U.S. AIRCRAFT TURN BACK

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 12

U.S. AIRCRAFT TURN BACK

Hercules Meet Head Wind

An icy jet stream blew a flight of United States Air Force Hercules ski planes back to Christchurch yesterday morning after an attempt to fly them to McMurdo Sound had been abandoned.

Five aircraft, with 95 men aboard them, are now standing by at Harewood on a continuous alert waiting for a favourable forecast before making another attempt. “We’ll be in the air two hours after getting the word it is OK,” the squadron commander (Lieu-tenant-Colonel W. Turk) told “The Press” yesterday. Colonel Turk, piloting the lead plane, took off from Harewood yesterday at 6.45 a.m. and headed south after climbing to 25.000 ft. It was not long before he was battling a head wind reckoned at 125 knots. His ground speed was cut down to 145 knots (compared with the normal speed of 270 knots) and outside the plane the temperature dropped to minus 28 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. “It took us three hours to reach Campbell Island, which should have been reached in two,” he said.

“We were then far behind our flight plan. It was a real jet stream and it was impossible to continue with any degree of safety and so I ordered the return.

“It took us only an hour and a half to get back and we were really barrelling along at 380 knots at that stage.” he said. Weather Forecast Colonel Turk said that the weather the flight had encountered was a . very unusual phenomenon which had developed south of Invercargill and around Campbell Island, originating from a low pressure area south of Tasmania. The phenomenon had neither been observed nor reported when the nlanes took off. The Tuesday midnight forecast was favourable but observations made at 6 a.m. yesterdav showed that bad winds would he present on the flight route. By the time this data had been collected, collated and interpreted nlanes were airborne. Colonel Turk said that the forecast material had come from McMurdo Sound, the picket ship USS. Peterson 600 miles south of New Zealand, and New Zealand stations.

Forecasting based on this material was prepared by the United States Navy aerological office at Harewood.

A Navy spokesman said yesterday afternoon that its Skymaster search and rescue plane was standing by at Christchurch r eady to take off for Hobart and fly a long-range weather reconnaissance over the ocean from there to the Antarctic ice edge and back to Christchurch should that be necessary The distance is about 3000 miles.