The typhoon posed a special problem for the field hospital. It currently had 48 patients, a few ill but most injured in accidents, some seriously. The ambulatory patients were temporarily sent to Navy hospital ships; some of the Army medical staff went along o care for them. Those who couldn’t be easily evacuated were repositioned to the few Quonset huts available. Major McNeilly’s remaining eight nurses, including Marge Braden and Nancy Bergstrom, would stay with them and provide care. The doctors and nurses did their best to weatherproof their stockpiles of medical supplies.
As the order to evacuate was implemented among the flying units, the photo recon squadron found itself with all but one of its aircraft ready to go. This F-5, Number 49, was having its right engine replaced. Its regular pilot, one of John Worth’s section, was still in the hospital recovering from dysentery. He would have to remain on Okinawa. The mechanics worked like demons to complete the engine change so Number 49 could be evacuated. John Worth volunteered to return and ferry the aircraft after delivering f-stop to safety. Colonel Harris had no objections. Time was precious, though, and John had to depart with f-stop for the airfield on northern Luzon without seeing Marge, who was also racing the typhoon’s arrival, relocating her patients to safety.
John’s first flight went without a hitch; navigation across the open sea was easy as they flew in a group with a B-25 bomber as pathfinder. f-stop was turned over to Chuck Jaworski, who was in charge of the advance maintenance detachment dispatched to care for the evacuated photo recon aircraft. The typhoon began to veer northward toward Okinawa as John hitched a ride back on the last courier plane, another B-25, bringing crucial documents to 10th Army Headquarters. The storm would strike Okinawa in less than six hours.
Flying north, the B-25 passes high over the great pinwheel of nature’s fury with the pilots, navigator, gunners, and John on oxygen. Some of the crew furiously snap pictures of the awesome 100-mile-wide storm. John muses that shortly he will return over the same route, hopefully in formation with the B-25. He makes notes on heading and wind drift for the return trip as he watches the navigator, who is busy with sun plots and low- frequency radio beacon tracking. John recalls the many times he has traversed large expanses of sea all alone, without benefit of a navigator or pathfinder aircraft, using only dead reckoning and prayer, never failing to find his destination; flights from Australia to New Guinea, New Guinea to Rabaul, New Guinea to the Philippines. He hopes Number 49 has film in the cameras so he can get some pictures of the typhoon for himself. He wonders if the engine change is even complete; if it is, he will evacuate the aircraft. If it is not, he will try to find Marge and ride out the storm with her.
The B-25 arrives at Kadena as the sky to the south turns dark and ominous and the winds grow strong, gusting to 50 miles per hour. The landing is very rough as the pilot grapples with the strong crosswind component. John drops through the hatch of the bomber before she even stops rolling and runs to Number 49, sitting on the ramp with anxious mechanics surrounding her; if John had been any later, they would have had to begin tying her down. John’s preflight inspection is rapid but thorough and the engines, still warm from the run-up after the engine change, are fired up. All systems function normally, and John is pleased to see the mechanics have placed several chocolate bars and a fresh canteen of water in the cockpit. He will need them; he has not eaten all day. He begins the taxi to the far end of the runway for takeoff as the mechanics scramble to secure their equipment before seeking shelter for themselves. The storm will reach the southern tip of Okinawa in less than an hour.
Number 49 is lined up on the runway and John advances the throttles for takeoff. The crosswind component now actually exceeds the maximum allowed in the Aircraft Performance Manual. He does not know the exact wind values, but he can feel the dangerous conditions in the aircraft’s behavior: the left wing wants to fly before the right wing and the nose is pulling hard to the right. John hopes he will not destroy the nose tire as he fights with the rudder pedals to keep the aircraft rolling straight. That could bring this takeoff or the next landing to a disastrous end as the steel wheel rim, bereft of a tire, digs into the runway. The plane gains flying speed quickly, though, and upon lifting off, John fights her wanting to roll hard right immediately. He keeps the nose down and retracts the landing gear, building as much airspeed as possible, skimming the ground for the entire length of the runway and beyond before trying to climb, all the while praying a sudden upset will not cause a wingtip or propeller to contact the ground. Fortunately, there are no trees or hills at the end of the runway in this direction and he will be over the water quickly. As the airspeed passes 150 knots and John gently pulls back the column to begin climbing, he breathes a sigh of relief as the altimeter begins to wind upward. Flying outside the performance envelope is nothing new to him, but that does not make it any less terrifying.
His relief is short-lived, however. At 1000 feet, the plane suddenly yaws right and loses airspeed. He doesn’t even need to look at the engine gauges--the throbbing of out-of- sync propellers can be strongly felt in the seat of his pants.
Shit! Something’s wrong with the goddamn prop governor on that new engine! Ain’t this just fuckin’ peachy!
He levels off to arrest the loss of speed and begins a slow turn to the left.
Never turn into the dead engine!
Now headed back over the airfield, he has time to play with the prop controls and plan his next move. If he cannot get it to respond, he will not be able to climb over the typhoon, and he will have to return immediately to Kadena.
Betcha the wrenches have all fled to shelter…Who can blame them? If I bring her back and manage not to crack up, there’ll probably be nobody to tie her down but me… might not be able to in this wind and she’ll get destroyed anyway and I’ll probably get blown away trying. Gotta get control of this prop and stay upstairs!
That is just what he does, but it takes some experimenting and a fair knowledge of the workings of the prop governor. By alternately manipulating the manual override switch and rpm lever, he gets the blade pitch into a position where he can resume climb power. Once at altitude and above the storm, he will have to play with them again to get and keep a good cruise rpm setting. Even if the prop setting refuses to cooperate at that point, he can still maintain enough altitude and limp to Luzon with careful fuel management. A lesser pilot might have panicked and aborted the flight but John turns back to the south, into the path of Typhoon Louise, and continues his climb.
When he reaches the leading edge of the great storm--this massive pinwheel of dense cloud glistening in the bright sunlight--he is high above it at 20,000 feet. The cameras have indeed been loaded and John lets them click away. The view is breathtakingly beautiful, provided you could ignore the deadly havoc the storm is wreaking on the Earth’s surface. His thoughts turn to Marge. He wishes he could have seen her, even just for a second. Mostly, he longs for her safety.
Back on Okinawa, Marge is every bit as concerned for John. Currently she, Nancy Bergstrom, one doctor, and three medics are caring for 10 badly injured patients in a cramped Quonset hut the engineers have deemed secure enough to withstand the deadly winds. She hopes the engineers are right; their chances of survival are bleak if this hut blows away. The nurses are running on caffeine and adrenaline. They have not slept or been off duty in over 24 hours.
Even though she has not heard from John, it is no secret the planes are being evacuated to the Philippines.
That crazy farm boy of mine is relaxing on Luzon right now, damn him!
Far from relaxing, though, John is ministering to his sick propeller, which is becoming more obstinate by the minute. Every time he gets it to an acceptable rpm setting, it drifts off, sometimes causing power loss, sometimes threatening to run away. Its constant demands are occupying almost all of John’s attention. Ordinarily, such a situation is best remedied by shutting the engine down and descending to a lower altitude. The swirling mass of nature’s destructive energy below him
makes that not an option today.
The errant propeller is not his only problem. The voice in his head grows more nervous and uncertain with every passing minute.
Where the hell am I? I’d better not be drifting off course…ain’t got that kind of fuel to play with. Fucking headwinds! I need to hit Luzon on the first try…can’t go hunting around for it. Well, at least if I run out of gas, I’ll be able to see the water I’m ditching into. Where the hell is that B-25? Why don’t they answer?
