The Old Navy: Typhoon-December-1944

The harsh buzz of the sound-powered phone brought me sharply into wakefulness. I reached through the darkness toward the head of my bunk to grasp the phone. As I answered, another part of my consciousness was aware of the staggering motion of the ship. I shifted my body and drew up a knee to brace myself against the erratic action of the destroyer which several times almost pitched me bodily from the bunk.

"This is the officer of the deck, captain. The sea has been making up for the past hour or so, the wind has increased to gale force and I’m having difficulty keeping station on the carrier. Also, the chief engineer has just called and requested permission to commence deballasting.”

I glanced at the luminous hands of the ship's clock above the foot of my bunk. It was 0430—early morning- "Is it light enough to make out the surface of the sea?’

I asked.

"Not light enough to make out things clearly, sir, but what I can see doesn’t look good.”

"Very well, I’ll be on the bridge in a few minutes, meanwhile, tell the chief engineer not to deballast. I doubt if there is going to be much fueling today.” I would soon have to reconsider my deballast deci­sion and tell the chief engineer whether to pump out the sea water which had been taken into the ship’s fuel tanks to compensate for the weight of the fuel burned. To deballast would remove tons of water from the fuel tanks, making the ship lighter and, in effect, cause a comparative top heaviness, an extremely dangerous condition for a ship in heavy weather. With an effort, I eased myself out of the rolling, pitching bunk and commenced to pull on my chino shirt and trousers.

Since there was no immediate emergency which required my presence on the bridge, I made my way carefully from the sea cabin into the darkened passage­way, moving cautiously so as not to be thrown against

jutting pieces of equipment, thence down the steep ladder that led to the wardroom. Reaching the ward­room, dimly lit with red battle lights, I moved with care to the buffet which held the electric coffeee maker, bolted fast to the top of the buffet. The coffee was swirling about in the glass container which was held firmly to the heating coils by metal bands.

Pouring the coffee into a cup was quite a trick since

I had to brace myself against the leaping motion of the ship, holding the cup with one hand and cautiously pouring the coffee with the other; meanwhile attempt­ing to maintain a reasonably upright position.

My mind reviewed the situation facing us as I sipped the hot bitter brew. An operational message received earlier had designated our task unit among the units scheduled to fuel at first light this morning.

I was not too concerned. The destroyer escort Robert F Keller (DE-41?) was my third combatant sea com­mand since the war began, and the approaching heavy weather, although an unpleasant prospect, did not cause me undue concern, nor did I think it would present any unusual complications. We had fueled at sea in heavy weather several times and the officers and men, as well as I, had profited by the experience. The ship had been secured for heavy weather before I had turned in last night, lifelines had been rigged along the weather decks and there was nothing to be done now but to recog­nize—and take immediate steps to handle—each situa­tion as it arose.

I finished the coffee and placed the cup in its hole in the fiddleboard. Leaving the wardroom, I mounted the ladder leading to the pilot house. As I entered the pilot house, which led to the open bridge, the quarter­master of the watch reported that the barometer was reading less than 28 inches and falling fast. About 30 inches is normal barometric pressure at sea level. The 'open bridge’ on destroyer escorts was just that. Open to the weather, its principal advantage was that it gave a 360° view of the waters about the ship. As I emerged from the pilot house onto the open bridge I was im­mediately conscious of a stinging sensation in my nos­trils, caused by the mist-like spume that was swirling about the bridge. The watch standers were wearing handkerchiefs tied over their noses. I did the same and felt an immediate relief from the suffocating, prickling sensation each time I breathed. I noted that the officer of the deck and the bridge watch were soaking wet, but the howling wind was warm and humid and no one bothered to put on heavy weather clothing. I took a firm hold on the spray shield of the bridge and tried to sense the temper of the wind and sea.

The first light of dawn was beginning to break in a dirty yellowish haze, sufficient to disclose the surface of the sea within two hundred yards of the ship. As 1 watched, towering masses of dull olive green sea would build up on our port quarter, overtake the ship until the fantail was awash in a swirling roil of foam that reached to the top of the depth charge racks. The confused mass would then pass under us like an im­mense sea creature, the ship .yawing with the drunken motion that I had noted earlier as it rushed along with the crest. Then the bow would rise sharply and a heavy drag could be felt as though a gigantic hand had grasped the laboring ship. The vibration of the twin screws, sometimes spinning free of the sea, caused the ship to shudder as the bow fell rapidly, buried in a smother of foam. The various coachwhip antennae about the bridge were bent almost 45° before the driving blast of the wind. The spindrift, cut sharply from the crests of the seas, scudded along the troughs like dust along a country road on a windy day, then striking the ship, swirled about her superstructure and struck with a hissing sound against the stack just abaft the open bridge.

