ROBERT FOGSEEKER CUNNINGHAM 1919-2008
CLOUD PHYSICS
7. After graduating in 1942 from MIT I joined the aircraft-icing project in the meteorology department and expanded my interest and knowledge in cloud physics. The group at first was composed of Jim Dotson, Bernie Vonnegut, Robert Katz, and myself. We had an unfortunate casualty early on when the pilot and Jim Dotson, head of the group, were killed in a crash of a Lockheed Electra aircraft (the same model used by Amelia Erhardt). We were trying out the feasibility of using this aircraft for icing research. Bernie Vonnegut and myself had a check flight on this aircraft just the day before. Bernie is later known as being the first to use silver iodide to seed clouds. Bernie became the group leader and we continued to do icing research at MIT and aircraft icing research and testing. I spent several winters in Minneapolis flying on military aircraft, mostly a B-25, developmenting hot wing de-icing systems - hot air from the engine was piped to sensitive areas in the wings.
8. Bernie invented an instrument to measure icing rate. This instrument got me involved with an effort by the Air Force weather reconnaissance squadron in Manchester, NH. Spending part of a summer at Gander, Newfoundland, we instrumented a B-17 reconnaissance aircraft with our new instrument to measure the rate of icing. We flew at both 400’ and 10,000’ in this aircraft across to Iceland to support the huge fleet of aircraft returning from Europe at the end of WW II..
9. This icing project got me involved again with Mt Washington, this time in mid winter. In those days one hiked up and down the mountain’s eight mile road with crampons or, at the lower levels, skies. One of the trips down was in pretty bad weather, we waited several days for the wind to die down to 30mph, but after we set out, the winds went back up to 80mph with below zero temperatures. I remember crawling on the ground.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
Following WWII I was part of a four-man group at the Meteorology Dept. at MIT working on A/C icing problems for an Army Air force contract out of Wright Field. The men were Jim Dotson, Bernie Vonnegut, Bob Katz and myself. I carried out the instrumental operation and aircraft flight cloud measurements out of Minneapolis. NW Airlines had a separate contract with the Army Air Force (AAF) to fly the military aircraft. At the same time and place Langmuir and Schaefer were studying the electrical charging of aircraft by precipitation and searching for means of minimizing precipitation static (also on an AAF contract). The problems involved overlapped so that when Langmuir needed data from my in-flight rotating cylinder measurements (see use in above report) and I needed to improve my analysis methods it was simple to exchange information. I remember a visit to see Langmuir at GE where I was shown the Analog Differential Analyzer at work, an impressive machine full of gears and shafts filling a good-sized room. I also remember vividly the flights where we operated probably the first airborne rotating cylinder device for obtaining water content and drop size. I would handle the cylinder covers from the cockpit open back door while a sergeant would be out in the open bomb bay of the B25 bomber. He would lower the rig out the bomb bay and then retrieve it a short time later. While the cylinders iced up he would often sit in the open bomb bay reading a comic book.
FAMILY
Writing stuff here
ANCESTORS AND BOYHOOD
Writing stuf1. First event: Birth July 1,1919 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2. First word: I'm told I used to stand holding on to the windowsill, watching the morning street activities below. One of the first notable events was the approach of the horse drawn wagon selling the refrigeration supplies of the day. The driver was stopping at most of the houses yelling ICE. So my first word was the unconventional word "ICE". A proper start for a Cloud Physicist / Meteorologist.
3. At age 10 I started taking weather observations twice a day, a habit that continues to this day. My other hobby that developed early was carpentry - In the first grade in Shady Hill school each member of the class built their own house, full scale for our size (6' by 4' by 4'), I remember it lasted in the backyard for over a year. Later I built the house in Lincoln, Massachusetts where I raised my family and have lived for nearly 60 years.
4. I remember in high school at Cambridge School of Weston, Bill Gross discussing Bowdoin's new summer bird experimental station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy. He was suggesting that high school students could be very helpful to the college students doing specific bird studies. I was entranced by the prospect and suggested I could run a background project for all by recording weather information. I spent the next three summers on the Island; the second and third summers I paid my board and room by milking a cow as well as doing the weather and collecting fog water. The founding of the Bowdoin Kent Island Scientific Station is well recorded in a book by Keith Ingersoll, "Wings over the Sea". #1. The establishment of the Kent Island weather station is documented by John Conover in a book entitled "The Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory: The First 100 Years-1885-1985 (see p209). Ref. 2.
With the beginning of the Canadian WW11 Bowdoin was considering closing the Kent Island Station. I and two other MIT freshman, Fred Sargent and Charles Ruckstuhl, had plans to be on Kent Island part of the summer of 1939. We traveled to Bowdoin and had a meeting with the President to discus these plans. We convinced him to let us continue our work on Kent for at least another summer, The MIT summer.
I continued the wx observations and fog water sampling, while Fred ran a project comparing the effect of cold fronts on human chances of caching a cold. This was a repeat investigation of a study he made in Exeter Acd where the cold front brought in cold air but on Kent Island in the summer the reverse happens. We arranged for a Med Doc to do the blood testing. Charley was very active with all the amateur radio equipment that included broadcasts that were setup with a Portland Maine commercial station. .
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COLLECTING FOG ON KENT ISLAND
