galveston texas. more than 6 million vacationers come here each up here frolicking on the shores of the gulf of mexico. it s hard to believe seeing it that this peaceful place was the epicenter of the greatest natural disaster in the history of the united states. it was 1900 and galveston was thriving. the largest city in texas, booming population building fortunes from galveston s busy commercial ports, shipping content and receiving goods from your. galveston was on an incredible growth pattern. was without a doubt the queen city of the gulf. it was quite clear. september 8, 1900 began as a day like this one. with clear skies and calm seas. the skies turned black, the weather took a terrifying turn. the good people of galveston had
galveston texas. more than 6 million vacationers come here each up here frolicking on the shores of the gulf of mexico. it s hard to believe seeing it that this peaceful place was the epicenter of the greatest natural disaster in the history of the united states. it was 1900 and galveston was thriving. the largest city in texas, booming population building fortunes from galveston s busy commercial ports, shipping content and receiving goods from your. galveston was on an incredible growth pattern. was without a doubt the queen city of the gulf. it was quite clear. september 8, 1900 began as a day like this one. with clear skies and calm seas. the skies turned black, the weather took a terrifying turn. the good people of galveston had
thriving. the largest city in all of texas, a booming population, building fortunes from galvesto galveston s busy commercial ports, shipping cotton and receiving goods from europe. galveston was on an incredible growth pattern. it was without a doubt, the queen city of the gulf. rightfully earned that title. jon: september 8th, 1900 was a day like this one. clear skies and calm seas. but the skies suddenly turned black, the weather took a terrifying turn. the good people of galveston had virtually no defense against the great storm sweeping in from the sea. a category four hurricane lashed the islands community. it carried no name as was the practice of the time. it went up to 140 miles an hour and worse, a surge of seawater over a 15 feet high over want to be on protected city, leveling
so they had to come together and plan this out, because two things. yes, the weather was going to be important, obviously. but a couple of things also had to come together. we had to have the right moon, and the right tide. we had to have a full moon, but not just a full moon, a late rising full moon, because the paratroopers needed to come in, in full darkness. then you needed a low tide. at first, they thought high tide less beach to get things through. but no, they leaded a low tide, but a rising low tide so they wouldn t get stuck and the minimal cloud cover and light winds, calm seas. that was going to be a problem. we had a storm system that was rolling through on the 5th, so they could not go on the way they wanted to go. but the weather folks were able to forecast this quick and brief clearing that occurred on the 6th. the parameters, those weather
reference. calm seas, glassy water, anything like that you re going to have a very difficult time judging depth. 200 feet per minute on the rate of descent on the vert kl speed. in the middle of the ocean if you don t have an altimeter setting you don t have a frame of reference. you only have your bsi. i forget what your question was. mitch, i think you just made a brilliant point which is if the pilots were in control, they d never let the situation happen where they d actually run out of fuel. they d realize they had no other option and they d make a powered approach on to the ocean. i think that s a brilliant point you just made. i m going to add one extra question to that, mitch. that s this. with our brand-new map we received today that shows a very curious route, skirting the northern part of indonesia and then arcing back around southward and flying on for several hours southward to the south indian ocean, is there any circumstance that you can imagine where there would be