I had seen enough. I knew that there would be no fueling operations conducted this day. I directed the officer of the deck to have reveille sounded and to caution all hands, over the interior communications system, not to use the weather decks, but remain within shelter, also, to inform the chief engineer to secure the fueling detail. The executive officer came to the open brfdge at this moment and I asked him to see to it that all watertight doors were closed, the ship placed in maximum watertight integrity, and the most experi­enced and skillfull officers and men stationed in all spaces where machinery or special equipment was operating. I had to shout at the top of my voice to make myself heard.

Daylight, when it came, was merely a lighter yel­lowish, opaque haze and, if anything, visibility de­creased. The wind had backed, that is it had shifted in a counter-clockwise direction, so that it was now coming at us with rising intensity from slightly abaft the starboard beam. For some time a strange shrill sound had been impinging upon my consciousness. I suddenly realized that it was the shriek of the wind about the mainstays of the mast. With the shifting of the wind a confused sea had built up, causing the ship to lurch and yaw in wild, unpredictable motions. The officer of the deck reported that the ship was very sluggish in answering the helm and that he was having considerable difficulty conning her. I then re­lieved him of the conn.

A tactical signal received over TBS (talk-between- ships) reversed the course of the formation by having all ships execute a simultaneous 180° turn. This signal was most unusual with a bent-line antisubmarine screen since, after the formation had executed the ma­neuver, the carrier was now ahead of us on a south­westerly course with her destroyer screen in an arc astern of her. The carrier advised that no fueling opera­tions would take place, that all ships were to rig for typhoon weather, and that the course change just exe­cuted was to take the formation out of the dangerous semi-circle of the typhoon. I had to assist the twin rudders with full speed on the outboard engine to bring the Keller to the new course signaled by the carrier.

The awareness of the passage of time began to recede from me, as my attention was more and more absorbed in conning the ship. I had experienced hurricanes in the Caribbean in one of my previous commands and heavy gales in both the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but somehow, I knew that this was becoming a struggle for survival. Normally a course to steer is given to the helmsman, and he keeps the ship on course by making the necessary changes in rudder angle. The confused sea was making it difficult for the helmsman to keep the ship near the signaled course of the forma­tion and occasionally I would have to order an extreme amount of rudder and an increase in the speed of one of the engines, to add to the effect of the twin rudders to assist the ship to struggle back to the desired head­ing.

The executive officer was standing beside me. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled into my ear in order to make himself heard. "Captain, the bot­tom has fallen out of the barometer and we’ve just heard a TBS transmission from the carrier to the fleet commander, saying that she’s having difficulty main­taining her course, that some of her planes have broken loose on her hangar deck and that fires have broken out.” I nodded to let him know I understood. There was nothing we could do except remain afloat and stay in her vicinity. The carrier hadn’t said that the fire was out of hand or that she needed help. I cupped my hands and yelled into the exec’s ear "Is everything secure belowdecks?” The exec nodded, then turned and dis­appeared into the pilot house to make another round of the laboring ship.

I lost track of time. In periods of such intense concentration the body and its demands recede and fuse into a mental-spiritual sensing that extends one’s reac­tions to the utmost limits of the ship, so that her next movement becomes as responsive and anticipated as the movements of one’s own limbs. In this strange orches­tration I was conscious that the wind had continued to back and to reach crescendos of violence. Immense seas now came hurtling at us from forward of our starboard beam, the wind knifing through their crests in a fury of spindrift. The ship was rolling deeply, now laboring up and across a mountainous wall of ugly sea, or pitching crazily with a skidding roll toward the depth of the trough. These thunderous seas were not in regular sequence, nor from a predictable direction. The heavy and confused seas, built up by the driving blast of the winds in their earlier directions, were still not overcome by the inhuman force of the typhoon now raging upon us. I used every combination of rudder and engines, yet the powerfully geared turbines and the twin rudders had little effect against the titanic forces beating down on the slender destroyer hull. The ship in her torment lay spent, almost inert in the fury about her. I could feel my insides quiver when an unpredictable sea smashed into her and buried her under its immense weight. Then, with agonizing slow­ness, she achieved a movement of her own. Suddenly, without any transition, she was racing down a tremen­dous incline. I yelled for full rudder in the opposite direction. The sensation can only be compared to the sudden, breathtaking drop of a roller coaster. There did not seem to be any reaction; she was not answering to her rudders. For an interminable time we rushed down that vast slope. I felt a brief flash of thankfulness that she had not yawed, that is skidded with her stern- This was a common fault with this class in a following sea, as they were designed to turn quickly and had no deadwood between the rudders. Suddenly the bottom­less rush was over, a cross sea smashed into the Keller's starboard bow and the impact could be felt through every frame of the ship. I put the rudder amidships and waited for the next onslaught.

Looking back on it now, I can recall only an almost impersonal detachment from everything but sensing the ^ship and the unrecognizable forces that possessed the wind and seas. I have a sailor’s profound respect for the sea, and I have felt fear many times in my life, hut this absorption was too intense to admit awareness of fear. I recall that from time to time someone would yell into my ear, giving me bits of information: The fife on the carrier was under control; one ship in our formation reported a lifeboat shattered, another reported damage to parts of her superstructure; Our radar indi­cated that the USS Jabberer, on our starboard bow, had closed to one half of her former distance; The forma­tion of our task force was disintegrating as each ship fought for her life. The reports I received indicated that so far the Keller was unharmed, except for superficial breakage due to our violent motion. Each time I would acknowledge the information; then that part of my being that sensed the ship withdrew into the intimate problem of keeping her afloat.

Two or three times the Keller, ordinarily so respon­sive to her powerful engines, lay like a stricken creature without reaction to her rudders or radical speed changes rung up to the engines. She was almost "in irons”, an old expression from the days of sail when a ship, coming about from one tack to another, failed to pay off on the new tack and lay helpless in the eye of the wind. Then gradually the Keller would take on a life of her own, and slowly the gyro repeater before me would indicate that her head was coming back to the course I had ordered to meet the next thrust of the sea.

Someone was pulling my arm violently and pointing toward the murk, the color of burnt umber, on our starboard bow. I could see that he was excited and yelling at the top of his lungs, but I couldn’t hear him. My eyes were stinging and blurred from the driving force of the spindrift. Then suddenly I saw the cause of his alarm. There, only a few hundred yards from us, pitching high over the crest of a sea, its entire forefoot uncovered, was the sharp reinforced bow of a destroyer escort; behind it I could make out the tophamper of the mast. The looming shape was almost upon us.

I yelled into the voice tube that led to the pilot house "All engines ahead flank!” Then, grasping the cradled phone of the TBS at the side of the conning station, I yelled into it the code name of the Tabberer. Those within the radio shack, who were removed from the shriek of the wind, told me later that they heard my voice over the loudspeaker in strong urgent tones call the Tabberer and say "My engines are ahead flank, back down full or you’ll ram me!” A moment later over the loud speaker came the calm Georgia voice of my friend, the skipper of the Tabberer, saying "Rogah, Ah’m backin’ full.”

All watertight doors and hatches in the ship’s com­partments had long since been secured; experienced personnel, including damage control parties, were man­ning their stations. In situations like this where one is committed to a course of action, when all has been done that seamanship and experience indicate, every­thing hangs on a heartbeat. It’s up to the ship and the imponderables now. The Tabberer, every part of her visible, as were the figures on her open bridge, buried her bow into an immense sea abeam of us, then, seem­ing to leap clear of it, passed about a hundred yards astern in a flurry of foam and flying spray. Then she was lost in the murk.

The quartermaster’s log showed that shortly after noon the barometer began to rise. The wind continued to back and although it no longer blew with its former insane fury, the ship continued to make heavy going of it; so I kept the conn. I remember eating an apple that was handed to me and thinking that the salty taste of the spray mingled well with that of the fruit. Toward late afternoon, the sky to the westward cleared and the sea abated sufficiently to permit me to change course to rejoin the carrier, whose distant shape could be discerned along with those of other ships scattered along the horizon.

"Trouble began during the forenoon watch of the 17th. When the calendar turned on December 19th, the Third Fleet had lost three ships, 790 men, and about 200 planes. Twenty-eight ships were damaged, and nine of the damaged were so badly battered thay they had to be sent into port for major overhauls. The enemy was that 'Ole Devil Sea’.”

United States Destroyer Operations in World War II, by Theodore Roscoe. United States Naval Institute,

Annapolis, Maryland