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Reunion -
“What
a celebration of life! The reunion here in Midwest City and your part in
the sharing
of stories, expertise, and friendship hit the high water mark +
excellence. I heard and noted down scores of records and adventures of
the mobile teams who covered the entire world. I met new friends and
reestablished the iron bonds of military duty and friendship with old
friends.”
Sixth Weather Squadron (Mobile) has provided detailed histories of
its projects and operations. In particular, I thank Joe Kerwin, Dave
Guenther, Ed Skowron, Buck Bucklin, Paul Laman, Don Nissan, John Baker,
Marty Piel, Gerry Guay, Neil Prete, Bill King, Tom Kinney, Irv Watson,
Carle Clark, Gordon McCann, Barbara McCann, Shirley Eldringhof, Tom
Grace, Ernie Workman, Ken Brown, Chuck Miller, Carl Bishop, Chuck
Hewitt, Ted Lungwitz, John Lassiter, Elmo Reddick, John Webb, Don
Garbutt, Fred LaPerriere, Tom Rivers, Ken Zinke, Ed Herman, Mel Turnbow,
Dave Weiner, Robert Bongiovanni, Robert Orshoski, Michael Seaver, who
over the years have communicated with me and sent information, but most
of whom especially took the time during the 2013 Reunion to fill me in
on numerous projects during the decades when Six Weather ruled the upper
atmosphere with its weather information gathering.
Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City fittingly was our
headquarters roughly from 1955 to 1985 , and we were initially formed to
track and study tornadoes. The first prediction of a tornado by two
military weather forecasters happened at Tinker AFB in 1948. “We
provided surface weather but more importantly upper atmosphere weather
recordings for important missions that nobody else was equipped to do.
Unlike most military operations, there were no officers in charge at the
sites. Each flight or team was headed by an NCO, another unique aspect.
This said a great deal about the integrity, reliability, and maturity of
our personnel.”
You may know I intend to publish a trilogy of books all stemming from
real life events in the history of Sixth Weather Squadron (Mobile).
“Storm Chasers, Island Fever, and Mustang Fever --all
dramatically point toward the looming issue of drastic climate change,
and the long terms effects of nuclear testing around the world. In 2012,
the U.S. suffered $110 billion dollars in damage from eleven separate
events; each one exceeded over $1 billion in damage.”
The public is increasingly aware of this today, so stories about unique
information-gathering of weather have heightened interest. Extreme
records were shattered in 2011—historic tornado outbreaks, large scale
flooding, crippling drought and heat waves to prove that weather is
getting worse—and then tropical cyclones Irene and Sandy brought
unbelievable damage to the Northeast. To my count there were five
separate aspects of weather that atypically converged to slam us with a
“Perfect Storm” Sandy—with over $65 billion in damages.
The year-long drought drove up approximately $30 billion in damage. Last
year we suffered the most widespread drought since the 1930’s. Of course
our properties have gone way up in value since then. Some types of
extreme events are consistent with rising temperatures and heavy
precipitation events.
We haven’t even dealt with all the huge costs of wildfires which have
sprung up, due to evaporation rates rising along with the temperatures.
And I just read about five cities in coastal areas which are preparing
themselves for the high cost of barriers against for rising seas. Since
1980 we have endured a startling 144 weather/climate disasters, the
total cost of which is more than $1 trillion dollars.
“In the last month, Oklahoma, the belt-buckle of Tornado Alley has
suffered from two extreme tornados—the Moore F5, and the El Reno
multiple tornadoes, at least one of which made the F5 category. In 1999
on May 3rd and 4th, there was an outbreak of 75
tornadoes in Oklahoma and surrounding states, and the F5 tornado that
hit Oklahoma City stayed on the ground for 38 miles plowing through the
city and the town of Moore nearby, killing 36 and injuring 600. The
highest wind speed of 318 miles per hour was the highest recorded in
history.”
