“We circled the storm before heading for the center. We were hitting rain and moderate turbulence all this time. All at once we broke through the overcast and for a few seconds I wondered if it were letting up, but only for a second. One instant everything was peaceful and the next instant we were getting slapped around like a punching bag with Joe Louis on the prod. I looked at the bank and turn indicator and the rate of climb, and they both looked as if they were going all out to win a jitterbug contest. Now it was really raining. You’ve never seen it rain until you’ve been in a hurricane. I couldn’t even see the engines from the cockpit window. I knew our right engine was the least bit rough before we started out and all I could think of was ‘For gosh sakes, don’t be cutting out now.’ Before we were out of it, the engine sounded like a one-cylinder Harley motorcycle but really she never missed a beat. It was about this time that our cylinder head temperature dropped down to about 90° and the pilot dropped the wheels to bring it back up. And it was also about this time that we started for a milder climate. “Don’t ask me if I was scared or not. It would only be a fool or a liar who would say he wasn’t worried. One thing about it is that you’re so busy hanging on and trying to keep from getting thrown on your face that there isn’t much time to think whether you’re scared or not. It’s really rough but there are no words to describe it. You’d have to go along to get the picture.” Lieutenant Kappler, for whom the hurricane was named, was due to go to Eglin Field with the crew that penetrated the hurricane on the fourteenth, but he wanted to stay over and see more of it. So they took him on, and although they already had a weather officer, Lieutenant Howard Schudel, Kappler was allowed to go as photographer. Schudel made the weather report from which the following is extracted: “The rain was moderate at a distance from the center but already I was drenched because of a leaky nose in the ship. We flew almost completely around the center with nothing especially spectacular. At about twenty miles from the center we encountered severe turbulence which lasted only until the center was hit. During this time is when I found myself trying to code two weather messages at once and not doing a very good job on either. I actually was too busy to get very scared as to whether or not the plane would hold together. Between the severe turbulence and the water which by then had covered the entire desk, I could hardly read my own writing a half hour later when I was able to send the messages to the radio man. The turbulence near the center was of a nature I had never experienced previously. It was not a sharp jolt as experienced in a cumulus cloud but more of a rhythmic up and down motion. But on top of this there was a motion from side to side that made it especially rough.