Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 3 (V2) by C.R. Ryder

Master Sergeant Kip Austin
    Weather Reconnaissance Loadmaster
    WC-130 Hurricane Hunter
     
    On January 10, 1991 Tropical Depression O4E moved westward across the Pacific.  It gained momentum before crossing over the Philippines becoming Tropical Storm Kim moments before it made landfall.  Drifting into the Sulu Sea it moved northwest eventually slowing to a crawl as it crossed the Spratly Islands. 
    I flew weather missions during the war out of Kadena Air Force Base on the WC-130 crew named Weather Wizard.
    At 0400 in the morning on January 13, two days before the UN deadline, the storm increased in strength and became Typhoon Kim.  Of course we were right there in the middle of it.
    Despite being four months out of season and relatively small, it was the worst storm the region had seen in winter in recorded history.
    Operation Jungle Storm slowed to a halt.
    One of the meteorologists that we deployed with called it global warming.  That was the first I had heard that term and the whole idea didn’t really pick up steam for another ten years.  Back in the late eighties we were concerned about pollution, fruit flies and the hole in the ozone.  We were headed for the millennium and there was a lot of end of the world talk.  I just chalked up global warming with the Y2K stuff I heard of later.  I mean people get in a tizzy every seventy five years or so when Halley’s Comet does its flyby.
    All that being said it was easy to believe somethings wrong when there was a typhoon three months out of season bearing down on the entire south Pacific.  Still Typhoon Kim could just be a big fluke.
    We flew into it three times and the tension was so heavy you could taste it.  The last typhoon this big brought down Swan 38 around the same part of the ocean. 
    The only good thing was that the Vietnamese were getting it just as bad as us.  Whether anyone would be flying over the next week was up for speculation.  We were trying to solve that particular riddle with our probes.
    “Prepare for drop!”  The weather officer called from the front of the cargo compartment over the interphone.  He served as the flight director during weather operations telling the pilots where to go.
    “Ready!”  I responded.  I had been ready for a while.  I was just waiting for him and the flight crew to find the right spot.  They got a great view of the storm up front.  All I got to look at in the back was the inside of the fuselage.
    “Drop in ten.” 
    We were dropping a device called a dropsonde which was equipped with high frequency radios and sensing devices.
    “READY…READY…DROP!”  The weather officer ordered.
    The dropsonde was ejected out of the aircraft and headed toward the water through the storm. As it descended to the ocean surface on a small parachute, it measured and relayed to the aircraft a vertical atmospheric profile of the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure and wind data.
    I hope the probe discovered something.  There was no denying that there was something unnatural about that storm.  I was thinking God was against the whole war and that was his way of letting us know.
    Still we were up there in it.  We dropped our probes and waited for readings.  Everything we were seeing was that it was going to be an enduring storm.  The whole operation was going to have to wait a few days.
    The Weather Wizard took a pounding from the storm.  I had heard we had lost an old A model Hurricane Hunter in Vietnam.  Tail number 56-519 had been captured at Tan Son Nhut Air Base when the south fell.  Rumor was it was still there.  Maybe if we invaded we could get her back, drop some new engines in her and fold her back into the fleet.  God knows we needed to replace the Weather Wizard as bent up as she was getting on this trip.  There was so much turbulence I stopped eating before we flew.
    All the run up indicated we were going to hit Vietnam hard minutes after the UN resolution deadline passed.  I didn’t