The last two weeks of January 1949 were very cold. Albion had 15 consecutive days with lows of zero or below, and from eight to 11 days with lows of zero or below were common throughout and around the blizzard area.

“Another bad storm in progress. High winds, drifting snow,” Lois Tompkins [who, with her husband Harvey, ranched near Inman] wrote in her diary on Jan. 27. At Grant, on the southwestern edge of the blizzard area, drifting snow mixed with blowing dust, producing a muddy conglomeration. The greatest precipitation fell southeast of the area already paralyzed: Omaha had 13 inches of snow, and Lincoln received 9½ inches.

The magnitude of the paralysis grew increasingly evident. On Jan. 27, Lois Tompkins wrote, “Heard a telephone call over WNAX [Yankton] to Gov. [Val] Peterson and Gov. Mikkleson [Mickelson] of South Dakota about requesting Fifth Army help in combating the snow.

By the fourth week in January, it was evident that some two million snowbound cattle and sheep in Nebraska and the Dakotas westward to Nevada were in jeopardy. On Jan. 21, the Tenth Air Force had dissolved its Domestic Emergency Relief Team, but the weather continued to deteriorate, and it was reestablished three days later. To feed stranded livestock, the Air Force launched Operation Hayride, better known as Operation Haylift, using C‑47 and C‑82 cargo planes. Denver’s Lowry Air Force Base was headquarters for Operation Haylift work in Nebraska and South Dakota. On the ground the Army was using Weasels to bring supplies and assistance to stranded people.

From Lincoln, Governor Val Peterson asked county boards of commissioners how they were coping with storm recovery. In response, he received many telegrams saying that county governments lacked the money and equipment to open roads; deep snow and drifts kept cattle from getting to feed; and, in some cases, long‑isolated rural people were exhausting food and fuel supplies.

It was obvious that more equipment was needed to open the thousands of miles of county roads, and on Jan. 24, the Governor appealed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Fifth Army for aid. The Governor declared a state of emergency in all of 22 counties and parts of seven counties in northern Nebraska. Under the direction of Brigadier General Guy N. Henninger, the adjutant general, a command post for “Operation Snowbound” relief activities was set up in the basement of the capitol building.

To emphasize the urgency of the situation, the governor used figures compiled by Rufus Howard, Nebraska director of agriculture, who estimated that in the 29 counties wholly or partly in the storm emergency area, there were 1,684,440 cattle worth $2.53 million (about $1.95 million in 2003 dollars). If sheep and hogs were added, along with livestock in areas on the periphery of the storm‑stricken territory, the value of livestock possibly in jeopardy was much higher.

Fifth Army bulldozers, Weasels and “Sno-gos” (four-wheel-drive trucks equipped with separately powered augers) were already at work, and General John P. Lucas, the deputy commander, recommended that the Army assume control of relief efforts. Civilian and military officials who made aerial inspections of the snowbound area were impressed with the seriousness of the situation. Near the end of a flight over north-central Nebraska, Assistant Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray said, “After what we’ve just seen in this last stretch, I wouldn’t be prepared to argue that there was anyone alive down there.” However, a humorous perspective came to Governor Peterson in an amateur radio message from his home town of Elgin, in hard‑hit Antelope County: “My cow is hungry as hell. Please toss her a bale of hay when you go over.”

In early February, 250 Nebraska guardsmen formed eight-man “mercy teams” in several snowbound areas, and in Cherry and Thomas counties, guardsmen from Lincoln operating bulldozers and hay‑laden military trucks brought relief to some 150 ranchers, often leaving roads or trails and following a guide on horseback.

Frameworks of local support were critical to the work of state and federal authorities and the Red Cross. Even before Operation Snowbound began, local and county leaders had formed emergency teams to work with military and civilian agencies in directing bulldozers, deploying Weasels and aircraft, and assisting Air Force Operation Haylift flights.

When a hay shortage developed in the southern Panhandle, price gouging became a possibility. To forestall it, County Agents William P. Bullock of Cheyenne County and Paul E. Miller of Kimball County, along with State Senator Ray Babcock, arranged for hay and alfalfa to be shipped in. Bullock also secured the release of a locally held supply of straw.

A 1950 study by Wesley Calef of the University of Chicago denied that real shortages had existed: “At no stage in the later storm period were there any serious local shortages of livestock feed anywhere,” the report contended. “The problem was not one of importing livestock feed into a particular area, but of distributing it within that area.” Calef’s basic point was probably valid, but he may have overstated his case.

Because of its large size and the severe impact of the winter, Holt County was a center of blizzard relief activity. At O’Neill, the county seat, 60 inches of snow had fallen since the November storm. Since November, pilots in O’Neill and other Holt County towns had provided some links to the outside and had been transporting necessities, and amateur radio operators also were helpful, but increasing livestock losses were a growing worry. Around 3 a.m. on Jan. 23, Kearney Air Base snowplows arrived to clear the airport road and the runway so a C-47 cargo plane could land. Winds and a plow breakdown hampered the work, but it was finished in the next few days.

As blizzard relief organizations were created in Garfield and Blaine counties, Burwell organizers arranged for airlifts of hay to ranches in neighboring Loup County. One of the Burwell men, B.W. (“Tiny”) Wagner, would later be described as “the civilian brains” for Haylift operations in Garfield, Loup and Blaine counties. When Air Force Operation Haylift flights from Kearney Air Force Base began on Jan. 26, Wagner and others he enlisted provided directions for C-47 (“Sky train”) and C-82 (“Flying Boxcar”) flights to drop hay. In arranging these details, Wagner spent $6,000 of his own money for hay trucked or flown to Kearney, some of it coming from as far away as Wichita. In the daily operations through the first week of February, Wagner also went on Haylift flights and spent considerable time on the telephone.

In arranging Haylift assistance for Blaine County, Wagner phoned Blaine County Treasurer Dan Norris of Brewster to inquire about stockmen in that county who needed help. Norris conducted a telephone survey, but to contact ranchers without phones he sought the aid of Herb Hardin, a North Platte pilot who also flew Red Cross aid missions. Hardin flew over the ranches and dropped notes tied to lumps of coal, giving instructions how to signal if they needed hay. Some recipients did need Haylift drops. Norris said, “We saw much trouble from the air,” including seven cows lying dead near one ranch house.

The C‑47s carried a payload of 2.5 tons, the C‑82s, 4.5 tons. Along with the crew on each flight was a spotter, as well as Air Force and civilian “kickers” – four or five on the C-47s and seven or eight on the C-82s – whose job it was to shove hay out the open cargo doors. Kickers were kept from falling out by straps secured to a bulkhead. The spotter was a civilian familiar with the area who guided the pilot to the ranch in need. At the sound of a buzzer from the cockpit, the kickers shoved out the bales of hay. Most broke apart on impact.

Civilians on Haylift missions had to sign a waiver freeing the government of any liability. The also had to designate next of kin. Nevertheless, the atmosphere aboard Haylift flights was cheerful. Air Force personnel enjoyed the low‑level flights, and the civilians were thrilled by the novelty as well as feeling they were doing something useful. Obviously, there was some danger in these missions: two C-47’s – one from Kearney and the other from Lowry – were seriously damaged when hay bales struck their vertical stabilizers. Fortunately, both aircraft landed safely at Kearney Air Force Base.

B.W. Wagner and his associates arranged 54 drops totaling about 240 tons of hay. Each of the 54 ranchers in Garfield, Loup and Blaine counties received from 34 to 404 bales. The Haylift program coordinated by the Chadron Junior Chamber of Commerce dropped 1,854 bales to 29 local ranchers.

Blizzard relief work was a final big moment for the Kearney Air Force Base, which was soon to close. One C-47 sent from Kearney to North Platte on Jan. 10, made 78 or more drops to towns and ranches. Thirteen planes from Kearney’s 27th Fighter Group were used to search the countryside for distress signals. By the last week of January, 11 C-47s and 10 C-82s from Kearney were available for Operation Haylift duty. The snowplows and their crews dispatched to O’Neill represented a peculiar contribution from Kearney Air Force Base.

Belying the base’s imminent demise was the activity at its public information office. Radio station WOW in Omaha routinely used material from the base in its evening newscasts, and the airmen sent to O’Neill were filmed and interviewed by army newsreel units. Operation Haylift was the topic of many press releases from the Information Office, and the Air Force welcomed such good publicity. In an internal report, the office described a peak in the relief work as, “the best weekly period that we have covered,” emerging from a situation “that normally would not arise.”

Even before the Haylift flights from Kearney Air Force Base began, planes from LowryField in Denver had been carrying hay to stranded cattle and sheep in western Nebraska. Some hay was brought to Alliance for use by aircraft from Lowry, and some Haylift flights to the Sheridan County‑Pine Ridge Reservation area along the Nebraska‑South Dakota border came from Rapid City Air Force Base. According to the Strategic Aid Command, two Haylift missions were flown from Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha.

Not everyone was convinced the Haylift flights were useful. As the operation got underway on a large scale, Governor Peterson called the innovation “impractical” and apparently considered it a publicity stunt. In fact, the vast number of cattle needing feed rendered Haylift impractical compared with the relief that could be supplied by ground‑based operations. Haylift crews tried to drop bales as close to livestock as possible, but even if it landed within a hundred yards, animals caught in ice‑crusted drifts might not be able to reach it. Sometimes cattle were frightened by the aircraft and bolted.

Dan Norris probably put Operation Haylift in proper perspective when he said, “No doubt the operation did a great deal of good in its way. It was a temporary measure, and kept cattle alive until they could be fed in the natural way.” Y

 

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