A little later, the ground operator had to crawl under a table to get shelter because nearly all of the building had been blown away, bit by bit. Structures of the quonset type were crushed like matchboxes and carried away like pieces of paper. Their roofs were ripped like rags. A cook at the Air Force Base hurried into a large walk-in refrigerator when everything began to blow away. “It was the only safe place I could find,” he explained afterward. “The building blew away but the refrigerator was left behind and here I am.” One of the meanest of the typhoons of this period was known as “Vulture Charlie.” It was dangerous to airmen because of the extreme violence of its turbulence. Ordinarily, the typhoons were known by girls’ names, and for that reason the typhoon hunters in the Pacific were known as “girl-chasers.” But “Vulture Charlie” got the first word of its name from the type of mission involved, and “Charlie” from the third word in the phonetic alphabet used in communications. On November 4, 1948, an aircraft commanded by Captain Louis J. Desandro ran into the violent turmoil of Vulture Charlie and described it as follows: “We hit heavy rain and suddenly the airspeed and rate of climb began to increase alarmingly and reached a maximum of 260 miles per hour and four thousand feet per minute climb to an altitude of three thousand seven hundred feet. The sudden increase in altitude was brought about by disengaging the elevator control of the auto-pilot and raising the nose to control the airspeed. Power was not reduced because of our low altitude. After about thirty seconds to one minute of this unusual condition we hit a terrific bump which appeared to be the result of breaking out of a thunderhead. The airspeed then decreased to 130 miles per hour in a few seconds due to the fact that we encountered downdrafts on the outer portion of the thunderhead and were momentarily suspended in air. At this point the left wing dropped slightly and I immediately shoved the nose down to regain airspeed. Before a safe airspeed was again reached, we had descended to an altitude of one thousand one hundred feet. “As a result of this turbulence my feet came up off the rudder pedals. The engineer, who was sitting on the nose wheel door instructing a student engineer, came up off the floor like he was floating in the air. The navigator and weather observer were raised out of their seats. A coffee cup, which was on the back of the airplane commander’s instrument panel, was raised to the ceiling and came down on the weather observer’s table. Cabin airflow was being used and the airflow meter exploded and glass hit both engineers in the face.” In December, 1948, a crew under the command of Lieutenant David Lykins was instructed to use the boxing procedure in a typhoon called “Beverly.” On one of their missions, they flew into it on December 7. The following is based on his report: