"Chris Mark" wrote in message
...
Here's an anecdote from Capt Frank Dailey that gives a little bit of the
flavor of weather on flight operations in the ww2 era:

"Dick Korn was a PPC in squadron VP-H/L-7 who became the beneficiary of a
good
APS-15 radar operator in his crew. The circumstance began as a simple
transit
flight from NAS Kodiak to NAS Adak, with some off-airways patrolling along
the
way. Aleutian weather reared its head and as its first challenge provided
headwinds much higher than those forecast.

By the time the Korn-piloted PB4Y-2 got to the vicinity of Adak, it had
exceeded its planned fuel consumption. Adak had closed in. I happened to
be at
Adak as a fill-in copilot for our Operations Officer, Lcdr. Wagoner. It
was now
snowing heavily at NAS Adak .The airfield was now below even GCA minimums.
Dick
Korn elected to try a GCA approach at Adak as he began to doubt that he
had
fuel enough to reach his alternate at Shemya. Wagoner went down to Adak's
Operations room, right next to the tower. I stayed in our assigned Quonset
hut
on top of a hill just south of the runway. My next experience was to hear
a
plane with its engines in full roar making a pullup to the south and
passing so
close overhead that the Quonset huts all rattled. Then I went down to
Operations and found Wagoner in communication with Dick Korn. Wagoner
asked
Korn to get a fuel report from his plane captain. It took longer than it
should
have and when Wagoner finally got it, he made some quick calculations and
barked out instructions to Dick Korn. "Set your course direct for Shemya,
using
your radar operator to track you out there. Do not fly via the standard
airways
route. You do not have enough fuel. Do not try to land here. This field is
almost zero-zero." Korn's crew grasped these instructions quickly and
their
plane gradually disappeared from the NAS Adak radarscope. Wagoner got into
voice communication with Shemya Control and told them the story. He asked
that
Korn be given a straight-in approach and that the Bartow lights on the
runway
be set at Strength Five. It was raining slightly at Shemya but they had
two
miles visibility under a low overcast. The PB4Y-2 radar worked to
perfection.
Dick Korn and crew made a straight in approach and landed at Shemya.
Number one
engine quit on final approach and the # 2, 3, and 4 engine tanks when
dipped,
had twenty, twenty and thirty gallons left, respectively. (The wing tanks
held
about 2400 gallons when topped off.) The radar and the radar operator had
scored again. Wagoner set another high mark for intelligent and timely
decision
making. And Dick Korn was smart enough to follow instructions."
Chris Mark

Chris...and others interested in the above anecdote...
You would be interested in "The Thousand-Mile War" (World War Two in
Alaska and the Aleutians") by Brian Garfield.
There are a number of these 'weather' stories. In fact, the weather in the
area impacted on most of the true tales in this remarkable book. IMHBUAO.

Cheers.