Before taking off from Honolulu, the airmen wanted a forecast for this long route and a report of the weather at Wake. Also, before taking off from Wake, they asked for a forecast for the trip to the next stop at Guam, Manila or Tokyo. The military called on the Weather Bureau and Civil Aeronautics Administration to furnish the weather service and the communications. They started operations at Wake very soon. By 1952 men from these two agencies were on the island, some with their wives and children. The Standard Oil Company and Pan American Airways also had people there. For the most part, they were housed in quonset-type structures, but some old pillboxes constructed during the war still dotted the island and could be used for refuge from typhoons if the wind-driven seas did not rise high enough to flood them. There were only three concrete buildings and they were used for offices and storage. On the morning of September 11, 1952, the Weather Bureau forecaster drew a low center on his weather chart far to the southeast of Wake. His analysis was based largely on two isolated ship reports, the only information available from a one million square-mile ocean area lying to the east-southeast of his tiny island station. Here was just enough data to arouse suspicion and alarm that a developing tropical disturbance was somewhere—anywhere—within this vast expanse of sea and air; but not enough information to indicate a position, or probable intensity, or actually to confirm the existence of a well-defined storm. During the next three days, the question of continuing the low on successive charts, and the problem of deciding its position, were mostly matters of guesswork on the part of the Weather Bureau staff at Wake; there was only one ship report from the critical area during the time. Then on September 14 the existence of a vortex was established. A single ship report, together with reports from Kwajalein and Eniwetok, gave good evidence of cyclonic circulation. From this time on, until the storm struck at daybreak on the sixteenth, everybody on the island worried about it, and the weathermen went all out in tracking it and disseminating information. Meanwhile the typhoon—which had been named “Olive”—grew into the most destructive storm to hit Wake since it was first inhabited in 1935. The forecasters’ job was a difficult one because of meager observational data. There were heartbreaking delays in securing airplane reconnaissance due to mechanical breakdown that grounded the B-29 stationed at Wake for that purpose until an engine part could be flown in from Tokyo.