[From Samuel Eliot Morison "History of US Naval Operations in World War II"]

Admiral Halsey had hoped, after completing the strikes of 16 December, to pull off his long-desired raid into the South China Sea, where survivors of the Japanese fleet from the Battle for Leyte Gulf had been reported. But Admirals King and Nimitz, feeling that our land-based air at Leyte was not yet sufficiently strong or reliable to risk moving the carriers from positions to cover Luzon, withheld their consent. And 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 hurricane 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.

For some reason that goes deep into the soul of a sailor, he mourns over shipmates lost through the dangers of the sea even more than for those killed by the violence of the enemy. He feels that the least he can do for those brave young men who went down doing their duty on 18 December 1944 is to set forth at length the causes and details of the catastrophe, in the hope that it may never recur.

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 I7th 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.

The weather service did the best it could. Broadcasts summarizing all land stations' reports were made four times a day by Radio Kwajalein and eight times a day by Radio Manus. Search planes operating from the Marianas, Ulithi and the Palaus made weather reports.  But these planes were not then much use to the Fleet, since they avoided bad fronts, and only in exceptional cases broke radio silence to send in their reports before landing. Consequently, most aircraft weather reports were at least twelve hours old before they reached a ship in the operating area. 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.

First hint of trouble reaching Fleet Weather Central was the report of a search plane pilot turned back by a "tropical disturbance" about noon 14 December, sixty miles SE of Samar. Nobody expected this to be serious, and actually it was not this disturbance that built up into the typhoon. Nothing alarming was observed by anyone on 15 or 16 December;  and at 1414 December 17 Commander Kosco estimated that a "disturbance"  probably not the same lay 450 miles east of New Jersey, moving NNW.

So this tight, young, wicked little typhoon came whirling along undetected toward waters where Third Fleet was trying to fuel.

The sea was making up all day 17 December but the waves came from the same direction as the northerly wind (which was not above Force 8 - 30 to 40 knots), and that gave no indication of a typhoon. Wind and sea, however, had already rendered fuelling difficult. Destroyer Maddox, a new 2200-tonner, required three hours' work to obtain 7093 gallons from oiler Manatee. The hose then parted and she had to cut the towline, narrowly avoiding a collision. Two hoses parted on New Jersey when she tried to fuel destroyers Hunt and Spence. Escort carrier Kwajalein (Captain Robert L. Warrack), one of the replacement-plane CVEs that belonged to an oiler group, was unable to transfer pilots by breeches buoy, and canceled air operations at noon. Her deck crews then concentrated on respotting and relashing planes, which were secured three ways with steel cables, the air having been let out of the F6F landing gears . It was too rough for escort carriers to recover C.A.P. Two planes still aloft at 1500 were flagged off from their respective flattops and the pilots were ordered to turn their planes upside down and bail out. They were rescued by a destroyer.

At 1251 December 17 Admiral Halsey ordered every ship to belay fuelling as soon as practicable and steam northwesterly to fueling rendezvous No. 2, at lat 17-degrees N, long. 128-degrees E, in order to resume at 0600 the next day. He made this decision on the assumption by his weather man that the cyclonic disturbance was moving on a course to clear.  Actually, the center at 12.51 was about 120 miles SE of the Fleet's position, instead of 450 miles as Commander Kosco thought, and making right for it..  But there were as yet no portents of a typhoon. This one was so young, small and tight that it had not yet thrown out signs to its periphery. Admiral Halsey was reluctant to abandon fueling because some of the destroyers urgently needed oil and he had to support the Mindoro operation (and the Lingayen one coming up) with a strike on Luzon two days later He accepted the risk. One cannot quarrel with an officer who makes a mistake because of his single-minded devotion to his mission.

In obedience to Admiral Halsey's orders, Vice Admiral McCain ordered TF 38 to discontinue fueling at 1310 December 17 and set course 290-degrees for the morrow's 0600 rendezvous. But he made an exception of destroyers, Spence, Hickox and Maddox, then dangerously low on oil. The two first-named, unable to rig hoses, were ordered to remain with the oilers and seize their first opportunity to fill up.

