Bunting reported afterward that it took both pilot and co-pilot to control the ship and at times the RPM set at 2,100 would drop to 1,900 and then rise to 2,200, due to the terrific force of the wind. Kappler kept phoning the correct altitude to the pilot at short intervals because of the enormous changes in pressure. It was impossible to write in the log book so he scribbled as best he could on a piece of paper and copied it afterward. He noted that before entering the eye it was very dark. Inside it was cloudy but the light was better, indicating that the upper clouds were missing. When the flight was finished the crew was glad to be back at Morrison Field—to put it mildly!
Another plane at Morrison Field had been out the day before and soon was taking off again, at 2:00 P.M. The pilot was Lieutenant A. D. Gunn. He flew a direct course to the center of the storm—he hadn’t realized the day before that he was elected to go through it again today, so he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. These two days had provided his first such experience. One cylinder head slid to a very low temperature in the heavy rain and Gunn dropped the landing gear and tried to keep it up to 100°, but one engine died. The turbulence was so bad that neither he nor the co-pilot could tell which engine was out. The severe turbulence lasted for a full thirty minutes, about ten minutes of this being flown on one engine, with the crew desperately working on the other while they bounced around. The flight engineer, Sergeant Harry Kiefaber, had to leave his seat because of water pouring down his back and the tossing up and down, with his head repeatedly hitting the top of the plane. He tried to go back to join the navigator but the plane started to fall off to the right and he had visions of ditching in a mass of white foam. The pilot got it under control but it seemed that they were being tossed around like popcorn in a popper. Gradually the turbulence ceased, the other engine began running smoothly and they headed straight for Morrison.
But the conditions on the fourteenth were just an introduction to what happened on the fifteenth. The first crew took off at 7 A.M., with the edge of the hurricane causing rough weather at the field. Here is the story told by the navigator, Lieutenant James P. Dalton: