the other crew member filling a barf bag and gagging and when he got a whiff of that he too filled a bag. I was lucky to be the only one who did not retch into a bag. That may have been the time when we went from the Philippines all the way to Wake island over three thousand miles away, following a storm most of the way.

Wake island is little more than a dot in the Pacific. So small that in World War Two when the Japanese invaded and took over the island just after Pearl Harbor, the island was bypassed by the navy and was held in Japanese hands until the war ended. It was an interesting place in 1965. One could see the entire island because it was nearly flat. The island still had guns that had been taken from navy ships to defend the island. There was a little bar there called the “Drifters Reef.” The bar was on the beach next to the small bridge from Wake to Peale island. We fished there from the bridge, caught a few small fish that no one knew what kind they were, then drifted back to the beach where the BBQ grills were fired up making a feast and all the beer everyone could drink. It was perfectly safe because no one was driving home. The break was very welcome after spending so much time in the air tracking the typhoon.