Hurricane Hunters NAS Jacksonville

The Hurricane Hunters were a different group of guys than any I had encountered before in the Navy. They were closed mouth, holding back,from outsiders (me), seeming to think that I as a supply officer was there to take away their private stock of critical repair parts for the old but still useful Willie Victor Convair aircraft they were responsible for keeping flying. They loved this old bird, who as a young Princess, protected the US and Canada's Northern boarder from attack by Soviet A-bomb attacks over North Pole.

The aircraft was a modified civilian airliner (Constellation) with a large fin on top, containing radar and a much larger radar dome on the bottom. This aircraft protected the US during the Cuban Missile crisis until the fall of the Soviet union in Dec. 19991 to detect aircraft flying very low and fast or high and fast entering our airspace over the North Pole. The (Willie Victor) was beloved by pilots and crew alike who had kept her flying beyond the military job into a new role of providing weather data as a hurricane hunter.

The Commanding Officer gave me permission to fly on a mission to see what it was like to fly into the eye of a hurricane and come back out. I took him up, thrilled to be invited. Several days later, I met the pilot I would be flying with as we boarded his plane. We took off. Thirty minutes later we were approached the dark threatening clouds of the storm.

Going in, our large bird was tossed up, down, and sideways. Once inside the eye, it felt very still like we were not moving—very disconcerting. Coming back out of the eye we again experienced the full fury of the storm. Then, we felt the jolt of a lightning strike and a basketball–sized ball of electricity bounced down the center passageway to vanish out the tail of the a/c. One of the crew members said that lightning strikes are frequent when leaving the eye of a hurricane.

Five months later, the Hurricane Hunters received orders to relocate The squadron to Puerto Rico and I received orders to Meridian, Mississippi to construct a Naval Auxiliary Air Station there.