The plane took off at 6:17 P.M., Bermuda time, climbed to ten thousand feet and leveled off. Almost immediately the crew saw an oil leak in the No. 1 engine and it was feathered. The radio operator got in touch with the tower and airways and the aircraft commander prepared to return to the field. The pilot brought the plane over the island and reported at four thousand feet, descending. But just at that time a Pan American Stratocruiser was cleared to land. The B-29 circled and reported at one thousand five hundred feet at a distance of seven miles west of the island. Next the plane was four miles out, coming straight in at one thousand feet and was cleared to land on Runway 12. There was a gusty cross wind and there were scattered clouds at one thousand feet. The plane then reported that it would pass over at one thousand feet and get lined up, but almost immediately said to disregard the last message. One-half mile away, the flaps were raised, the landing gear was let down, and power was applied on the three remaining engines. The plane made a left turn which became steeper and altitude was lost rapidly until the left wing hit the water. This was a quarter of a mile offshore. Fire broke out as the plane hit the water and rescue boats rushed to the scene. Only three men escaped, two of them miraculously through a hole in the fuselage, as was determined by a Bermuda diver who went down sixty feet in the water to examine the wreckage. The other man, captain of the aircraft, was pulled out but died later in the hospital. It was the two radar men who were fortunately in a position to get out through the hole in the fuselage and both survived. In this incident at Bermuda the plane was not being affected by a storm. It is an amazing fact, in consideration of the very large number of weather missions flown by the Air Force after World War II, that their first plane to be lost while on reconnaissance in a tropical storm was in 1952. On November 1, a B-29 left Guam to fly into a typhoon called Wilma. The crew of the superfort was instructed to penetrate the storm, report by radio, land at Clark Field in the Philippines, and be prepared to fly through the typhoon again on the following morning. The same day, however, radio contact was lost. Seventeen rescue planes and numerous surface vessels searched the typhoon-torn waters near Samar Island for survivors without success. Natives on the island of Leyte reported that a four-engined plane was seen flying low in that vicinity but the report could not be verified. The squadron to which this plane was assigned had made more than five hundred reconnaissance flights into typhoons between June 1, 1947, and the date on which it was lost. Lieutenant A. N. Fowler, an experienced Navy pilot, was the man who said that a hurricane flight was like going over Niagara Falls in a telephone booth. Describing one of his most dangerous trips, he told a newspaperman: