In late July 1943, German U-boats were in the Gulf of Mexico. The Allies were starting to make progress in turning back the Axis in Europe, Africa and the Pacific. And a hurricane was heading from off Louisiana toward Galveston. No one on land knew about the hurricane because the government censored warnings because of national security. The storm that landed on July 27, 1943, has become known as “The Surprise Hurricane.” It also led to another surprise. An Army pilot and navigator at Bryan Field took a bet from British pilots being trained at the field and flew, unauthorized, into the storm. The Hurricane Hunters flights were created.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration history page reports the Orange-Port Arthur-Beaumont area had widespread flooding with one area in Port Arthur getting 19 inches. The storm killed 19 people and caused about $17 million in damages. One of the deaths was in Port Arthur, plus four men on the sea-going tugboat Titan in the Gulf near Port Arthur drowned. Ten others on the tug survived on a life raft. (Orange Leader newspapers from the time are not available on microfilm.)
Hurricane historian Lew Fincher and meteorologist Bill Read, who wrote the NOAA history, said accurate records can’t be found on the size and strength of the storm. Decades later when they researched the hurricane, the Galveston and Houston Weather Service offices did not have the records. The speculation is that the records were shipped to Washington as classified because of national security.
The war was the reason for the silence on the weather warnings. In those days, meteorologists relied on reports from ships at sea about storms to forecast. Because of the U-boats in the Gulf, the ships were under strict radio silence and were not allowed to use the radios. Radar would not be used to forecast until another decade. Satellites weren’t available until the 1960s.
Another reason the government wanted to downplay the storm was because the Texas Gulf Coast was a center of production for the war. Orange and other cities had shipyards. Port Arthur, Texas City and Houston had oil refineries. Even after the storm hit, news about the damaged was censored because officials didn’t want the Axis countries to know.
The NOAA history said the storm began as a depression on July 25 southeast of Burrwood, Louisiana, and headed west. Newspapers on Monday, July 26, 1943, reported on a storm with winds of 30 to 40 miles per hours and advised small craft to stay in port. When a Houston Weather Bureau meteorologist was asked for more details, he said “don’t get the people disturbed by the use of the word ‘hurricane.’”
The storm began to hit the coast the morning of July 27. The official record lists the maximum sustained winds as 86 mph, which would put it in the Category 1 storm designation. But Fincher and Read think the storm was a Category 2 after researching unofficial records. Texas City recorded a peak wind of 104 mph. A gust of 132 mph was recorded at Ellington Field in Houston. Towers in the Houston Ship Channel designed to withstand 120 mph winds were blown over.
The late Elaine Toal, a longtime Orangefield High School librarian, grew up in Texas City and told her remembrances of the storm. It hit on her 13th birthday and the family didn’t know the storm was a hurricane. As it got stronger, her parents decided to take their four children to a neighbor’s house which was stronger. She was the oldest of the four children and was walking on her own. A gust blew her across their yard. She grabbed onto a small tree in the yard and held tight until her father waded through the water to get her. Her mother had put on a wool coat and put the family’s silverware in the pockets. Because of the flooding, her mother couldn’t see a ditch and stepped into it. The wet wool and silver weighed her down and she struggled to get out. The family made it safely to the neighbor’s.
The NOAA history said 90 percent of all the buildings in Texas City had either water damage or structural damage.
Fincher and Read tracked the storm from Galveston straight across Galveston Bay to Kemah, Seabrook and LaPorte. Houston suffered through the storm in the evening. The eye went over downtown at 11:45 p.m.
No storm warnings since have been censored in the United States. And a bet made future storm forecasting more accurate. British pilots were at Bryan Field near College Station training on the then-new instrument equipment. The morning of the 27th, word came that a hurricane was nearby and the British bet their American instructor that he couldn’t fly into the storm. Lt. Ralph O’Hair, a U.S. navigator, later told the historians that the British thought a hurricane was a strong thunderstorm. Col. Joe Duckworth, the pilot and instructor, got O’Hair to fly as his navigator. They didn’t ask for official permission and flew straight into the hurricane. They were the first to see inside the eye of the storm and the dark eye wall. When they returned, the meteorologist at the field wanted to go and Duckworth took him back for a look. The Hurricane Hunters were born.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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