“In 1999 the state record of 137 tornadoes occurred. In 1998 and 1999 a
two year total of 220 tornadoes loomed the largest in state history.
Does anybody see a trend here? The unique projects and missions of Sixth
Weather Squadron (Mobile) would be of high interest to Oklahomans and
the entire U.S., who has new awareness of the tragedies in Oklahoma.”
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Joe
Kerwin - 
Joe Kerwin who served for the longest time in Sixth Weather—twenty
years, gave details on projects ranging from land and sea, at Christmas
Island, Truk, Guam, Buka, Port Moresby, New Guinea, during the U. S. and
British nuclear testing in the Pacific, and during the following French
nuclear testing. He had a project in Alaska to track the Russian nuclear
testing. He said, “There was so much fog in Alaska, the Air Force flew
C-130’s and C-141’s in a box pattern, dropping dry ice to dissipate the
fog into ice crystals which fell to the ground, so our planes could land
safely.”
There were numerous photo-mapping projects Sixth Weather took part in,
providing weather for the complete aerial mapping of the Pacific Ocean,
South America, and Africa. Joe said, “At one time the U. S. Air Force
shot test missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the coast of
California—far downrange into the South Pacific, but they could not
retrieve them for study and improvement. Concerned about their weaponry,
they determined that the maps were wrong, not the missiles. That led to
photo-mapping and new maps, important for our security and
missile-defense systems.
“At another time off Easter Island, when B-52’s from Barber’s Point,
Hawaii, flew down to Easter Island on frequent missions, they dropped
thermonuclear bombs which exploded over our heads,” Joe said. “At one
point on my deployment I spent seventy-nine days aboard a ship,
launching helium weather balloons with the radiosonde measuring
instruments hanging below them. The gooney birds on Christmas Island
were blinded by the light from the blasts, and we were detailed to shoot
them out of mercy, instead of them dying a drawn out death.”
“At Eniwetok, during the testing, a project buddy got coral poisoning
from swimming on the reef. He developed a hole in his foot. The doctor
on board told him, ‘Keep it dry.’ Some help he was.”
When Joe was on a project in Iran, he arrived to find their support
radar did not pick up and enemy plane from Iraq until it was ten minutes
out. “You have a temperature inversion out there, maybe six thousand
feet up,” he said after making some of the upper atmosphere runs. “The
radar signal bounces off it. You need to take your equipment up on that
mountain,” he pointed. “I can’t do that,” the Iranian NCO protested, “I
would have to leave my wife and kids.” “Do you want to defend your
country?” Joe responded.” You can’t do a thing when a fighter or bomber
appears ten miles out. It will be dropping bombs before your
anti-aircraft batteries are even alerted. You must go up the mountain,
above the temperature inversion.”
“On a project at Johnston Island, whenever we saw Russian trawlers off
the coast, we knew there would be no missiles or weapons shot from
Vandenberg AFB that day. The Russians had trawlers all over the Pacific.
Off the island of Guam, they could monitor our bomber take-offs, and
warn the anti-aircraft batteries in Vietnam that missiles or bombers
were headed their way. So when there were no trawlers, we knew there
would be actions. When there were trawlers, we knew there would be no
actions.”
Joe got a cup of coffee. “We were sent on a project at Chico, California
where we needed two trucks full of helium to fill one high altitude
balloon designed to drift for two days to capture radioactive particles
and other classified data at 60, 000 feet. That balloon was one hundred
twenty feet tall, compared to our usual five six foot wide helium
balloons.”
“Then down on Buka Island in the Pacific, our tents were so hot in the
tropical sun, the natives took pity on us. They built us shacks with
palm branches which were much cooler. When we were faced with warm beer,
we use the fire extinguisher to make the beer icy-cold. The C-54’s were
drop us supplies because they could not land. Once we said, “How
accurate can you be?’ They said, ‘Put a red handkerchief on the spot you
want your supplies.’ We did, and they dropped tons of supplies dead on
that red handkerchief.”
To
Be Continued.....
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