My mom was a pilot for the 54th WRS flying C-130s into hurricanes from Guam for a few years. She said it actually wasn't all that dangerous in her mind, and no losses since the '70s supports that. She said her most frightening job in the Air Force was being a T-37 instructor pilot, flying with newbie pilots on board, or worse flying formation with them.
@Logitech-de3pc Definitely not true - I'd know given my mom's stories. Maybe you're thinking combat pilots, women weren't allowed to fly in combat when she was in the Air Force. Non-combat pilot roles began opening to women in the '70s, my mom was in if I remember right the second class of women (can't remember if all-female or just to include women) to go through pilot training.
In 1981, a friend and I went to Miami, staying with his former roommate. The roommate worked for NOAA on the hurricane flights. Like me, he gets severe motion sickness. Yet he flew into Hurricanes because he loves the work. I asked if he throws up, and he said yes, on most flights. Dedication.
Back in the 80s, I was in the USAF, assigned to Hurlburt Field AFB in Ft. Walton Beach, in the panhandle of Florida. When Hurricane Elena came into the GOM through the Florida Straights, the base Commander gave the order to evacuate all aircraft that could fly. When the storm veered off towards Texas, he recalled the aircraft. When the storm suddenly turned due east, he ordered the aircraft evacuated again, but when it passed by, he had them recalled. Then the storm began to make landfall along the west coast of the peninsula and we figured that was the end of it. We were wrong. Elena inexplicably did an about face and, once again, the aircraft were evacuated. As it passed close by us (for the, now, 2nd time) it destroyed the last 50 yards of a steel-reinforced concrete fishing pier. The storm made landfall near Pensacola, at the western most part of the state, and our base (approximately 35 miles east) caught 75 mph winds, which buckled the base tennis court fence and (according to the base Commander) drove an 18" long white pine needle through a telephone pole. Up to date and hyper accurate weather data is ESSENTIAL for all aspects of life during hurricane season. Far fewer lives are lost when people know what to expect.
I like Hurlburt Field. I’m actually living at the famcamp on Eglin! A few weeks ago when Idalia formed and we didn’t know exactly where it would go, we thought they might evacuate the 15s and 16s from the 96th, the 35s from the 33rd, and the 130s belonging lord knows what squadron. They never gave any evacuation orders for personnel or aircraft, and tbh I honestly didn’t really see a reason why they actually would. I guess I just went off what my family said but yeah, and thank you for your service!
Lack of engine performance has nothing to do with the service ceiling of jets. The reason they have a max altitude is because the mach speed approaches supersonic at lower and lower indicated airspeeds, until the point where the indicated airspeed is too low to be safe, even right at the maximum mach number. At 43000 feet, mach 0.8 is about 215 kts IAS.
Thank you for your comment. I don't understand. Would you explain your comment a bit more, please? Does lower altitude with higher density allow planes to get a lower IAS, or do I have that backwards. I thought the indicated air speed comes from the Peto (I don't know how to spell, I'm sorry) tubes and at higher altitudes there are less air molecules to pass by the sensor. I think there are the tubes and a sensor that is farther back that doesn't get air directly? I am teaching myself by reading flight manuals and other books and watching many airplane channels. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, and thank you for your kind reply.
@@kg-Whatthehelliseventhat No problem. As you go higher, the speed of sound decreases. The "mach speed" means what proportion of the speed of sound you are going. So, if you maintain the same "true" forward speed through space and climb, your mach speed will be a greater and greater proportion of the speed of sound (mach 1 = speed of sound). The wing stresses at high speed scale with the mach number. Therefore, as you climb, you need to reduce your true speed to keep the wing from going over its mach limit. Also, as you go higher, the air is thinner, so it is as if you are flying slower, on top of you actually slowing down at the higher altitude. The "indicated airspeed" defines how much control your control surfaces will have, and your stall speed will be based on it. Because the air is so thin, it is "as if" you are flying slower, which is why we call it "indicated" airspeed. This can't go too low, or you will stall. Therefore, the mach limit approaches the stall speed as you climb.
