In the 1950s, U.S. Air Force Crews In Old World War II Bombers Deliberately Flew Into Radioactive Winds From Nuclear Blasts
The Air Force called it 'bug-catching'
As if flying into hurricanes weren’t dangerous enough. In May of 1949, the U.S. Air Force tapped the typhoon-chasing Boeing RB-29s of the Air Weather Service for a top-secret mission.
Every indication was that the Soviet Union was preparing to test its first atomic bomb. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency wanted to know when it happened.
So RB-29s based in Alaska, Japan, and Guam were modified with a special device. From outside the aircraft it looked like a simple metal scoop. The scoop fed outside air through a removable cloth screen accessible from the fuselage.
The idea was that the screen would catch minute radioactive debris cast skyward by an atomic blast. It was thought that winds at high altitude would scatter the debris hundreds of miles into international airspace.
Hopefully, the debris would include tiny pieces of the bomb itself. Experts on the ground would determine an atom bomb’s yield and design by comparing the debris to known bomb specifications.
Which is exactly what they did on Aug. 29, 1949, when an Alaska-based RB-29 cruising over the Pacific Ocean collected samples from the first Soviet atomic explosion, thus verifying the arrival of the world’s second nuclear power and initiating the Cold War.
The first B-29s to be modified with the new device carried it under their wings. Later modifications saw the old bombers carry it under, then over, the fuselage. The Air Force called the scoop an “atmospheric sampling device.” The crews called it a ‘bug-catcher.”
As the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb program grew in scope, so did the bug-catching mission. By the early 1960s, there were some 100 aircraft of several types modified for the air-sampling mission.
The 55th and 56th Weather Reconnaissance Squadrons, respectively based at McClellan Air Force Base, California and Yokota Air Force Base, Japan, undertook the majority of air-sampling missions before 1962.
That’s when the Typhoon Chasers of the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron joined the effort. The 54th WRS had existed on paper for a number of years before gaining its first aircraft and moving to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam in 1948.
Although its aircraft long had been modified with air-sampling equipment, the 54th at first served strictly in the weather reconnaissance role. The squadron became a detachment of the Japan-based 56th WRS in 1960.
Two years later, in March 1962, the 54th regained squadron status and moved back to Guam. It took some of the 56th’s aircraft and responsibilities with it. The 54th WRS flew its first air-sampling mission shortly thereafter.
The 54th started out in 1948 with essentially unmodified wartime B-29s that had been re-designated “RB-29” to reflect their new reconnaissance role. The RB-29s were progressively updated, losing their machine-gun armament and bomb sights and gaining up-rated engines, weather sensors and a weather officer’s station in the nose, in addition to the bug-catcher.
In 1951, the RB-29 was re-designated WB-29 for “weather.” The WB-29s were replaced by 1948-model WB-50Ds in 1954.
The B-50 was essentially a new-production B-29 with better engines and a taller tail. The weather reconnaissance-modified WB-50 featured several improvements over the baseline B-50, including Doppler radar, additional fuel tanks and a rudimentary navigation computer.
The WB-29 was an unforgiving aircraft prone to engine fires. It suffered an unacceptably high accident rate.
The WB-50D, though more modern, was hardly safer. Its fuel cells were particularly unreliable, and the majority of the type passed through a modification program late in their careers to remedy the problem.
Between 1945 and 1956, the AWS lost eight WB-29s with 58 crew. It lost 13 WB-50Ds and 66 crew over 11 years of service between 1954 and 1965.
Adoption of the WB-50D marked a dark chapter in the history of the 54th WRS. Lt. Santos Pantoja joined the squadron in 1960—just in time to witness perhaps its most dangerous era.
A combination of barely serviceable aircraft, lethal typhoons and aggressive Russian fighters made life very exciting for the Typhoon Chasers. Not to mention the clouds of radiation that they deliberately flew through.
Pantoja was an airborne weather reconnaissance officer. He occupied the former bombardier station in the nose of the WB-50, where he directed the flight crew toward hurricanes.
Originally, the standard hurricane-penetration mission involved flying a racetrack pattern, taking barometric readings until the low-pressure eye was located.
But Pantoja devised a better way. “I just kept the wind on the left wing,” he said. “As long as the wind was perpendicular to our flight path, we moved automatically into the eye.”
Pantoja estimated his new flight profile cut mission times by two-thirds or more. In addition to pinpointing the location of a typhoon, it was Pantoja’s job to chart changes in outside air pressure to determine the storm’s size and power.
Pantoja was vital to the 54th’s weather reconnaissance mission. But he had nothing to do with the bug-catcher. The device was so secret that even the WB-50 crews knew little about it.
The bug-catchers aboard weather squadron aircraft were operated by airmen detached from secretive units such as the 1156th Technical Operations Squadron. There was often a degree of distrust between the flight crews of the AWS squadrons and the bug-catcher operators they hauled around.
It didn’t help that most air-sensor operators were junior enlisted men, while everyone but the observers in the weather squadron crew was an officer.
Jim Young knew all about this tense relationship. He was only 19 years old when, in 1961, he was assigned to operate the bug-catcher on WB-50s. “It was awkward,” he said. “I came from West Virginia. I enlisted just out of high school and a year later I’m telling this huge aircraft where to go.”
Often, their destination was the site of an atomic explosion. Secrecy, needless to say, was paramount. Young vividly recalled his officers’ instructions. “You can talk about what you did or where you were,” he said they told him. “But you can’t combine them.”
Even decades later, Young was reluctant to give specifics. But he would say he had seen a number of mushroom clouds. “They sure look big when they go off,” he said.
Deliberately flying into radioactive debris presented certain challenges—like how to keep the radiation outside the aircraft. That’s where the pressurized crew compartments of the WB-50D came in handy. The earlier B-29 was one of the first production aircraft with a pressurized cabin.
The constant outward flow of air through the many tiny seams and cracks in the bomber’s fuselage kept the aircraft free of radioactive debris.
But the WB-50s were old and prone to mechanical failure. Pantoja’s aircraft once lost pressure during a bug-catching mission. The crew was sure it had received a harmful dose of radiation.
It was customary for crews returning from air sampling missions to route through rainstorms to clean off the aircraft, but in this case a bath was little help. The radiation was inside the plane.
Pantoja and his crew were examined as soon as they landed. Fortunately, they’d received only a minimal dose of radiation. Far more lasting was the damage to their ears from the sudden depressurization. Forty years later, Pantoja wore hearing aids to compensate for injury he received on that mission.
The 54th’s missions were dangerous even when the aircraft didn’t suffer mechanical failures. Pantoja remembered being shadowed by Russian fighters on one occasion. Weather crews had to take care to remain in international airspace.
Fighters aside, the 54th’s environment was its most dangerous adversary. Guam is notorious for its location in the heart of “typhoon alley”—a stretch of the Pacific Ocean between Wake and Palau that witnesses as many as 30 tropical storms per year.
1962 was no exception. 54th WRS piston engine mechanic Jerold Selle recalled the worst storm of the year. “Beginning on Nov. 7,” he said, “our aircraft began tracking a tropical storm.”
By Nov. 8, it had developed winds of about 60 knots. Six hours after the initial penetration of the day, the winds were 80 knots and had reached category-one status.
“This was now officially a typhoon. Its name was ‘Karen.’ A penetration even later in the day indicated that it had reached category three with winds of 105 knots. By Nov. 9, the storm had reached category-five status with winds in excess of 160 knots.
“This was now a ‘super typhoon.’ At that time, all island aircraft were ordered to leave. This included Strategic Air Command B-47 bombers.”
One aircraft wasn’t able to leave. A WB-50D, number 49-0288, had landing gear problems and couldn’t fly. It would have to endure the storm in one of the hangars.
When the typhoon finally reached the island, a hangar door fell onto it and destroyed its vertical stabilizer. By noon on Nov. 12, the eye of Karen came over Guam with gusts of wind reaching 200 miles per hour.
Eventually, Karen passed and the winds died. Some 500 buildings on base were destroyed—not to mention thousands more elsewhere on the island. But thanks to the early warning provided by the 54th WRS, casualties and write-offs were light. The 54th relocated to Yokota while Andersen was repaired.
The troublesome WB-50Ds were phased out of the weather-reconnaissance role beginning in September 1963. The last was retired in 1967.
The WB-50 was replaced by the Boeing WB-47, which itself provided less than stellar service. Its higher speed was a disadvantage when it came to riding out the turbulent outer rings of tropical storms.
Modified Lockheed C-130s soon arrived to supplant the WB-47s. Various models of the WC-130 perform the weather reconnaissance mission to this day. Air sampling, on the other hand, eventually migrated to the Boeing WC-135, which is still active in the role.
The 54th remained on Guam performing the weather-reconnaissance mission until the Vietnam War, when it took part in rain-making operations over Thailand. The squadron subsequently shifted its attention back to typhoons until its inactivation in 1987.
Forward-deployed airborne weather reconnaissance in the Western Pacific ended with the demise of the Typhoon Chasers.
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