Opinion

Ball lightning

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

It was a race and I wasn't 100 percent sure that we were going to win. The speed contest was between a thunderstorm, a rather large one, and our steed of the evening, a super nice twin-engine aircraft. The McCook Airport the goal. We won but not by much. Incidentally it was the same thunderstorm that disrupted and delayed the Bison football game.

Especially from the air, thunderstorms at night on the Great Plains can be an awesome sight to behold. The shafts of falling rain are lighted by nearly continuous lighting flashes. Big storms climb to 50,000 feet in altitude, all lighted by bursts of electrical energy. Definitely not a place for an airplane to venture into, no matter how brave the pilot.

We were returning from Enid, Oklahoma, last Friday evening, an hour or so after sunset. We had a "heads up" that there might be a problem when the local Great Lakes Air airliner diverted to Kearney instead of landing at McCook.

A few minutes earlier, we noted the lights of a possible safe haven at Norton, Kansas, if the storm had beat us to our destination. Yet from 40 miles south, the lights of McCook were in sight, including a welcoming airport beacon, urging us to come on home. Still, the thunderstorm on the west side of the City was intimidating with continuous lightning flashes. The first drops of rain were splashing the windshield as we touched down to roll out on an already rain-dampened runway.

By the time we had taxied to the hangar the gust front passed and the airplane rocked and rolled in pelting rain as the propellers came to a stop. We were soaked to the skin pushing the airplane back into its safe-haven hangar. No problem, the clothing will dry and we won't rust. Rain, rain, blessed welcome rain.

Then this week I read of a research lab that has learned how to generate ball lightning to study that somewhat rare phenomena. They described it as leftover electrons forming a spherical shape for a short time after a lightning strike, and then quietly dissipating or, rarely, simply exploding.

Submarine crews of the World War II era seem to be the first to experience ball lightning and didn't like it at all.

Those subs were diesel powered, with large generators charging huge battery packs in the bottom of their boat. When submerged, the engines were turned off (no air to breathe) and large electric motors provided power to turn the screws. The transition from diesel to electric necessitated throwing large switches that sometimes caused large sparks. On rare occasions that spark would generate a ball of charged electrons that wandered along above the deck before dissipating or just moving out through the hull of the ship. Those balls of charged particles would sometimes touch the legs of the crewmen burning hair and causing pain. Not popular, just ask a veteran who had it happen to him.

The study "Air Force Scientists Share insights About Lab-Created Ball Lightning" told of a "famous" happening of a C-133A crew that experienced ball lightning while flying from California to Hawaii. I wasn't familiar with that incident, but my memory was jogged to remember an incident closer to home.

It was the summer of 1969 and I was pilot of a KC-135. My crew was leading a three ship formation flying out of Okinawa during the Vietnam War. We had launched at an ungodly hour; something like four o'clock in the morning. Climbing to altitude on a westerly heading, we threaded around and past a series of thunderstorms embedded in a thick haze. Through the murk, we could make out the core or each storm proudly displaying their lightning signatures.

The navigator had his face in the radar scope to see the storms and provide a clear path to avoid their rain and turbulence. He just directed me to turn to a heading of probably 270 degrees. He also stated that we should be passing the last of the small thunderstorms. "Kerash!" Like looking into a hundred flashbulbs bright light accompanied by instant thunder. LOUD! We'd been struck by a big bolt of lightning on our nose, just in front of the windshield. By memory, I reached overhead and turned the "thunderstorm lights" to full bright.

Glancing over at my copilot I noted that he'd just turned into 200 pounds of dumb. The navigator thought that his radar scope had exploded but then it just kept on working as normal.

The aircraft kept flying just as if nothing had happened at all. No radio failure, no holes drilled in the skin as sometimes happen with lightning strikes, nothing untoward at all. We kept on and flew the refueling mission as briefed. Our flight refueled a like number of B-52 bombers loaded with bombs somewhere north of the Philippines. They were on their way to drop devastation somewhere in Vietnam. We flew on to our briefed base in Thailand and reported the lightning strike to maintenance. No damage--lucky.

My boom operator was sitting at his forward crew station about eight feet behind my seat in the cockpit and he had the best story of all.

When he could talk again, he related that when the lightning struck the nose, he saw a bright ball about the size of a basketball come through the windshield. It floated past his seat and into the empty cargo compartment. Leisurely, it proceeded aft and then passed through the sealed door at the rear of the compartment some eighty feet behind our cockpit.

Ball lightning, I'd never heard of it. I've experienced St. Elmo's fire while flying at night many times, but this ball thing was different. The incident caused me to do a little research and I found this latest study enlightening.

US Air Force Academy study leader, Dr. Mike Lindsay, said "Ball lightning is used almost generically to describe phenomena seen in nature that aren't described by normal lightning, bead lightning or things like St Elmo's fire' or aurora. And likely it's not one thing but several things that have similar observables."

Gee, my crew must have been privileged to be on the receiving end of one of nature's strange anomalies.

Still, it beats flying through any thunderstorm, whether in Nebraska or the far reaches of the Pacific. Makes sense to delay a football game, also.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail

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