The Florida Times-Union Jacksonville, Wednesday, September 28, 1955
Navy Plane Missing With 11 Local Men
A Navy Hurricane Hunter plane with 9 Jacksonville Naval Air Station men aboard and 2 news men has disappeared while probling the 110-mile-an-hour winds of Hurricane Janet.
Cmdr E. L. Foster, Commanding Officer of VW-4 at NAS, said the ship was operating out of NAS Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and has been overdue since 6:30 p.m., yesterday.
He said the ship had enough fuel to last until about 10:30 last night. The last radio contact with the plane was made at 10:15 a.m. yesterday.
An air-sea rescue team has been alerted and will begin combing the Caribbean area at dawn today if no word of the missing plane has been received.
Capt. Frederick Davison of the Navy’s Weather Central in Miami said planes and ships from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Panama have been alerted.
Comdr. Foster, who said a communications alert for the plane was ordered at noon yesterday, said he did not know of any field in the area large enough to accommodate the P2V “Neptune” bomber “with which we are not in communication.”
He said it was possible, however, that the plane may have landed somewhere else under emergency conditions.
A liaison officer at the Miami station, Capt. David Rudle, said a communication from the plane about 8:15 a.m. indicated the pilot intended to make a penetration into the storm. He said the radio contact made at 10:15 gave no hint that the plane might be in trouble, but the signal from the plane’s radio was weak and fading.
It was not known whether the plane was in the midst of the hurricane at the time of the last radio message.
The plane took off from NAS Guantanamo Bay, Cuba at 6:30 a.m. and was due to return at 4:30 p.m. It was considered overdue at 6:30 p.m.
Cmdr. Foster remained at his post at NAS throughout the night.
The plane was one of several sent from Jacksonville to NAS Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to keep watch on hurricanes in the Caribbean area.
A four-engine Super Constellation left the Cuban base on schedule to relieve the Neptune, with special orders to be on the watch for the missing ship.
Lt. Cmdr. Grover B. Windham Jr. of Jacksonville, Plane Commander
LTjg Thomas R. Morgan of Orange Park, Navigator
LTjg George W. Herlong of Yukon, Co-Pilot
Aviation Electronics Technician Second Class Julius J. Mann, 22, of Canton, Ohio
LTjg Thomas L. Greaney, 26, of Jacksonville, Navigator
Aviation Mechanic First Class J. P. Windham, Jr., 32 of Jacksonville
Airman Kenneth L. Klegg, 22, of Cranston, RI
Aviation Electronics Man First Class Joseph F. combs of Forest Park, NY
Aerologist William A. Buck, of Jacksonville
The only Atlantic Hurricane Hunter flight to go down occurred on September 26, 1955. Snowcloud Five, a U.S. Navy P2V Neptune weather reconnaissance airplane flying out of Guantanamo, Cuba, was lost in Hurricane Janet, 300 miles southwest of Jamaica. Snowcloud Five was part of the Airborne Early Warning Squadron Four (VW-4), based at the Jacksonville, Florida Naval Air Station. Carrying a crew of nine and two reporters from the Toronto Daily Star, Snowcloud Five took off at 0630 local time, and performed its initial penetration into Janet at an altitude of 700 feet. At the time of the crash, Janet was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds. The aircraft sent back this transmission, then was never heard from again:
NAVY RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHT 5U93, OBSERVATION NUMBER FIVE, AT 1330 GMT (8:30AM EST), MONDAY, LOCATED AT LATITUDE 15.4 DEGREES N, LONGITUDE 78.2 DEGREES W. OBLIQUE AND HORIZONTAL VISIBILITY 3-10 MILES, ALTITUDE 700 FEET, FLIGHT WIND 050 DEGREES (NE) 45 KNOTS (52 MPH). PRESENT WEATHER LIGHT INTERMITTENT SHOWERS, PAST WEATHER SAME, OVERCAST AND SOME SCUD BELOW, SURFACE PRESSURE 1,003 MILLIBARS (29.62 INCHES), SURFACE WINDS 050 DEGREES (NE), 45 KNOTS (52 MPH). BEGINNING PENETRATION.
Nuc1
Figure 1. Snowcloud Five, the U.S. Navy P2V Neptune weather reconnaissance airplane that went down in Hurricane Janet of 1955. Image credit: navyhurricanehunters.com
An intensive air and sea search operation combed a 300 by 200 mile region of the Caribbean for the airplane over the next five days. In all, sixty aircraft, seven ships, and three thousand personnel were involved. No trace of Snowcloud Five was ever found. A book called Stormchasers (David Toomey, 2002) provides a detailed story of the flight into Hurricane Janet, and provides some insight as to what may have gone wrong. Dr. Hugh Willoughby, former director of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, speculated on the fate of Snowcloud Five in a review of Stormchasers that appeared in the February, 2003 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: “The enlisted aerographer’s mate was left behind that day in order to accommodate the Toronto Daily Star reporter. This key crew member was normally responsible for keeping the pilots aware of altitude by calling out readings from the only radar altimeter on board, located at the aerologist’s station. Without him, the aerologist, Lt. (jg) William Buck, had to do two demanding jobs: He had to simultaneously read the bouncing, flickering altimeter and peer down from his Plexiglas bubble in the nose to discern the wind from streaks of foam on the sea. It is easy to imagine how he might have lost control of the situation as he struggled to keep the airplane safely above the waves and flying perpendicular to the wind towards the eye.”
The crew members lost on the mission were: