MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, was my first tour of duty after enlisting in the military in 1976. When I arrived on the base, one of the first things I noticed was the tropical climate and how different it was from where I grew up in Minneapolis. One intriguing feature was the clocklike precision of afternoon thunderstorms. From the Flightline, you could watch the wall of rain sweep down two miles of runways and across the sea of asphalt, which made up the Flightline. The resulting humidity and steam arising from the previously scorching tarmac once the storm passed was quite oppressive. The rain itself was different from anything I experienced in Minnesota. The volume of water that fell was astounding even though the downpours were short-lived.

MacDill AFB occupies the southern tip of the Tampa Bay Penisula, and the water surrounding it consists of Tampa Bay, Old Tampa Bay, and Hillsborough Bay.  

In the spring of 1980, I was working the graveyard shift. Our crew’s job was to ensure the fighter jets weapons systems were operational for the next days bombing runs to Avon Park. MacDill, a pilot training base at the time, practiced dropping all types of ordinances in a controlled setting.

I lived about a mile off-base from the main gate and traveled each night to my job by bicycle. Once I cleared the main artery for cars, I would cut over to the FlightLine and follow the service vehicle route, which skirted the edge of the tarmac. My shift started at midnight on May 8, 1980, and it was a typical night with high humidity, warm breezes, and the smell of salt air and jet fuel. As the shift started, the calendar turned, and it was now the early morning of May 9th.

The work we did that night was the same as every other night. Our four-person crew made sure that the jets scheduled to fly in the morning, were properly configured with the missiles and bombs required for the next days training mission. We normally completed our tasks by 5:30 AM and then waited for the dayshift to relieve our crew. It is unusual to get rain at night, and once the afternoon showers rolled through around 4:30 PM, the rest of the day and night tended to remain calm. The following day the heat would start to rebuild the thunderheads. During the night, we could see what the locals referred to as heat lightning. The flashes of lightning deep inside cloud formations appeared in the distance over Gulf, and seldom had any effect on our weather at the base.

At 5:43 AM on the morning of May 9 in the Gulf of Mexico, the 609 foot 34,000-ton Summit Venture, raised anchor and headed for the entrance to Tampa Bay.

At 6:30 AM, the National Weather Service in Ruskin Florida reported a line of intense thunderstorms 65 nautical miles west of Tampa Bay. The line which had developed out of a moist tropical air mass was moving at nearly 40 miles per hour toward the east.

At 7:15 AM, with my shift nearly completed, I saw the weather rapidly deteriorating around me. It was not like the approach of a normal storm with a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder every few seconds. This storm had lightning resembling a laser show and a continuous rumble of thunder growing louder as it rolled maliciously toward us.                                                                                                                                             

7:25 AM, the Summit Venture was starting its approach toward the Skyway Bridge that connects St Petersburg to Bradenton as part of Interstate 275. The severity of the sudden storm completely blinded the crew of the Summit Venture with winds estimated between 60 and 70 mph, and a falling rain volume equivalent to 7 inches per hour.

7:31 AM, the Summit Venture’s pilot, gets his first visual of the bridge and immediately realizes he is no longer in the shipping channel. The pilot issues a series of commands for evasive measures.

7:34 AM, the Summit Venture collides with the Skyway bridge, and 1297 feet of the roadway falls 150 feet into the water below. Eight vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, unaware of the collapse and traveling with limited visibility drive off the end of the remaining roadway. Within minutes 35 people have lost their lives in the accident.

7:42 AM, the wind from the storm on-base reaches nearly 40 mph, and the rain fell in a volume that I had never witnessed before or since. Having been caught temporarily outside in the onslaught, I found it difficult to catch my breath with the sheer amount of water pouring over me.  

The storm cleared the base and moved to the east by 8:15 AM. The mighty deluge of rainfall had no place to go on a base with only a few feet of elevation. The Flightline, service roads, infields were all flooded with six or more inches of standing water. And what normally was a sea of pavement, now looked like a massive shallow lake.

Riding my bike home that morning was difficult through the standing water. It was not until I arrived that I learned of the Skyway Bridge disaster. After witnessing the storm on the base, I could easily imagine the difficulty the crew must have faced in trying to navigate the large ship through the binding storm.