178-mile winds slam Coast Guard station in remote Aleutians

alaskaflyer

alaskaflyer

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The crew at the Coast Guard station on Attu Island was digging out Wednesday following a weekend storm packing hurricane-force winds that left 7-foot snow drifts and a thick layer of ice on just about everything.

The storm shook the Loran Station's 1-foot thick concrete walls. The sturdy station's wind meter peaked out early Sunday with a 178 mph-hour blast.
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Now that's a blizzard! One of it's antenna's is gone. Pretty good engineering to only lose one. Wonder if it's affecting LORAN coverage up there... is there a NOTAM up for LORAN outages?

I love that they ventured out in 80 mph winds to dig themselves out, since it was "tame" by then.
 
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Been there... Remember the line from Top Gun "And if you screw up just this much, you'll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog **** out of Hong Kong!!"?

When I was in the CG, it was..."And if you screw up just this much, you'll be counting days at LORANSTA Attu!!"

Edit: I wasn't there because I'd screwed up just that much.
 
Sounds like the CG's equivalent to Adak for the Navy. Although the Navy isn't there anymore.

Oh the other hand, the story was that Diego Garcia was so bad that they sent their people to Adak for R&R. :D
 
My dad was stationed there flying P38s in 45 and 46. I heard stories of slush storms leaving 6 feet of slush. They lost more pilots to weather on patrols than combat. Wonder what he did to get assigned there?
 
My Dad was stationed at Adak during the Korean war flying air-sea rescue B-17's. Not many pilots flew B-17's in two wars. I remember his telling me that other than hunting ptarmigan there was not much to do.
 
Dad fell in love with Skiing there. Over night I remembered that they called the slush storms Willawa's or something like that.
 
I was always afraid I'd wind up on Adak or Shemya for the last of my hitch in the Navy. Fortunately I got an early-out instead. They say there's a woman behind every tree on Adak...
 
RickH said:
I was always afraid I'd wind up on Adak or Shemya for the last of my hitch in the Navy. Fortunately I got an early-out instead. They say there's a woman behind every tree on Adak...
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Shemya was not so bad...once you were on the ground. Flying in and out of there could be, um, interesting.
 
RickH said:
I was always afraid I'd wind up on Adak or Shemya for the last of my hitch in the Navy. Fortunately I got an early-out instead. They say there's a woman behind every tree on Adak...
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Watch it! One of these days I'll find my pictures of Adak National Forest and scan them in. The sign says, "You are now entering and leaving Adak National Forest". :D
 
Just found this scan of my dad on Shemya
 

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wby0nder said:
My dad was stationed there flying P38s in 45 and 46. I heard stories of slush storms leaving 6 feet of slush. They lost more pilots to weather on patrols than combat. Wonder what he did to get assigned there?
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My bigger question is what he did to survive.

Hats off to the man, not only for flying my favorite airplane (two V12s? That's just awesome) but surviving.
 
The Lightning did not get the nickname of flying coffin for nothing...

denny-o
 
Apparently the later versions of the 38 were pretty good airplanes. However, I have a letter to my dad after he returned to the states (46) in which he's informed that all the Lightnings have been grounded because his pal Zim had spun to his death on a routine flight near Seattle. Pretty sure these were L model Lightnings.
 
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