Product Description

Fifty years after Isaac's Storm, a riveting story of the first Hurricane Hunters, and the one crew who paid the ultimate price.

"In a virtual age when tempests are monitored by global positioning and The Weather Channel, Stormchasers reminds us that our first understanding of hurricanes was directly built on the risks and sacrifices of living, breathing heroes," writes Hampton Sides (author of Ghost Soldiers).

In September 1955, Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and a crew of eight flew out of Guantánamo Bay into the eye of Hurricane Janet swirling in the Caribbean: a routine weather reconnaissance mission from which they never returned. In the wake of World War II, the Air Force and the Navy had discovered a new civilian arena where daring pilots could test their courage and skill. These Hurricane Hunters flew into raging storms to gauge their strength and predict their paths. Without computer, global positioning, or satellite support, they relied on rudimentary radar systems to locate the hurricane's eye and estimated the drift of their aircraft by looking at windblown waves below. Drawing from Navy documents and interviews with members of the squadron and relatives of the crew, Stormchasers reconstructs the ill-fated mission of Windham's crew from preflight checks to the chilling moment of their final transmission. 8 b/w photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1251150 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 226 pages

From Library Journal
Toomey is an English professor who also teaches technical writing and coauthored Amelia Earhart's Daughters. So he seems like the right man to take on the post-World War II fighter pilots who happily volunteered to fly into hurricanes with occasionally lethal consequences.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Using the 1955 disappearance of a navy weather plane inside a hurricane as his reference point, Toomey roams about the presatellite history of research into the tempests. Knowledge about hurricanes was so rudimentary that determining their cyclonic structure was considered progress. From that discovery in the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, advances in knowledge and forecasting were modest. By interspersing the history of hurricane research with the preparations of the ill-fated navy crew, Toomey effectively points out how insufficient understanding of meteorological conditions impelled weather planes to fly in such dangerous conditions. Besides the informative technical coverage about hurricane behavior, the twin-engine Neptune plane, and its weather instrumentation, Toomey delivers an understated narrative that ennobles crew members. He doesn't inflate basic information that's known about them, and alludes to their awareness of the perils in their assignment. Toomey's dramatization of scenarios of what might have happened to the crew--a ditching in the storm's eye or midair wing failure--will keep readers rapt. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Baltimore Sun
Riveting.... Toomey is imaginative and compelling in his re-creation.

Customer Reviews

"There are bold pilots and there are old pilots,but there are no bold,old pilots."
This book has a lot more to it than suggested by its dust jacket. Rather than just a number of experiences by a few of the crews who fly into hurricanes to learn more about them;it traces the history of the individuals and their planes, as well as the theories that have been used since the end of WWII,to try and get a handle on these powerful natural occurrances,which wreck such havoc;particularly on the south-east and Gulf coasts of the US.
From this book,you will become acquainted with the theories involved,the models used and the great difficulties encountered in trying to understand and thus predict the path,strength and resulting damages of hurricanes.
There is only thing certain,and that is that ecah year,there will be a string of events,but try as they may,the forcasters will havetheir hands full. The expertize continues to improve,but the "science" of hurricanes is far from perfect.
The book will help one to much better understand the reports we will be getting from The National Hurricane Service this coming summer and fall. It appears we are in for another wild time of it.
We really gain a good insight into the power of these systems and the punishment inflicted on the planes and crews who fly into them. In spite the power it is unbelievable that only one plane and its crew ever paid the Supreme Sacrifice.
The book is an excellent read for anyone interested in understanding "Hurricane Season". I think the most amazing thing that I learned from this book is that those great forces involved with these hurricanes can cause tremendous stresses on the earth's crust,resulting in accompanying earthquakes.

Final Mission
In late September 1955, a tropical depression in the Caribbean became the 10th hurricane of the season--Janet. The Naval Air Station in Jacksonville followed standard procedure, sending out hurricane hunters from Gauantanamo Bay, Cuba, on what should have been a routine reconnaisance mission. But Lt. Cmdr. Grover Windham and his crew of eight never returned from their flight into the eye of the storm. What happened?

Toomey recounts the possible scenarios as he reconsiders the drama, but he also uses the tragedy to discuss the relatively
primitive state of weather prediction at the time.

There was no Doppler radar, no satellite imaging, no global-positioning systems. The twin-engine Neptune plane was outfitted witht he cutting-edge technology of the day---butu meterologists used pencil and paper to make graphs, and pilots still looked at the waves below to estimate their position.

Crew Five really didn't know what it would find with Hurricane Janet. It's final radio transmission at 8:30 a.m. ended, "Beginning penetration."

In the face of daunting odds and tremendous danger....
David Toomey's well researched book has an astounding wealth of information that is both stunning in detail and fascinating in every aspect. This book drew my attention because of my own obsession with hurricanes, having been through several in North Carolina,(to include Fran, Bonnie,and Floyd ). During Floyd we were in the eye of the storm at night and went out and looked up into a clear, silent sky and watched as suddenly a hurricane hunter flew overhead, the only sound at all.
David Toomey details the thoughts that went into the changing views of weatheras a philosophy and the evolution into the science of meteorology. This transformation from philosophy to science is interesting. Weather phenomena was thought to be only a local event and the idea that weather traveled from one area to another was not even imagined. The idea of weather patterns was a foreign concept as well. Toomey details this transformation which spans the continents, including battles of very differing ideas. The leap in the quantity of scientific data and reliability of it's use from the the 1950's to present time is amazing.
This scientific evolution was also a big push in the development of computers, originally called a "calculating clock"(in 1623), then "stepped reckoner" (1673), and then a giant leap to the "Difference Engine" in the 1830's. This subject in and of itself would have been a great subject.
Throughout all of this history of meteorology, the key aspect of this book centers on the people that flew into the hurricanes to obtain the data that would revolutionize hurricane forecasting. Their lives are opened and the picture that is viewed is of normal, everyday men. They saw their mission in life and pursued it, even in the face of daunting odds and tremendous danger. David Toomey has written a book that covers the world of hurricanes from the science to the very human and intimate aspects that surround them and has done so in a way that both educates and captivates your attention.