By mid-afternoon of the 17th everyone concerned was making forcecasts, but nobody got the position, course or strength of the circular storm correct. The first to make a good guess seems to have been Captain Acuff, commanding the fueling and plane replenishment group. He conferred over TBS with the skippers of two escort carriers around 2257 December 17. All three agreed that fueling rendezvous No. 2, set by the Admiral for the 18th, would be directly in the typhoon track.

Admiral Halsey at 1533 December 17 again changed the fueling rendezvous for the morning of the 18th, to what we may call No. 3 position, at lat.14-degrees N, long. 127-degrees 30' E.  Immediately after he changed fleet course to 270-degrees, which actually ran parallel with the typhoon track instead of, as the Fleet aerologist thought, at a wide angle from it. Nevertheless, as the Fleet on this westerly course was outstripping the typhoon by 3 to 6 knots, the glass rose and the sea moderated slightly, giving an illusion of improving weather.

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."

Zig-zagging was cancelled after sunset, owing to the mounting seas, and the Fleet continued to advance westward during the hours of darkness. At 2200 December 17, the glass read 29.76 on the flagship and a 28-knot wind was blowing from the N by E. Neither this barometer reading nor the strength of the wind nor the direction of the waves were such as to cause alarm, but they were enough to have suggested that someone try the old seaman's rule-of-thumb for locating a cyclonic storm center: "Face the wind, and the center lies 10 points (112-degrees 30') to your right." If this simple rule had been practised at 2200 December 17 - when the wind blew from 13-degrees - it would have indicated that the storm center bore 125-degrees, about SE by E, which was almost correct.  But Commander Kosco, the flag aerologist, still located the center hundreds of miles northeasterly.

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.

Between 1800 and 2400 that night Task Force 38 made good eighty-five miles in a westerly direction, slightly converging with the typhoon's course, but about three knots faster.

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.

During the small hours of Monday 18 December, after the task force had commenced its 320-degrees course toward fueling rendezvous No. 4, the weather became much worse, suggesting to Admiral Halsey at 0400 "for the first time" (according to the Court of Inquiry) "that the Fleet was confronted with serious storm conditions."  But the barometer held almost steady at around 29.68 between 0500 and 0700. The Admiral spent about half an hour poring over weather maps with his aerologist, but came to no decision as to what, if anything, should be done. The wind still varied from N to NE.

At about 0430 he began via TBS asking for estimates of the storm situation from Admiral McCain in Yorktown and Admiral Bogan in Lexington. At the same time Commander Kosco made a fresh estimate of where the storm center was located. All three were wide of the mark. According to estimates made subsequent to these events, the typhoon center at 0500 December 18 was at lat. 14  34' N, long. 129 10' E, which bore about 90 miles ESE from the then position of the flagship New Jersey, and was moving at a speed of about 8.6 knots.

At a few minutes after O5OO December 18, the Admiral cancelled his No. 4 fueling rendezvous and did not set another, but ordered all groups to shape a course due South at their then speed of 15 knots, and to commence fueling as soon as possible. Assuming that his aerologist had estimated correctly, this course would have taken the Fleet into the southern quadrant of the storm. The wind at that time had not changed direction and its velocity was only 33 to 34 knots (force 7), which created the impression that nothing unusual should be anticipated. It was indeed a deceptive small typhoon which sneaked up on Third Fleet.

At 0701 Admiral McCain, following Admiral Halsey's order to commence fueling as soon as possible, ordered Task Force 38 to change course to 60 degrees. A last, vain attempt to fuel was then made. Day was breaking but little light came through the heavy overcast and the hard, driving rain. Sea and wind were so high that fueling was both dangerous to attempt and impossible to achieve; and although Admiral McCain suggested that the neediest destroyers do it by the old-fashioned method, over the stern instead of alongside, that would have required dismantling and rerigging hoses and other gear, which could not be effected in so rough a sea. This fueling course held the fleet on a collision course with the oncoming circular storm, the exact location and course of which, it must be kept in mind, nobody had yet ascertained.

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."

At 0744 Captain H. B. Butterfield of Nehenta Bay, another member of the replenishment group, spoke up over TBS and requested Captain Acuff's permission to leave formation with Kwajalein and Rudyerd Bay and their screen, owing to the pounding that they were taking. Permission was granted at 0753. Butterfield's initiative was commendable, but the course that he took in search of better conditions took him very close to the eye of the storm.

Admiral Halsey was loath to give up his last attempt to fuel, so anxious was he to support the Mindoro operation; but by 0803 conditions were such that the risk was too great. So he canceled his last fueling directive and ordered the Fleet to resume course 180. By 0830 all ships that could do so had complied. At 0913 Admiral McCain ordered course 220.

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 counterclockwise, 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 1149 December 18 Admiral Halsey directed CTF 38 to "take most comfortable courses with wind on port quarter." Seven minutes later, four minutes before noon, when the glass on board New Jersey read 29.55, and wind (then N by W) had risen to 51 knots, Admiral McCain directed TF 38 to steer course 120.

Both were sound decisions; the storm center was then about thirty-seven miles due north, and this southeasterly course took the Fleet away from it. But by that time the ships were strung out over some 2500 square miles of ocean and it was too late for some to escape. Mascoma, as we have seen, had already passed through the calm eye of the storm, saw blue sky for an instant, and was then buffeted from the opposite quarter; her barometer fell to 27.07.

This typhoon reached its greatest violence between 1100 and 1400 December 18, depending on the position of the vessel concerned.

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.

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 pilothouses 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.

The Ordeal of the Destroyers

The destroyers had the worst experiences, and those of two ships of the Farragut class, the ten-year-old I370-tonners, were frightful indeed. Lieutenant Commander J. A. Marks, skipper of Hull, had served in destroyers during bad Atlantic storms, but did not realize that this was a typhoon until about 0900 December 18. His ship, with destroyer escorts Crowley and Lake, were screening a fueling unit of four fleet oilers, Monongahela, Neosho, Patuxent and Marias. At about 1100 on the 18th. Commander F. J. Ilsemann, the unit commander in Monongahela, ordered a change of course to 140.

While this maneuver was being executed the wind increased to over 100 knots. As Hull's fuel tanks were 70 per cent full she did not take in salt-water ballast; events proved that it would have been well to have done so. When proceeding to her new station incident to the change of course, her helm failed to respond to any combination of rudder and engines. She lay in irons in the trough of the sea with the north wind on her port beam, yawing between courses 80 and 100 degrees. The whaleboat, the depth charges and almost everything else on deck were swept off as she rolled 5O degrees to leeward, and before eight bells the rolls increased to 70 degrees. From two or three of them she recovered, but a gust estimated to be of 110-knot elocity pinned her down on her beam ends. Sea flooded the pilothouse and poured down the stacks, and at a few minutes after noon she went down. Of her complement of 18 officers and 246 men, only 7 officers and 55 men were ultimately rescued.

It was-noted in the Court of Inquiry that Hull had not taken in time the precaution of reballasting with salt water her partially empty tanks; but at that time it was neither ordered, nor considered necessary, for a ship of her class with that much fuel on board to reballast . . .  Half-empty tanks were a danger in a seaway, because when the ship rolled the center of gravity of the contents of each tank shifted to leeward and increased the roll.

As a result of earlier typhoons encountered by Third Fleet, destroyers were ordered, when encountering rough weather, to fill empty tanks with salt water. But the C.O. of a destroyer about to fuel would naturally hesitate to do this because the deballasting process takes as much as six hours, and might not have been completed when her turn came to fuel.

Dewey (Lieutenant Commander C. R. Calhoun) was flagship of Destroyer Squadron 1, commanded by Captain Preston V.
Mercer, formerly Admiral Nimitz's assistant chief of staff. Having been through 80-mile-an-hour winds in destroyer Winslow, he had given much thought to ship handling under such conditions. To Captain Mercer's "steadying influence, sound advice and mature judgment" the C.O. attributed the survival of his ship. She was in the screen of the logistics and plane-replenishment group, which included four oilers, seven destroyers and the three escort carriers whose story we have already told. Captain Acuff, the group commander, who wore his pennant in destroyer Aylwin, made no attempt to force station keeping. At 0744, as we have seen, he allowed Captain Butterfield to leave formation with the three escort carriers.

