Flying in bad weather - Part 1 of 2

To give the families an understanding of the conditions in which we flew, I told them that a, about an experience I had which almost duplicated that in which Bill Rogers and his crew lost their lives.

It happened earlier during the same monsoon season over the same jungle covered mountains. We were returning empty from Meiktila in the central plain to our base in Tulihal in the Imphal Valley. It was late afternoon, we were flying our third mission that day. As we approached the jungle covered hills from the east, we were confronted by a wall of thunderheads in front of us. Carrying no oxygen and not being pressurized, we are at a ceiling limit of 12,000 feet to 14,000 feet, the cumulonimbus clouds normally towered above 25,000 feet, with their bottoms covering the 35,000 foot hills, I saw a patch of bright sunlight between two boiling clouds at about 6,000 feet. I commenced climbing to fly through it to the other side of the line of clouds and into the valley where our base was located. As we approached the hole, it quickly closed and before I could turn the aircraft around we were suddenly caught in a steep, in a violent updraft.