Charlie was spawned several hundred miles east of the Windward Island of Trinidad. The first notice the Navy had of its presence was a ship reporting an area of bad weather, and almost immediately one of the hurricane hunter planes from the advanced base in Puerto Rico was in the air to get the first reports on Charlie. For the next nine days Charlie led them a wild, if not a merry chase. He slipped by night through the Windward Islands and into the Caribbean, loafed across this broad expanse of water, then slammed into Kingston, Jamaica, dealing that city one of its most devastating blows in history. Then Charlie headed across the Yucatan Channel and over the Yucatan Peninsula, where he lost some of his push. Some sixteen hours later he broke into the Gulf of Campeche with renewed fury, stormed across the Gulf and into the Mexican coast at Tampico, on August 22, again costing lives and millions in property damage. During his long rampage, he was being invaded almost daily by Navy planes. On Tuesday, August 21, Brango had the fortune of being assigned to the reconnaissance crew for that day. They departed Miami at noon of a bright sunny day. For three hours they flew over a calm ocean, flecked with sunlight. By then they could see the looming mass of clouds ahead, which indicated Charlie’s whereabouts. Dropping from seven thousand feet cruising altitude to six hundred feet, they started getting into the eye. The sun had disappeared and the winds jumped rapidly to seventy miles an hour. For almost an hour they swung around to the west and south, feeling for the weaker side, as the winds got up to one hundred miles per hour and the rain and turbulence became terrific for about ten minutes before they broke through the inner wall and into the eye. According to Brango, “The eye is a pleasant place! Many of them have blue sky, calm seas and air smooth enough to catch up on your reports and even drink a cup of coffee. Charlie’s eye wasn’t too good—big, but cloudy; still it was better than what we had just come through, so we hung around for about thirty-five minutes, watching the birds. There are usually hundreds of birds in the eye of a hurricane. Probably they get blown in there and have enough sense not to try to fly out. But not us, we want out.” Soon the decision to start out was made, and the order went over the inter-com: “Stand by to leave the eye—report when ready.” This always brings the stock answer, which has become a standard joke in the squadron: “Don’t worry about us mules, just load the wagon!”