@@kg-Whatthehelliseventhat I should have mentioned, the concept I described is known as "Coffin Corner", if you want to look at it in more detail on Wikipedia or something. For aviation stuff, I mostly watch Mentour Pilot and Green Dot Aviation.
just had Miss Piggy on my ramp for a few days for Hurricane Lee, pretty cool to see that aircraft in person, even has decals for all the hurricanes that they flew into
I think Hurricanes spin in the other direction in the southern hemisphere, so the stickers are actually pretty accurate. Would be great if someone with more knowledge on the subject could confirm :)
One of your best videos yet :) Well-narrated (as always!), well-structured (pacing, segues), rich with interesting content all the way through, and stunning visuals (as usual :) !
I live in sweden and the idea that you would have to evacuate is completely alien to me. I understand the basic idea but we really have basically no major natural disasters.
Hobby aviator here, damn these guys are insane! There are not many things I would be uncomfortable with, until this video it would have been flying a supper scooper (firefighting planes), but this is at another level haha.
That Chuck joke was awesome!!! When a new Chuck Norris joke is born all other jokes become less funny. Why did Chuck Norris destroy the periodic table? Because he only believes in the element of surprise.
4:57. I think you meant "...fly into up to 3 storms in 1 mission." as it's impossible to fly into 3 storms at the same time. 9:39. FYI, there have been 2 western Pacific tropical cyclones named Chuck, 1992 & 1995.
Imagine Colonel Duckworth back in 1943 returning completely exhausted from flying his plane through a hurricane for the first time EVER and being told to fuel up and do it again to get some weather data.
No word on the WRB-57? I don’t think it could structurally survive a hurricane, but I could fly higher than the stock B-57 Canberra due to much larger engines and wings being fitted for its specific weather/recon missions.
The C-130 is such an amazing plane. You think of rapid iteration WW2 fighters like the P-51 and P-47 for hitting D models.. But the C-130 is currently on J.. 😂 They'll probably just run out of letters eventually.
Very interesting. I once saw a documentary where NOAA uses an old prop plane for reasons of its strength and immediate response (from its props)- unlike a modern jet.
That's kinda wild (but makes sense) that they have to dedicate the flight engineer to man the throttle. A computer could probably handle that these days but probably not worth the development cost I guess?
On older planes that require a flight engineer like the Lockheed Electra from which this is derived, normal operations involve the FE setting engine power levels during various phases of flight. In this case, I’m guessing the FE is particularly busy and a big help in reducing the workload of the pilot flying. On newer planes that don’t have a FE, the newer technology may make it easier for the pilot flying to set the engine power themself, even in these conditions (although as someone said, they’d probably still do this manually rather than with autothrottle). I’m assuming that’s why this wasn’t discussed for the C-130s
Great video! The information back in Texas 1943 when the Air Force evacuated their AT-6 Texan's before the hurricane hit. The first few video clips were incorrect. Those were BT-13s which has fixed main landing gear. Now a few clips later while they are flying. You notice the main landing gear are retracted in the up position.
As a Florida native we know all about the 'Cane planes. Growing up we'd get our free hurricane trackers from the grocery store and watch the weather channel or listen to the radio when the power was out to get the latest location, pressure, travel and wind speed.
This was so great to learn! I mean I never have it any thought. I thought it was just satellites and Doplers. Thanks for this and thank you to all those that risks their lives to keep people safe during a hurricane!
The reason business jets have their high altitude capabilities is precisely that it's more comfortable and less congested... At FL500 you will get your direct clearance. No questions asked...
he got plenty wrong as it pertains to the reasoning and ability for altitudes. It's unfortunate he didn't just consult with an SME on the subject (given all the other research).