As soon as he received Admiral Halsey's order of 0803 December 18 to break off attempts to fuel and steer south, Captain Acuff cast his screen loose and left the oilers to take care of themselves, for there was no use echo-ranging in a typhoon when sound gear will not work and submarines cannot operate.

Dewey began to lose lubricating oil suction around 0900. At about 0945, when the driving rain and spindrift had reduced visibility to less than a thousand yards, she narrowly missed colliding with Monterey. In avoiding this carrier she got herself into the same situation as Hull: in irons, broadside to wind in the trough of the sea, rolling heavily to starboard and unable to steer any course but from E to ENE. Although Dewey's fuel tanks were 75 per cent full, the commanding officer, on the advice of. Captain Mercer, not only jettisoned topside weights  a difficult and risky operation in that sea  but resorted to the desperate expedient of ordering her partially empty port tanks to be ballasted with 40,000 gallons of salt water and fuel oil from the starboard tanks. Even the feed water in No. 3 boiler on the starboard side of No. 2 fireroom was run into a port tank to improve righting movement. At the same time, the skipper directed all hands to secure below on the port side, for which they needed little urging. She started rolling 60 degrees to starboard, hanging there and recovering slowly. A speed of about 3 knots was maintained with the starboard engine.

This procedure of ballasting the weather side was a terrific gamble, but it worked. If Dewey's reported position is correct, she was sculling around the eye of the typhoon when hove-to. Had the eye overtaken her, and the wind whipped around to the opposite quarter, she would have capsized immediately. A lucky ship, indeed!

Around 1100, when the glass read 28.84, wind was blowing hurricane force from the NNE and the sea had made up to condition 9. Several things then happened to Dewey at once. Sea water entering one of the mushroom ventilators short-circuited the switchboard in the steering-engine room, which severed steering control from the bridge. Lube oil suction had been completely lost, owing to the excessive list, so that the port engine had to be secured. Heavy seas crashed through engine room hatches, short-circuiting the main switchboard. This brought total loss of light and power. No 1 fire room began to leak. Lieutenant Commander Calhoun, finding his ship completely out of control, organized a bucket brigade to bail out the steering-engine compartment so that men on the hand wheel could keep the helm hard down. He caused submersible pumps to be rigged in various places to keep the ship clear of sloshing water, and organized a messenger service for transmitting orders, his bridge telephones having gone dead. It was impossible to exist, much less to stand, on deck. The after stack was invisible from the pilothouse; spindrift removed paint from topside surfaces as though it were a sand-blast.

Even worse was to come. At 1210 Dewey rolled 60 degrees to starboard, recovered, rolled 75 degrees and hung there. The barometer needle went off the scale at 27 and kept dropping; Captain Mercer believes that it reached 26.60. A lurch caused the skipper to lose his footing on the weather wing of the almost perpendicular bridge deck; he grasped a stanchion, and, before the astonished eyes of his quartermaster, hung there as on a trapeze.

He was preparing to order the destroyer's mast to be cut away with an acetylene torch when No. 1 stack pulled out at boat-deck level and fell 'thwart ship, completely flattened; and although this loss caused flarebacks in No. 1 fire room and let in more sea water, it reduced the ship's "sail area" so that stability improved. Engineers maintained boiler pressure so that all pumps were soon working. By 1300 the center of the storm had passed, and by 1800 Dewey had full way on and was able very cautiously to wear around to a westerly course.

The factors that enabled this ship to survive were the prompt jettison of topside weights, ballasting with salt water, unremitting bailing and pumping, and the loss of the stack. She suffered one casualty that Hull did not, the drowning out of her steering engine, and dealt with it promptly.

Aylwin (Lieutenant Commander W. K. Rogers), Captain Acuff's flagship, water-ballasted her high side, and she too had
the good luck to get away with it when the eye of the typhoon passed her close aboard. Around 1100, with steering control lost, engines stopped, and heading 220, she rolled 70 degrees to port and then lay down on her side for twenty minutes. Steering control, regained intermittently, was employed to bring her stern to windward, using the bow's surface like a headsail to keep steerage-way and pay off. This maneuver kept the wind at about 30 degrees abaft the starboard beam, but she frequently fell into the trough. From 1300, when lowest barometer reading - 28.55 - was observed, "ship did not roll more than 60 degrees."  Engine rooms were abandoned when temperature reached 180 F., owing to failure of blowers. The ship's engineer officer, Lieutenant E. R. Rendahl USNR and Machinist's Mate 1st class T. Sarenski, standing watch in this terrific heat to protect the electrical circuits, stayed too long at their duty posts. When finally they could bear it no longer and crawled out on deck through the only exit, a hatch so narrow that they had to remove life jackets, they were immediately overcome by the change of temperature, collapsed, and before anyone could help them, were washed overboard and lost. At 1745 Aylwin got under way at 7 knots, with water sloshing around well above her floor plates; but she managed to control the flooding that night.

Hickox, a 2100-tonner of Desron 52, after six unsuccessful attempts to fuel on the I7th, was down to 322 tons, 14 per cent of her fuel capacity. Her C.0.,  Lieutenant Commander J. H. Wesson, began water-ballasting at 1750.

By 1010 December 18 she had taken on 246 tons of sea water. Twenty minutes later, in avoiding a collision, she got herself in irons in the trough of the sea. Unable to tack or wear, Commander Wesson decided to ride it out with bare steerageway and set Condition "Affirm" - all buttoned up.

Bridge lost steering control at 1130, owing to leaks in the steering-engine compartment, which took in water so fast that the sailors who tried hand steering had to be pulled out to save them from drowning. Only the best efforts of all hands kept Hickox from sinking. A bucket brigade worked in pitchy darkness with water and oil sloshing over the men in the heavy rolls. The engine room became a good imitation of Dante's Inferno. "With all vent systems out and with water entering through these systems, striking hot machinery and flashing into steam, the temperature and humidity rose to such a point that it was impossible to remain for more than a few minutes without collapsing."

After the steering-engine compartment had been partially bailed out and the leaks temporarily caulked, the men rigged a lead to a submersible pump there from the switchboard power supply of No. 5 gun. In this situation Hickox handled herself very well, lying just out of the trough with the bow trying to head up, thus avoiding full, deep rolls. Despite frequent clogging of the submersible pump by seamen's clothing which had gone adrift, the flooded compartments were almost clear by 1745.  Hand steering was resumed and, the worst of the typhoon having passed, Hickox complied with Admiral Halsey's order to the Fleet at 1800, to "come to a comfortable southerly course in search of fueling weather."

Monaghan (Lieutenant Commander F. Bruce Garrett) was another Farragut-class destroyer that failed to stay afloat. She was operating independently of the task force at the height of the typhoon, with fuel tanks 76 per cent full. The skipper reported to Captain Acuff at 0925 December 18 that he was unable to steer the base course, and was then heading about 330-degrees with the wind on the starboard bow. Apparently he wore ship later, which took his destroyer as near to the track of the typhoon's center as Hull. At about 1100 her skipper attempted to ballast her weather side.

Monaghan's senior survivor, Water Tender 2nd Class Joseph C. McCrane USNR, testified that he and his helper with great difficulty opened the ballast valves to the after tanks, but it was then too late to save her. Electric power and steering engine failed at about 1130. The engine and fire rooms' overheads began to rip loose from the bulkheads. Monaghan made several heavy rolls to starboard, hung there for a time, and shortly before noon foundered. Of her entire company only six enlisted men survived.

