"Here was a spectacle to excite the derision or pity of the gods."
In our last issue we covered Halsey's Typhoons. A number of our members asked for a more complete description of the event, especially the December 1944 Typhoon Cobra.
There is no more vivid naval author (in my opinion) than Samuel Eliot Morrison. So without further ado here are key excerpts from the admiral's description of events. - DWT
... before Task Force 38 could do anything else, it encountered the worst storm of the year in the Philippine Sea.
This typhoon was comparatively small; but, owing to the fact that a number of deballasted destroyers ran smack into it, more damage was inflicted on the Navy than by any other storm since the famous [storm] at Apia, Samoa, in March 1889. Three destroyers capsized and six or seven other ships were seriously damaged, with the loss of almost 800 officers and men. As Admiral Nimitz said, this was the greatest uncompensated loss that the Navy had taken since the Battle of Savo Island.
Task Force 38 at this time was composed of seven Essex-class and six light carriers, eight battleships, four heavy and eleven light cruisers and fifty destroyers. Captain Jasper T. Acuff's fueling group of the Third Fleet attending it comprised twelve fleet oilers, three fleet tugs, five destroyers, ten destroyer escorts and five escort carriers with replacement planes. The fuel supply of many combatant ships was dangerously low after their three days' strikes on Luzon.
Rendezvous took place as planned at lat. 14 50' N , long. 129 57' E, in the eastern half of Philippine Sea, early Sunday morning 17 December. Fueling began promptly. There was a 20-to 30-knot wind from the NNE to NE, with a sea from the same direction, which made the transfer of oil difficult from the start. This fuelling area, selected as the nearest spot to Luzon outside Japanese fighter-plane radius, lay in the normal track of typhoons.
Weather signs on the 17th were not such as to arouse a seaman's apprehension, and the Pacific Fleet aerological service gave no hint of what was cooking; could not have done so, because Pacific Fleet had moved so fast and so near enemy-held areas that it had been impossible to establish enough weather reporting stations.
Weather map analyses were made four times a day by Pacific Fleet Weather Central at Pearl Harbor, whose forecasts were sent out twice daily to the Fleet by radio. Each aircraft carrier had her own weather man on board and flagship New Jersey had an experienced one, Commander G. F. Kosco, a graduate of the aerology course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had also studied hurricanes in the West Indies. Yet none of these individuals or staffs were able to give Third Fleet due warning of the typhoon's approach.
The reason for the forecasters' failure lay in the nature of the beast. It was a small "tropical disturbance" that suddenly and unpredictably developed into a typhoon. The foul, Caliban-like birth of this little monster was unobserved by ship, shore station or search plane. So this tight, young, wicked little typhoon came whirling along undetected toward waters where Third Fleet was trying to fuel.
Portents
Sunset that Sunday evening was not one to cheer the heart of a seaman, or to suggest hymn-singing, unless "For Those in Peril on the Sea." A sinister afterglow remained in the sky. The sea was deep black except where the wind whipped off wave crests into spindrift.
On board carrier Kwajalein, then heading almost dead into the wind, "as each wave rolled under, the entire bow would come out of the water, hover for a few seconds, and then crash, taking the flight deck almost to sea level. Plates were clanging and snapping and ripples ran up and down the steel hangar deck. The forward lockouts, normally stationed in the catwalks, were ordered to secure."
Admiral Halsey now cancelled No. 3 fueling rendezvous because the ships could not possibly reach it in time, and at 2221 set a new one (No. 4) for next morning, well to the northwestward, at lat. 15-deg 30' N, long. 127-deg 40' E. He hoped that at this position the wind would be on the starboard beam of fueling ships. At 2307 Admiral Halsey ordered all carriers and their escorts to change course from due West to due South at midnight in the hope of finding smoother water, and to NW at 0200 December 18 for fueling rendezvous No. 4. This move was unfortunate, as it took many ships straight into the path of the advancing typhoon.
At midnight, having reached lat. 15 17 N, long. 127 50 E, the task force changed course as ordered to the southward, and at 0200, when directly in the path of the typhoon, to the northwestward. Half an hour later, Commander Kosco "waked up and sort of thought something was wrong," but after checking reports and looking at the barometer he reflected that things didn't look too bad.
Maybe not, from a battlewagon, but it certainly looked ominous from escort carriers and destroyers. The Fleet was now so spread out that weather records in the logs of different ships show varying conditions. The log of Hancock, remote from the center, notes only "scattered showers" prior to 0800, when "heavy continuous rain" started. Escort carrier Kwajalein, in Captain Acuff's group well to the eastward, had to heave to, and with both engines ahead full and wind 45 degrees on the starboard bow, made a few knots' leeway.
Salt water was blowing horizontally at bridge level. There seemed to be no separation between sea and sky. The sound of the wind in the rigging, especially in the large "bedspring" radar, was frightening. "The battle ensign was reduced to a small scrap showing two stars."
