Considering his hurricane penetration a routine weather flight at the time, Joe thought nothing more about it until he read a story in a Sunday paper, several weeks later. Then he had a telephone call from Brigadier General Luke Smith, at Randolph Field, who asked him to come down, and surprised him by saying that he knew of the incident. At Randolph, the General said that Joe was being recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross. This never went through but later Joe did receive the Air Medal. There were several amazing features about these flights into the vortex. First, they justified Duckworth’s unswerving confidence in his ability to fly safely through a hurricane; second, at the level of high flights there was a remarkable absence of violent up drafts or turbulence; third, they showed that quiet air in the center extended at least to heights of a mile to a mile and a half, and that at those levels the air in the center was much warmer than the air in the surrounding region of cloud, rain, and high winds. Joe is sorry now he did not organize his flight to get better scientific data. He believes his air temperature gauge probably was inaccurate. But, as he says, “It was just a lark—I didn’t think anybody would ever care or know about it!” This demonstration was followed by an increasing number of penetrations by aircraft into the eyes of tropical storms, not all of which, by any means, were as uneventful as the flights by Duckworth and his fellow officers. After years of experience, the military services involved in flying hurricanes developed a technique which was essentially the same as that used by Duckworth in this first flight; that is, penetrate into the western semicircle and then into the center or eye from the southwest quadrant. _8._ THE HAMMER AND THE HIGHWAY _Bellowing, there groan’d a noise As of a sea in tempest torn By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hades With restless fury drives the spirits on._ —Dante During the first half of the present century there was a tremendous growth in population, industry, truck-farming, citrus-growing, boating, and aviation on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts of the United States. This brought new worries to the hurricane hunters and forecasters.