Page 65 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

CHAPTER 17 - Black Pearl of the Pacific

On December 11, 1952, I received my assignment to Detachment 1 of the 7th Weather
Group located on a small island called Shemya, near the end of the Aleutian chain. At
the Alaska Air Command Headquarters, Colonel Hughes told me that I was picked for
this assignment because I did so well on the tests and that it was such a big and
responsible job. Before long I would be signing aircraft clearance forms for flights to
Alaska and flights to Tokyo. Also, there would be several commercial airlines stopping
there since it is about halfway between Seattle and Tokyo. Finally, he said, “I won’t tell
you it’s nice out there because most of the fellows don’t like it, but from the weather
point of view, it will be very interesting.”

My friend, Jack Hall, got the assignment he wanted. He volunteered to be an aerial
weather observer on reconnaissance flights to the North Pole. I was happy with the
Shemya assignment because I knew I would have a lot of time for reading and
studying.

When my church heard that we were leaving, they held a nice farewell party for us after
the Sunday evening service. When I got back to the barracks, I wrote my mother a letter
telling about my assignment. I also told her that I still hadn’t received the new RSV
Bible she had mailed. I was worried that it might have been on that plane that had
crashed into the mountain.

The next two days we received nearly ten inches snow which caused the flight to
Shemya to be postponed for three days. I was happy because I just received my RSV
Bible in the mail and I could get started reading it. In the meanwhile, an airman who
had been stationed at Shemya came in the barracks and when he learned that I was
going there, he told me about the island. I learned that it was only 2 miles wide and 4
miles long, and there were about 300 mainly military personnel there. The coldest
temperature ever recorded there was 18 degrees, and the highest in summer once had
reached 65 degrees. Almost half of the Pacific storms pass over this station, and it is
noted for its long cloudy and rainy periods.

On Wednesday the weather cleared. When I saw the plane that I was going to fly on, I
was amazed at its size! It was a C-124 that was being filled with truckloads of supplies
that would be carried to that small island near the end of the Aleutian chain. The plane

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