The B-25 cannot answer John’s radio call--it has crashed on takeoff at Kadena. Unable to deal with the winds, it veered off the runway and flipped onto its back. It came to rest right next to the Quonset hut Marge and Nancy are occupying. One of the gunners is dead, his neck broken. The other four crewmen survive but are injured. All the medical staff, plus the three supply sergeants who were the normal occupants of the hut, raced to the mangled, inverted aircraft and pulled the crew out just as the wind-driven deluge began, alternating drenching the rescuers, knocking them down into the mud, and battering them with flying debris. The rain did serve one useful purpose; it smothered any ignition of the gasoline gushing from the wrecked bomber. The crewmen stumble into the hut if they can; they are carried if they cannot.
Nancy, soaking wet from the rain and dodging debris, yells to Marge, “Next time I set foot outside I’m wearing my fucking helmet!”
Marge, battered and covered in mud and gasoline, yells back, “There ain’t gonna be no next time, honey!”
The one thing the medical staff had not expected was more patients before the storm passed, but the doctor and his nurses adapted as they always had, suturing lacerations and setting broken bones in the terribly crowded hut. The dead gunner was laid in a corner and covered with a blanket. The pilot had suffered a concussion and a badly cut scalp. Nancy talked continuously to keep him conscious while she cleaned and dressed the wound, and he was giving fairly lucid answers.
“…and this guy you gave a ride to, his name was Worth, you say?” Nancy asked. “John Worth?”
“Yeah, I think so,” the groggy pilot said. “Looked like he had some engine trouble on takeoff, but the last we saw of him he was headed straight for the storm.”
“Hey, Margie,” Nancy called out, “don’t be cursing loverboy just yet for lounging in Luzon…”
John is far from lounging anywhere. As he looks directly down into the eye of Typhoon Louise, he guesses he has another 60 miles--or 20 minutes--of flying before the winds at lower altitudes would be less than cyclonic strength; he prays the winds at his current altitude are not pushing him off course. Other than the blue-green patch of sea visible through the typhoon’s eye, he can see nothing on the earth’s surface, just the swirling bands of storm clouds below.
The propeller governor on the number 2 engine continues to give him fits but he has developed a routine for dealing with it, his left hand cycling that governor’s circuit breaker, then fine-tuning the rpm with its manual override switch. This enables him to give at least some attention to the myriad other aspects of safe flight and steal an occasional glance at the photo of Marge that he always flies with now, tucked in the corner of the instrument panel. She seems so happy in the picture, in her brand new dress uniform on some stateside post, like a schoolgirl, bubbly and full of youthful joy, not a woman whose life has now been darkened by a year of war. He realizes he is more worried about her safety than his own at the moment.
Those fuel gauges…God, they can’t be right! He doesn’t know this airplane like his own; it would be easy to be misled by mechanical quirks. Number 49 seems to be using fuel more quickly than John had calculated. He wishes there had been time to fuel the drop tanks before departing. Empty, they were nothing but drag, and he had released them a while back when he first became suspicious of her thirst for fuel. The left tank had initially refused to release; it finally fell away on the fifth actuation of the toggle switch. Each successive try on that switch had been more frustrated and forceful than the preceding one. I’m lucky it dropped before I broke the damn toggle off! He had eaten the chocolate bars before going on oxygen, but despite the quick energy boost, they only made him realize how hungry he really was.
It occurs to him he has not once scanned for enemy fighters, a habit he thought was indelibly stamped in his subconscious. He comforts himself by thinking: I guess deep down I don’t believe any Japs would be hanging around a typhoon, even the ones real close in Formosa.
But the wishful thinking wears off quickly: That’s just dumb. I’m here…why can’t they be here, too? Pay attention, you idiot!
As John clears the massive storm, it is bringing its full fury down on Marge. The medical staff, now back inside the Quonset hut with their newest patients, tries to clean up as best they can. Marge especially needs to get out of her gasoline-soaked fatigues and rinse her body. This is not easy in a hut crowded with men, but the exhausted yet resourceful nurses quickly fabricate a curtain behind which they are free to disrobe and wash. In the camaraderie of life-threatening crisis, the men respect their privacy without question. The nurses now realize the wisdom in Major McNeilly’s insistence that they pack a change of clothes and extra dry socks. The wind outside is blowing over 100 miles per hour, the rain arriving in horizontal sheets. The hut creaks and groans as it strains against the storm; the boarded-up windward windows rattle as if announcing their intention to shatter at any moment. The leeward windows are open to prevent a pressure differential that would suck the hut off its foundation. It has grown quite dark outside even though it is early afternoon. The lighting in the hut depends on a gasoline-powered generator in its own exterior shelter and whatever filters in from the leeward windows. If the generator fails, they will have only lanterns and flashlights. When the calm of the eye arrives, the boarding and opening of windows must be reversed. The rain pounding on the arched, corrugated metal of the hut produces a menacing racket inside.
John has cleared the typhoon’s trailing edge and begins to descend, pulling back the throttles on both engines, which temporarily alleviates the need to fight the balky propeller. As he drops through thick layers of cloud, he begins to view glimpses of the sea below. If visibility remains as obstructed as it is now, he probably will not be able to see land for another hour--assuming he is still on course.
If only those damn fuel gauges were reading a little higher…
Louise is spreading her mayhem across the length and breadth of Okinawa. The six vessels unable to leave the anchorage at Buckner Bay have been tossed about and spun around until their anchors drag. They are all grounded at the shoreline now. After the storm’s eye passes and the wind direction reverses, they are pushed back into the bay: two sink and the others drift, still dragging anchor. Onshore, windblown debris is flying everywhere, causing casualties and damage. The 30 aircraft that had to remain are frequently struck by the debris, causing shattered canopies, punctured fuselages, and torn fabric on flight controls. Once a canopy is shattered, the cockpit floods quickly, ruining instruments and electrical wiring. The ground crews have done an excellent job of tying down, though, and only half a dozen aircraft are actually moved by the devastating wind, with three of those smashed together in one pile.
Louise rages across Okinawa for almost five hours, then heads northeast, buffeting some of the northern Ryukyus on her way out to sea. Other than higher-than-normal surf, she never affects the Japanese home islands. Marge and her team have everything under control in the Quonset hut. They takes turns catching much-needed naps. When it’s Marge’s turn, she finds it impossible to sleep, as her thoughts turn to her pilot.
Where are you, John? You’d better be OK…
Another hour passes and John, urging Number 49 and its balky right propeller, does not make landfall. Visibility seems limited to about 20 miles and all John sees is that distance of sea in all directions. His radio calls--to any listening station--are answered only by the dense static of storm activity. Trying to remain calm, he weighs his options.
His gloved fingers lightly touch Marge’s photo.
What do you think, Marjorie? Which is it?
Scanning the vacant horizon once more, John takes a deep breath and makes a decision that relies far more on intuition and hope than science. He gambles and splits the difference, turning southeast, dropping still lower to get under some clouds. The needles in the fuel gauges quiver before inching a bit lower, like the minute hands of clocks in desperate need of winding, ticking their last seconds. He begins to weigh the pros and cons of shutting down the troublesome engine.
Half the fuel consumption…lower speed…longer time to landing…can’t climb if I run into more weather…
He elects not to shut the engine down. He has dealt with it this long, he can go a while longer.
His anxiety plays tricks on him. Several times, he mistakes banks of thin, low clouds for land. As he scans the horizon, losing hope, he cannot shake the image of the last night he spent with Marge, dancing in his tent to a record of Glen Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” clinging tightly to each other. But now Marge was fading away, dissolving in his imaginary grasp. The song modulates from its relaxed, contented sway to a disquieting dirge, like funeral music, he fears.
With composure born of inevitability, John comes to grips with his apparent fate. So this is how it ends? In the water…Alone.
Out of options but not quite out of gas, he plods ahead.
Fifteen minutes later, at 8000 feet, the coastline of Leyte Gulf--unmistakably not clouds--begins to fill his windshield, just where he hoped it would be. After another 15 minutes, with her fuel gauge needles sitting on zero, Number 49 touches down at its assigned Philippine airfield.
East Wind Returns Page 15