Posted on 12/05/2021 8:23:23 AM PST by DFG
I remember the t-shirts. “I survived the blizzard of ‘78”.
I lived on the South Shore and me and my buddies went down to the beach and watched it coming in. We could lean forward into the wind and would be standing at a 10 degree angle with the wind holding us up.
Made some money shoveling for the next couple of weeks til my arms got wore out.
My sister was coming home from work going up a hill and slid off to the side in the driveway of a nursing home and then the plows buried her Camaro. My dad went out and planted a sign saying “Buried Car” so that the plows wouldn’t hit it on subsequent clean up runs. When the weather broke, we went and dug it out. Dug an aisle for it. Dad got in the car and the sucker started right up. Would have made a good battery commercial.
The morning it hit us, it was actually above freezing most of that morning. I remember the temperature reading 34 degrees around noontime.
By 2PM, the winds started howling and I had to walk backwards against the wind to keep from falling down. The "wall of snow" hit us right around dark. The wind gusts were well over 100mph causing extreme drifting. The result being that one side of our house had practically no snow against it and the other sides had 15 foot drifts.
My side street did not get plowed out for nearly a week. All the neighbors got together to shovel out a path on the street in case a fire truck or ambulance had to get through. National Guard was called out. I still remember helicopters dropping supplies in our neighborhood like water, milk and bread.
I was about 10 blocks away from the beach, which had no snow at all because the ocean water washed it all away. Lot of lobsters washed up and the radio warned us against eating them but we collected them in big trash bags anyhow and cooked that at home. I'm not aware of anybody getting sick as a result.
Mike Dukakis was governor at the time and I remember him doing his press conferences with a sweater on and threatening anybody "non-essential" with arrest for being out on the roads. Just 10 years later, he threatened all of us with becoming president. Good thing all his threats amounted to nothing.
Air Force personnel have been flying in and out of Patrick AFB through the triangle for many decades.
I think if there was any mysterious danger out there, they would know about it.
Not for nothing, but if their last leg might have been about 140.46 miles instead of stopping after 120 miles, the might have made it back.
Yeah one side of our house had a snow drift almost up to the second story windows. I wanted to climb out the window and slide down it but ma wouldn’t let me. I was 13 years old.
I don’t know what instrumentation those aircraft had, but every one I flew had dual compasses for the very reason that the do occasionally but rarely fail.
So a question: What was the weather?
Had these pilots completed their instrument training or were they still in training?
Five compasses failing simultaneously on five different aircraft is not only impossible but the concept is ridiculous.
Remember, the magnetic compass has been used on ships as far back as the year 1400.
“...a routine three-hour training mission.”
A three-hour tour? Did they search all of the islands around there?
That’s New England .. not Florida.
Almost right. They flew to Hens and Chickens just north of Bmini, then North. The final radio fix that the Navy had was about 70 miles off of Daytona (thus the Martin Mariner out of Canaveral few north east before it blew up).
There were two major issues.
1: The radio stations from Havana were broadcasting over the same frequencies that the planes were using and Taylor wouldn’t change frequencies.
2: Taylor was not a great navigator. While serving in the Pacific, he made the same mistake, again blaming it on the compasses. It’s just this time he took a whole flight down with him.
There was a biography of him written back in the 80s by Larry Kusche. He is the first writer to actually look at Taylor’s military records.
Atlantic Hurricanes can form any day of the year. They are less likely in Winter.
The weather was fine, but, deteriorated. The problem was that Taylor was not a good navigator and blamed the compasses for his failings.
I was at the helm when my ship (a Destroyer) went through the triangle. My compass went crazy and became useless.
Seas were a little choppy. Overcast sky. We had to call the captain to the bridge. I always hated going through there. One minute smooth seas, the next choppy.
The odd thing is it happened during the day, in the afternoon. If the weather was even moderately clear, even if their compasses were doing weird things, all they would have to do is look at where the sun was, and from that have a pretty general idea of where west was. Heading west, they would have hit Florida at some point and found someplace to land.
I believe him. I witnessed the compass failing first hand. Ours failed for something like an hour. I was at the helm when it happened.
A wing and a prayer?
Flight 19 did not fly into a hurricane
I’ve always wondered why the lead plane just didn’t turn to the west, toward the setting sun. Even without a functioning compass, they would have eventually sighted land...
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