Spence (Lieutenant Commander J. P. Andrea), a 2100-tonner of the Fletcher class, larger, newer and more stable than the others, formed part of Admiral Sherman's Task Group 38.3. Her fuel was down to I5 per cent capacity on 17 December. After an unsuccessful attempt to fuel from New Jersey, she was sent at 0800 December 18 to Captain Acuff's group in the hope of fueling at the first opportunity, since by that time she had only enough oil for 24 hours' steaming at 8 knots. The commanding officer began water-ballasting too late, after breakfast on the 18th, and Condition "Affirm" was never set. On a course heading southwesterly, she began rolling heavily to port. Water entered through ventilators and sloshed around below, short-circuiting the distribution board.  The rudder jammed at hard right. At 1100 Spence took a deep roll to port, hung there a moment, recovered, rolled again, and then was swallowed up by the sea. Only one officer and 23 enlisted men were rescued.

Most successful in riding out the typhoon were the destroyer escorts. They rode the seas more easily than the destroyers, and were well handled by their young officers and men. Robert F. Keller . . was saved by early re-ballasting of her almost empty fuel tanks, and "the superb seamanship" of her skipper, Cdr. Raymond J. Toner USNR.

A vivid account of the typhoon is given by the exec of another destroyer escort in Anzio's screen:

The wind was howling all through the ship - we were rolling probably 40 degrees - some men were doing their job in a matter of fact way others were praying or sitting off by themselves, their faces white with fear. The spray covered the ship from the truck to the waterline. We realized that we were in a typhoon and we knew we were on the wrong side of it - would pass through the center if we stayed afloat that long.

At about 1230 the typhoon was reaching its height. We were completely at its mercy wallowing in the trough (this with 12,000 hp), port engine ahead one third, right full rudder. We tried every combination and this was the best - she would have broken in half if we had tried to run - provided we could have got on such a course which we couldn't have.

By 1300 we must have passed through the center for there was a momentary lull - the seas hit us from all directions and the ship was racked and twisted - but she survived. The respite from the wind was only a matter of minutes, then it howled, whined and finally got back to shrieking again. During the height of the typhoon there was a vacuum created throughout the ship - I suppose a sort of venturi action caused by the tremendous force of the wind. Standing in the pilothouse looking out at the bridge one could see for perhaps three feet. No one could have stood out there - the rain would have beat them to the deck or the wind lifted them bodily off their feet and hurled them off to leeward.

The greatest roll measured was 72 degrees. Just put that on paper - we were literally on our beam ends. By 1400 the barometer was back on the scale and we all began to hope that perhaps things might improve. The rain let up some  it blew perhaps 80 miles an hour instead of 120-130 and we began to be able to see first the pelorus, then the range finder and finally the mast.

Just listening to the voice radio kept one on edge. We were not the only one in trouble. The gunnery officers had one bad moment when a powder case broke and 60-lb projectiles were rolling around amidst the powder. We all had our moments. I for one have never seen nature at work like this and I hope I never do again."

Melvin R. Nawman lost her foremast, but she and all these gallant little ships came through with only superficial damage.

According to the Court of Inquiry, the commanding officers of Hull, Monaghan and Spence maneuvered too long in an endeavor to keep station, which prevented them from concentrating early enough on saving their ships. This was admitted by the C.O. of Hull, but the records of Third Fleet as a whole indicate that little effort was made to keep station after 0800 December 18. When, in the Court of Inquiry, Captain S. H. Ingersoll of carrier Monterey was asked whether he felt free to drop out of formation and handle his ship any way he saw fit, he replied that he did. It was the urgent need of these destroyers for fuel that got them in trouble; and although, in retrospect, it is clear that Admiral Halsey should have made no attempt to fuel on the 18th, he had no means of knowing where the center of the typhoon was, or even that it was a typhoon, until around 0900 that day. Under these circumstances it seems to this writer to have been too much to expect of junior destroyer skippers - Classes of 1937 and 1938,Naval Academy - to have pitted their brief experience against the lack of typhoon warnings and their own want of fuel. Let their successors, however, heed the stern, wise words of Fleet Admiral Nimitz:

"The time for taking all measures for a ship's safety is while still able to do so. Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary. Safety at sea for a thousand years has depended on exactly the opposite philosophy."

Around 1500 on this blue Monday, 18 December, the wind began to moderate, and by nightfall was down to 60 knots; the sky brightened somewhat, and it became obvious that the eye of the storm had passed.
 

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