US Air Force's 'Hurricane Hunters' fly into the eye of Hurricane Fiona

US airmen known as the 'Hurricane Hunters' have captured daylight views from inside the eye of a deadly hurricane.

The Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron took on the dangerous mission over the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.

They were flying in the storm to collect "measurements and information" to provide "better environmental data for the models to use in both track and intensity forecasting", according to the US Air Force Reserve.

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Hurricane Fiona recently strengthened into a Category 4 storm on Wednesday after devastating Puerto Rico before then hitting the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The squadron, according to the US Department of Defense, is the only operational unit in the world flying weather reconnaissance on a routine basis with the mission to "provide atmospheric data that forecasters use to create more accurate models".