- Drury, Bob and Tom Clavin.
Halsey's Typhoon.
New York: Grove Press, 2007.
ISBN 978-0-8021-4337-2.
-
As Douglas MacArthur's forces struggled to expand the beachhead
of their landing on the Philippine island of Mindoro on
December 15, 1944, Admiral
William “Bull” Halsey's
Third Fleet was charged
with providing round the clock air cover over Japanese airfields
throughout the Philippines, both to protect against strikes
being launched against MacArthur's troops and kamikaze attacks
on his own fleet, which had been so devastating in the battle
for Leyte Gulf three weeks earlier. After supporting the initial
landings and providing cover thereafter, Halsey's fleet, especially
the destroyers, were low on fuel, and the admiral requested and
received permission to withdraw for a rendezvous with an oiler
task group to refuel.
Unbeknownst to anybody in the chain of command, this decision
set the Third Fleet on a direct intercept course with the most
violent part of an emerging Pacific (not so much, in this case)
typhoon which was appropriately named, in retrospect,
Typhoon Cobra.
Typhoons in the Pacific are as violent as Atlantic
hurricanes, but due to the circumstances of the ocean
and atmosphere where they form and grow, are much
more compact, which means that in an age prior to weather
satellites, there was little warning of the onset of a storm
before one found oneself overrun by it.
Halsey's orders sent the Third Fleet directly into the bull's eye
of the disaster: one ship measured sustained winds of 124
knots (143 miles per hour) and seas in excess of 90 feet.
Some ships' logs recorded the barometric pressure as “U”—the
barometer had gone off-scale low and the needle was above the
“U” in “U. S. Navy”.
There are some conditions at sea which ships simply cannot withstand.
This was especially the case for
Farragut class destroyers,
which
had been retrofitted with radar and communication antennæ on their
masts and a panoply of antisubmarine and gun directing equipment on
deck, all of which made them top-heavy, vulnerable to heeling in
high winds, and prone to capsize.
As the typhoon overtook the fleet, even the “heavies”
approached their limits of endurance. On the aircraft carrier
USS
Monterey,
Lt. (j.g.)
Jerry Ford
was saved from being
washed off the deck to a certain death only by luck and his
athletic ability. He survived, later to become President of the
United States. On the destroyers, the situation was indescribably
more dire. The watch on the bridge saw the inclinometer veer
back and forth on each roll between 60 and 70 degrees, knowing
that a roll beyond 71° might not be recoverable. They surfed
up the giant waves and plunged down, with screws turning in
mid-air as they crested the giant combers. Shipping water, many
lost electrical power due to shorted-out panels, and most
lost their radar and communications antennæ, rendering
them deaf, dumb, and blind to the rest of the fleet and
vulnerable to collisions.
The sea took its toll: in all, three destroyers were sunk, a dozen
other ships were hors de combat
pending repairs, and 146 aircraft were destroyed, all due to
weather and sea conditions. A total of 793 U.S. sailors lost their
lives, more than twice those killed
in the
Battle of Midway.
This book tells, based largely upon interviews with people who were
there, the story of what happens when an invincible fleet encounters
impossible seas. There are tales of heroism every few pages, which
are especially poignant since so many of the heroes had not yet celebrated
their twentieth birthdays, hailed from landlocked states, and had first seen
the ocean only months before at the start of this, their first sea duty.
After the disaster, the heroism continued, as the crew of the destroyer
escort
Tabberer,
under its reservist commander Henry L. Plage, who disregarded his orders and,
after his ship was dismasted and severely damaged, persisted in the
search and rescue of survivors from the foundered ships, eventually
saving 55 from the ocean. Plage expected to face a court martial,
but instead was awarded the
Legion of Merit
by Halsey, whose orders he ignored.
This is an epic story of seamanship, heroism, endurance, and the
nigh impossible decisions commanders in wartime have to make based
upon the incomplete information they have at the time. You gain
an appreciation for how the master of a ship has to balance
doing things by the
book
and improvising in exigent circumstances. One finding of
the Court of Inquiry convened to investigate the disaster was
that the commanders of the destroyers which were lost may have
given too much priority to following pre-existing orders to
hold their stations as opposed to the overriding imperative to
save the ship. Given how little experience these officers had
at sea, this is not surprising. CEOs should always keep in mind
this utmost priority: save the ship.
Here we have a thoroughly documented historical narrative which
is every bit as much a page-turner as the the latest ginned-up thriller.
As it happens, one of my high school teachers was a survivor of
this storm (on one of the ships which did not go down), and I
remember to this day how harrowing it was when he spoke of
destroyers “turning turtle”. If accounts like
this make you lose sleep, this is not the book for you, but if
you want to experience how ordinary people did extraordinary
things in impossible circumstances, it's an inspiring narrative.
August 2009 