Meteorological Satellites (continued)

It is interesting to note that Harry and Victor were representing the two nations engaged in the cold war of that time while Robbie and I were WMO representatives. Russian authorities were obviously doubtful of the wisdom of having Victor Bugaev exposed to situations in which he might reveal Russian plans, for he was not permitted to attend the first meeting of the Panel and I cannot recall if he was present at later meetings in Washington in February/March 1961 or Geneva in March 1962. However I was to become well-acquainted with Victor in other WMO activities and found him to be a well-informed meteorological scientist and a delightful companion.

I have vivid memories of the first meeting of the Panel of Experts in Geneva in November 1959. Harry, Robbie and I met in a small room in the Secretariat of WMO and discussed the possible use of artificial satellites in meteorology. None of us had detailed knowledge of the capability of satellites which at that stage had limited payloads and operational life spans.

Harry brought with him an interesting 16 mm film taken by a camera in the nose cone of an Atlas 11C rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida (later named Cape Kennedy) on 24 August 1959. The rocket soared in a south-easterly direction across the islands of the West Indies and the camera in the rotating nose cone had captured remarkable pictures of the islands, the ocean and the northern coastline of South America, I was so impressed with the manner in which it demonstrated the potential of artificial satellites to reveal cloud distributions over the data sparse Southern Ocean that I prevailed upon Harry to provide me with a copy which I still have.

Bureau of Meteorology