Hurricane hunters

The Hurricane Hunters are aircrews that fly into tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean and Northeastern Pacific Ocean to gather weather data. Currently, the U.S. units that fly these missions are the United States Air Force Reserve's 53d Weather Reconnaissance Squadron and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Hunters; such missions have also been flown by Navy units and other Air Force and NOAA units.

One U.S. aircrew has been lost in duty since such missions began in 1943. Six of the seven crew members of the Navy PB4Y-2 (BuNo 59415) were killed on October 1, 1945 when their plane went down in a Category 1 typhoon over the South China Sea.

Before satellites were used to find storms, military aircraft flew routine weather reconnaissance tracks to detect formation of tropical cyclones. Today, satellites have revolutionized weather forecasters' ability to detect signs of such cyclones before they form, yet they cannot determine the interior barometric pressure of a hurricane nor provide accurate wind speed information — data needed to accurately predict hurricane development and movement.

The Air Force Reserve 53d Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, the world's only operational military weather reconnaissance unit, is based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi; most weather recon flights go from there. The term "hurricane hunters" was first applied to its missions in 1946.

The USAFR Hurricane Hunters fly weather missions in an area midway through the Atlantic Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands, and have on occasion flown into typhoons in the Pacific Ocean and gathered data in winter storms.

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Wikipedia