"What's wrong with this picture? Britney Spears is downgrading from the Gulf Stream 4 to the Gulf Stream 3. The Gulf Stream 3 doesn't even have a remote control for its surround sound stereo system..." "I'm sorry! We didn't know...we didn't know!" 😭
Round round, spin around I spin around Yeah (Spin around round round, I spin around) I spin around (Spin around round round, I spin around) My kinda town (Spin around round round, I spin around) I'm a real cool head (Spin around round round, I spin around) I'm makin' real good bread I'm spinnin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip I gotta find a new wormhole where the kids are hip My buddies and me are spinnin' real well known Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone I spin around (Spin around round round, I spin around) My kinda town (Spin around round round, I spin around) I'm a real cool head (Spin around round round, I spin around) I'm makin' real good bread (Spin around round round, I spin around) I spin around, round Spin around round round, ooh We always take my Gulfstream 'cause it's never been beat And we've never missed yet with the turbulent' girls we meet (rarely applied appendix to the crew): None of the guys go steady 'cause it wouldn't be right To leave their best girl home now on Saturday night
please do a video on these (this is a copy and paste list for a few channels) units and tactics/evaluation of loadouts of troops (from different jobs (and other branches) the tank doctrine of countries evaluation of tank veiw ports evaluation of tanks/armored vehicles of different countries navil ship cross sections (all the rooms and how it all works) evaluation of types of ships or evaluation of navil warfare flag ship vs capital ship, battleship vs dreadnought air craft carrier strike group formations exsamples, ancient persan ships, ancient veneti ships (gauls that fought ceaser) better for squads to be 2 teams of 5 or 3 teams of 3, and probably the esayest, better to keep troops well feed or starved like an animal how dose age effect comsnders eg napoleon got older so took less risks, ancient urban warfare ww2 tactics in Asia, tactics in the Chinese age of warlords, tactics in the ruso jap war cold war navil tactics, Korean war tactics, strange tactics or unque battles from the American war of independence and America civil war why did the Japanese empire fall, dont just say "America" like things like how there army and navy argued alot
So if a plane can fly into a hurricane, could it also fly into a tornado and collect atmospheric data on that? Of course, I imagine a tornado would be more dangerous. Hurricanes may have faster windspeeds, but they're also pretty much only throwing water around, whereas a tornado can be throwing around dust particles, rocks, tree parts, house parts, cars, etc...
No. Tornadoes are far too compact. Therefore the windshear is too strong and any aircraft would structurally fail. Hurricanes are huge, windspeed changes occur over huge distances. Airplanes dont care about this, since they only notice relative airspeed. I fly a plane that has a very low stall speed. It's possible for me to go up on a windy day and actually be moving backwards relative to the ground. The plane doesn't care as long as it's moving a certain speed through the air. In a tornado you can have winds of 200 mph that switch directions over tiny distances. This would quickly cause structural failure of an aircraft. It's not so much the wind speed, but the shear that gets you. Tornadoes are literally 100 percent condensed hate-shear in a small package 😂
@@purpleiguana208 You're quite welcome. In fact, while we can't fly INTO a tornado, you could get pretty close to one. In some of the US "tornado alley" states, news helicopters have been known to fly terrifyingly close to monster tornadoes. To the point where they're actually fighting the inflow just to not get "sucked in". This can be super helpful to meteorologists, but is especially good for civilians living in the path. If someone hears tornado warning, they might take action. If they can see live TV images from the news chopper of a 2 mile wide wedge tornado actually destroying stuff.. That's hard to ignore. Tornadoes are super intricate. A big wedge tornado might be doing EF-2 damage in it's overall path.. But have multiple sub vorticies, (think smaller tornadoes inside the b bigger tornado.) and those could be doing EF-5 damage. This is why you'll sometimes see, after a huge tornado wipes out an area.. One house is completely gone, while the one next door is only slightly damaged. The other side of the coin, is that hurricanes tend to spend most of their lives out over the ocean. Out of the range of weather radars. Whereas tornadoes spend pretty much their whole lives in range of the National Weather Services network of super powerful, 750,000 Watt WSR-88D dual-pol radars. These give a pretty amazing look at just about every part of the storm in basically 3d. The modernized dual pol weather radars really are amazing. This is why the hurricane forecasts tend to get a lot more accurate once they get closer to landfall, and within range of the land based radar. There's not actually much more you'd be able to tell from having an aircraft penetrate the storm. The only thing the radars can't really do, is tell what's going on at ground level. Due to being angled upwards to see into the storm, the further you get from the radar site, the higher the beam is looking. This is why eyes on the ground is still incredibly important for what's going on in the immidiately vicinity of the tornado. The radar can tell you it's there. But unless its lofting debris high enough the radar can see it.. It can't tell you if the tornado is on the ground. Hence why the NWS still offers spotter training classes to the public. Trained spotters have saved many lives over the years. Sorry for the extensive rambling. But you happened to hit right in my ballpark. Lol. As both a pilot, and a tornado chaser, I couldn't resist. 😁
I wish people would stop saying "accurate prediction". Prediction implies 100% accuracy. Weather forecasts are not even close to prediction past 24 hours in advance. After the 3-day mark it is closer to a bad guess.
