“Success is a marvelous stimulant. While we had every right to be near exhaustion after our thirteen trying hours this first day in ‘Hurricane George,’ we did not get to bed early that night. There was too much to tell, and too much to discuss concerning the flight scheduled to leave early the next morning. This second flight promised to be even more lucrative of results than the first, for we were scheduled to fly in the newest plane in the squadron. It had only 100 hours or so in the air and contained many new features the other planes didn’t have. Moreover it had bomb bay tanks and could leave the ground with nearly eight thousand five hundred gallons of gasoline.
“There were a few changes in the crew but Eastburn was the pilot again on the second flight. The takeoff was scheduled for 6:30 A.M. The storm was in a critical position as far as warnings were concerned, and the Miami office was anxious to get information as early as possible upon which to base a warning for the East Coast. ‘George’ was located over the eastern Bahamas and was moving slowly westward, a distinct threat to the entire Eastern Seaboard but immediately to the Florida coast.”
The first hint of what was in store for the hurricane hunters that day turned up as they completed their briefing at the ship and prepared to board the plane. The engineer, in a last-minute checkup, found a hydraulic leak and there was a delay of a little more than an hour before that could be repaired. Finally they pulled away from the line and out to the end of the runway. Number 4 engine was too hot. There was another delay while further checks were made into the power plant. Finally they were off—all one hundred thirty-five thousand pounds. This was to have been a very long flight and every available bit of gasoline storage had been utilized.
The plan on this day was once again to make a try for data near the top of the storm, to verify and expand the startling information gained the preceding day. This plane had de-icer boots and they were not concerned about the rime ice that might tend to accumulate, as it had the day before. First, they were anxious to get certain data from a low-level flight, and to learn how effectively the radar could be used for navigating a large plane like the B-29 near the center of the storm. They went out at ten thousand feet again but continued to a point about eighty miles north of the storm at this elevation. By this time they had crossed about four of the spiral rain bands (the spiraling arms of the “octopus”). Here the plane turned downwind parallel to another of the rain bands and flew through the corridor to within viewing distance of the eye. They gradually descended as the base of the middle-level clouds lowered near the storm center. Leveling off at seven thousand five hundred feet, they were in and out of clouds with horizontal visibility low much of the time. However, there was scarcely a thirty-second period when the crew were unable to see the sea surface below. Navigation at this stage was entirely by radar. Again the amazing thing was the lack of turbulence throughout this flight. This was a really big storm. They were flying at only seven thousand five hundred feet through one of the most violent sectors, only twenty to thirty miles from the eye itself, yet they encountered nothing that could be described as important as moderate turbulence. Simpson’s early experience in hurricane flying in 1945 in a C-47 had been repeated. They were flying in comfort under conditions which gave them a command of all the information needed to report the position and intensity of the storm. Simpson remarked: “What a difference this is from the battering flights at five hundred feet in the B-17’s which have been standard operating procedure (‘SOP’) with the squadron until this season!”