Old Weather Forum

Completed the year, spend a good part of December looking for lost ships and people, and to the Governor for a trip

Also observed some sperm whales

Great job. It's in the queue behind Haida 1928 and McCulloch 19 something.

Wow, that was fast! *clap clap clap*

I assume you have the new job and new house sorted out, and therefore have more time for OW again?

New home and job sorted, plus I had to isolate this weekend (tested negative, so back to normality)

I suspect the next log won't be quite so quick

Slow is OK!
Just don't desert

Wednesday, 15 February, 1939

They have been out searching for a missing plane that failed to arrive in Juneau. I haven't seen anything like this in the logs before. Maybe it's a special request by the authorities to help aircraft who may also be searching the area.

0700: Called all hands and performed regular morning routine. Sent hourly weather to Sitka Naval Air Station & Juneau.

There is an article in the Nome Nugget, which is not behind a paywall.
Two articles from the N. Y. Times, which are behind a paywall.

https://www.nytimes.com/1939/02/13/arch ... craft.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1939/03/18/arch ... plane.html

Michael wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 5:39 pm Wednesday, 15 February, 1939

They have been out searching for a missing plane that failed to arrive in Juneau. I haven't seen anything like this in the logs before. Maybe it's a special request by the authorities to help aircraft who may also be searching the area.

0700: Called all hands and performed regular morning routine. Sent hourly weather to Sitka Naval Air Station & Juneau.

Its not the first time I've seen something like that, for example at 0230 here:

https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 8-0009.JPG

and in 1945 she appears to be a weather station/observation outpost and I expect some weather records to be sent back to base, (see also viewtopic.php?p=11061#p11061)

Whether those records still exist and can be found is a different question, I guess it could be worth it for the scientists to have a look

Kevin's looking for them. The Canadian and US Coast Guard operated weather ships that were stationed off the east and west coasts. As well as taking hourly weather, they also launched weather balloons twice a day. One of my friends worked for the Canadian Coast Guard and he went out on a weather ship at least a couple of times. They would be on station for two weeks at a time, I think.

I think these other notes about sending weather data probably has something to do with providing data for aircraft on a special mission, such as a search.

The voyage for 1939 has been completed. It was great work by Joke Slayer. It would have been helpful if the log keeper was a diligent and accurate!

The plot of the voyage can be seen here. For more detail, download the KML file and view it with Google Earth. The people mentioned, can be found here.