250722 Wake Island

Chasing a bad weather typhoon.

We loaded up the plane on Guam and headed out into the vast Pacific ocean. Our call sign was Rainproof 4, kind of funny for a plane deliberately flying after and later flying into the eye of a typhoon. A typhoon is a hurricane labeled for the far east, while the term hurricane is used for areas east of the US. Our job was to follow and report weather conditions to the naval fleet weather center in the Pacific ocean. They sent our data out to the rest of the fleet and to countries in the far east.

We caught up to the storm and followed it going from east to west. There was so much weather it filled the radar scope, making it difficult to see anything but the storm. We passed over islands along the way. We were flying at around 1500 feet above the water. As we approached the island of Truk an officer told me to watch out for Truk because it had a mountain peak of 1600 feet and he thought it was a good idea not to crash into it. What he didn’t know was I couldn’t tell where Truk was because we were getting so large a radar return it was impossible to tell where Truk was. All I could do was hope we didn’t run into it. At one point the aerographer thought it was a good time to penetrate the eye of the storm. The pilot use the intercom to tell everyone to buckle their seatbelts as we headed into the heavy parts of the typhoon. The plane bounced and shook and jarred all of us like a popcorn popper. Then we breached the eye of the storm. Our plane dropped about 1000 feet in little more than a second. It felt like my stomach was coming out of my throat. The plane leveled off and inside the eye it was as calm as anything could be. The aerographer relesed a dropson that sent weather information out to the weather center. Then we approached the other edge of the eye. In less than a second or two we shot up almost 1000 feet, compressing us into our seats. After that we were bouncing all about as we were before entering the eye of the storm. We stayed with the storm until it fell apart into just a rain squall. We had been flying more than 20 hours and we were getting low on fuel. The pilot scanned his charts and the closest place was Wake Island.

Wake is a small flat island with a small bridge to Peale island area as small as Wake. We fished off of the bridge for a while and caught some, but let them go because we didn’t know if they were safe to eat. Besides, we were going to have a feast of barbecued meat and potatoes and side dishes. The meal also came with beer from the Drifters Reef (the only place for beer on either island).

This picture is the crew that flew covering that storm.

That was the only time in the navy when We enlisted men mingled and spoke like buddies with the officers.

Wake island was attacked twice by a Japanese fleet unit in WW-2 the first time the Marines fired artillery at the landing ships and pushed them further out to sea to regroup. The second attack the Japanese overran the marine and navy personnel and took them prisoner. The Japanese held the island until the end of the war. During the war, ships leaving Pearl Harbor would swing by Wake and fire their guns at Wake to let them know the war was still going on.

This is a naval 5inch gun removed from a ship and put on Wake island to aid in its defence. href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIBfuGAngiY15V75x5gdVqERK5JPjbMuQOgVTzVIFUau3iyTNoifkopOWBBvCd-9IgdShZl0kxIsOPZO4Gs7ocKiGkCb1BQYYbtGvndVwR89tk5ln_mHUVjqdpiAk6DZbgx1enboqyHzXevpray9sDibn0vGrtKk1nPmdrU7s5G1cLjyL1U7GSDM0EQDbe/s882/5_inch_WWII_gun_wake_island_oct_1965.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; ">