“We soon reached the base of the cirrostratus and entered the clouds. The de-icers were working. Again the data began to roll in along the same pattern as observed the previous day—at least for several minutes, until the interphone was filled with the excited voice of the right scanner with a spine-tingling report to the commander, ‘Black smoke and flame coming from number 4.’ At the same time the plane began to throb, roll and yaw. In less time than it takes to say it, the ‘boys’ in the front compartment of this B-29 became _mature men_—wise, efficient, stout-hearted men, each with a job to do and each one doing it with calculated deliberateness, yet speedily. There was grim determination here but no evidence of emotion. This magnificent tribute to topnotch training had an exhilarating effect upon me and tempered to some extent the abashment which I could not help feeling as a result of my helplessness in this situation, and the fear which clutched my heart.
“We were lucky! The single carbon dioxide charge released by the engineer extinguished the fire in the engine. Number 4 was feathered and began to cool but our troubles were far from over. The engineer had manuals and technical orders spread out on all sides of him and was working feverishly to restore some power to number 4, as the indicated air speed dwindled from 168 to 166 to 164 or 5, hovering precariously above the deadly stallout at 163. We were only a few miles from north of the center by this time but no one had recorded the data. We were too busy worrying. The pilot was in the process of putting the plane into a long glide to increase the air speed, when the left scanner claimed the interphone circuit with, ‘Black smoke and flame coming from number 1.’ This time we _were_ in real trouble. However, the engineer had anticipated further difficulty and was ready again. It was only a matter of seconds before the fire was out and some semblance of power had been returned to number 1. But we were still five hundred miles from the nearest land and very near the center of a granddaddy of hurricanes. So we declared an emergency and headed for MacDill Field.”
Altogether, this was an ironical turn of affairs. An old plane had acted like a lady the day before and now a new one had frightened the crew with its mechanical troubles, but the newer methods of hurricane hunting, the “tricks of the trade,” had fortunately taken some of the danger out of the storm itself. Otherwise the mechanical troubles might have combined with the weather to spell disaster.