Wind had now risen to 37-43 knots from a few degrees E of N, and the glass had fallen to 29.61. Still, this was no clear evidence of a serious typhoon. About 1000 when the barometer "started falling very, very rapidly," testified Commander Kosco, he began to feel that something nasty was coming, since this was the typical barometric nose-dive of a typhoon. Also at 1000, for the first time, the wind was observed to be backing counter-clockwise, sure sign of a typhoon, and that the sea was making up rapidly. According to Wasp's log, the sea was "very high" at 1030 and "mountainous" between 1130 and 1430. And by 1400 the wind had risen to 73 knots, almost hurricane force.
As the center of this tight, violently whirling cyclone approached, the weather became worse than the foulest epithet can describe. The eye of the typhoon passed so near several carriers as to show clearly on their SG radar screens.
Photographs made of Wasp's radar screen - the first probably ever taken of the eye of a storm - have the appearance of an Edgar Allan Poe thriller. The seas took on those confused pyramidal shapes characteristic of hurricanes. Wind velocities were reported of over 100 knots in the gusts. At 1345 Admiral Halsey issued a typhoon warning, to alert Fleet Weather Central to what was going on. This was the first reference to the storm as a typhoon in any official message. Unknown to Commander Third Fleet, three of his destroyers had already gone down.
Whom Gods Destroy
Here was a spectacle to excite the derision or pity of the gods. This mighty fleet, representing the last word in the energy and ingenuity of man on the ocean, was "running all over the sea trying to get behind the weather," as Joseph Conrad had written of his sinking ship in Typhoon. They were in a worse state than Phoenician galleys blown off shore, because too many of their skippers tried to fight the sea. Masters of merchant vessels had long since learned not to argue with a hurricane but to evade its center by the old rule of thumb; or, if conditions got too bad, heave-to, lie dead in the water and let the ship find her own way in the midst of the sea.
Yet, until just before noon, "no orders were issued to the Fleet as a whole to disregard formation keeping and take best courses and speeds for security." Fortunately, most unit and ship commanders had anticipated this order of 1149, and were doing just that.
By the afternoon of 18 December, Task Force 38 and its attendant fuelling groups were scattered over a space estimated at 50 by 60 miles. Except in the case of the battleships, all semblance of formation had been lost.
Every ship was laboring heavily; hardly any two were in visual contact; many lay dead, rolling in the trough of the sea; planes were crashing and burning on the light carriers. From the islands of the carriers and the pilot-houses of destroyers sailors peered out on such a scene as they had never witnessed before, and hoped never to see again. The weather was so thick and dirty that sea and sky seemed fused in one aqueous element. At times the rain was so heavy that visibility was limited to three feet, and the wind so powerful that to venture out on the flight deck a sailor had to wriggle on his belly. Occasionally the storm-wrack parted for a moment, revealing escort carriers crazily rising up on their fantails or plunging bow under, destroyers rolling drunkenly in hundred-degree arcs or beaten down on one side.
The big carriers lost no planes, but the extent of their rolls may be gauged by the fact that Hancock's flight deck, 57 feet above her waterline, scooped up green water. The battleships took the seas nobly, and Miami was the only cruiser to sustain damage. The light carriers had a particularly bad time because the rolling and pitching caused plane lashings on hangar decks to part, and padeyes to pull out of flight decks. Planes went adrift, collided and burst into flames.
Monterey caught fire at 0911 and lost steerage way a few minutes later. The fire, miraculously, was brought under control at 0945, and the C.O., Captain Stuart H. Ingersoll, wisely decided to let his ship lie dead in the water until temporary repairs could be effected. She lost 18 aircraft burned in the hangar deck or blown overboard and 16 seriously damaged, together with three 20-mm guns, and suffered extensive rupturing of her ventilation system."
Cowpens lost 7 planes overboard and caught fire from one that broke loose at 1051, but the fire was brought under control promptly; Langley rolled through 70 degrees; San Jacinto reported a fighter plane adrift on the hangar deck which wrecked seven other aircraft. She also suffered damage from salt water that entered through punctures in the ventilating ducts. Captain Acuff's replenishment escort carriers did pretty well. Flames broke out on the flight deck of Cape Esperance at 1228 but were overcome; Kwajalein made a maximum roll of 39 degrees to port when hove-to with wind abeam. Her port catwalks scooped up green water, but she lost only- three planes which were jettisoned from the flight deck; it took one hour to get them over the side. Three other escort carriers lost in all 86 aircraft but came through without much material damage. Unable to head into or down wind, they- steamed slowly with wind abeam, rolling horribly and occasionally backing engines emergency full to avoid collision with a cruiser or destroyer, since their course took them into the midst of one of the fast carrier task groups. Rudyerd Bay did so three times in as many hours. Total aircraft losses in the Fleet, including those blown overboard or jettisoned from the battleships and cruisers, amounted to 146.
Considering that in sailing-ship days guns often broke loose during storms and charged about the deck, it is not surprising that on so new a type as the aircraft carrier fittings and lashings should prove inadequate. But there was no flinching or failure on the part of the men. The carriers' crews showed complete disregard for their safety; in bringing these hurtling, exploding planes under control, and in mastering the fires, several men lost life or limb.
Typhoon Reprint Part 2: The Ordeal of the Destroyers
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© Copyright 2002 by David W. Tschanz.
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