|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
Posted on 12/18/2002 5:39:20 AM PST by SAMWolf
|
are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. We hope to provide an ongoing source of information about issues and problems that are specific to Veterans and resources that are available to Veterans and their families. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support.
|
|
|
|
USS HULL, USS MONAGHAN and USS SPENCE  As father and son go, we've known each other only in our hearts. You were all of 19 when the Lord called you into another service. Dad, thank you for giving me life and a proud lifetime memory. I love you. On 17 December, 1944, my father's ship, DD-354 .U.S.S. Monaghan was steering toward Leyte Bay on a rendezvous course with the Pacific Task Forces 38 and 58. The Third Fleet was engaged in naval air strikes against Japanese forces in the Philippines. While the planes had been attacking central Luzon in support of the Mindoro invasion, the carriers and their destroyer protectors were in desperate need of fuel. Dad's ship was assigned to escort duty for the fuel ships of the fleet, an attractive enemy target. She ran at flank speed during the operations and was riding high in the seas from lack of fuel. Then she ran into Typhoon Cobra, described below as "more powerful than any western Pacific encounter with the Japanese." "In December 1944 as Admiral William Halsey's Third Fleet was operating in support of General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, the Third Fleet encountered a tropical cyclone more powerful than any western Pacific encounter with the Japanese. The result was three destroyers (the USS HULL, USS MONAGHAN and USS SPENCE) sunk with 800 men lost, 26 other vessels seriously damaged, and 146 aircraft destroyed (16). The Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Nimitz said, "It was the greatest loss that we have taken in the Pacific without compensatory return since the First Battle of Savo." Halsey himself described it best. "No one who has not been through a typhoon can conceive its fury," he wrote in his autobiography. "The 70 foot seas smash you. The rain blinds you. The battleship NEW JERSEY once was hit by a 5-inch shell and I did not even feel the impact. The MISSOURI had kamikaze crash on her main deck and repaired the only damage with a paint brush. But the typhoon tossed our enormous ship the MISSOURI as if she were only a canoe."  One eyewitness account speaks to the conditions my dad found himself and his shipmates facing. "These destroyers were escorting the carriers, and they came out. We're trying to fuel them, and the seas are choppy; I mean, when I say choppy, they're twenty, twenty-five feet waves... They were going to move to another location and commence fueling in the morning again. Well, instead of taking us out of the typhoon they took us back into it. I'm talking about waves that were fifty and sixty feet high. Sometimes you'd see a destroyer, he'd be sitting up on top of a wave and the next time he would be down so low that you couldn't even see the mast. That's how deep the troughs were. There's no way those destroyers could fuel from the tankers." Former President Gerald R. Ford in May 1943 served as a pre-commissioning detachment for a new light aircraft carrier, USS Monterey (CVL-26). This was one of the ships in may dad's group. The following is an official record of an account by Lt. Ford who served as the assistant navigator, Athletic Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on board Monterey. "Monterey was damaged by a fire which was started by several of the ship's aircraft tearing loose from their cables and colliding during the storm. During the storm, Ford narrowly missed being a casualty himself. After Ford left his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the early morning of 18 December, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the deck. The two inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed him enough so he could roll and twisted into the catwalk below the deck. As he later stated, 'I was lucky; I could have easily gone overboard.' " The fueling day was the first of Typhoon Cobra that claimed 790 lives in the 3d Fleet, and sank Spence (DD-512), Hull (DD-350), and Monaghan. The six survivors, rescued by USS Brown after drifting on a raft 3 days, reported that Monaghan took roll after roll to starboard, finally going over. Of the 6 hands that survived the sinking, 3 perished after rescue. From accounts passed on by one of his shipmates, my dad and other Monaghan crew members remained in the water because some of the men were injured and bleeding. Their being in the life raft was their only hope and the area was known to be shark invested. Quietly, on the night of the second day, without notice in the darkness and the rough seas, Dad joined the watery grave of the Spence, Hull and Monaghan. Of the tragedy, Admiral Nimitz said, "represented a more crippling blow to the 3d Fleet than it might be expected to suffer in anything less than a major action." Veteran of so many actions against a human enemy, Monaghan fell victim to the sailor's oldest enemy, the perils of the sea. Monaghan received 12 battle stars for World War II service.  Survivors from the Spence and the Hull ***NOTE: This dedication and story is not about my Dad*** Thanks to Freeper Comwatch for this story
|
| Jeff... you wrote about your father: "He and my great uncle used to talk about that typhoon as much if not more than they did their other wartime experiences. Dad served as the navigation officer for a flotilla of LCI's." One look at this rare photo says it all. Consider how tall a carriers rides in the sea (freeboard) and what the power of 110 knott winds and 70 foot seas can do to a ship her size. If you connect the # 5 dots in the chart below and imagine human beings thrust into that sea, only God's hand could have spared those few brave men.
|
 |
USS Langley (CVL -28) on a roll to starboard. "Even the largest and most seaworthy vessels become virtually unmanageable and may sustain heavy damage." |
|
|
The green dots are where Weather Central said the storm was and the purple dots are where Halsey's aerologist said it was. The red dots represent the storm's actual center at those times and the red and black dots numbered 5 mark the position of the storm and of the Third Fleet respectively at 0900 on 18 December. |
| The actual time of Monaghan's loss has never been determined, nor is the exact location of her sinking known. She was last heard from at 1007 on the 18th. Watertender Second Class Joseph C. McCrane spoke of sounding the fuel tanks at sometime between 1000 and 1030, in preparation for ballasting The ship was rolling too heavily to continue that operation so he sought shelter in the after five-inch gun-mount, which he found crowded. I suspect my dad, a Chief Gunner's mate, was among them. "We must have taken at least seven or eight heavy rolls to starboard when the ship finally rolled over on her side," McCrane said The weight of the gun mount door and the wind blowing against it made it difficult to open "But eventually, we did get it open and managed to crawl out. Thankfully, none of the men had panicked, nor was there any confusion among them. They did the best they could to help their shipmates." They were all thrown into the sea and eventually McCrane found himself on a life raft with nine others. One, Gunner's Mate Joe Guio, who had stood outside the gun mount hatch pulling sailors out, died from exhaustion. During the next three days, two more died from exposure. Another thought he saw land and houses and swam off into the night. On the third day, the raft was spotted by search planes and, within an hour, USS Brown (DD-546) came to their rescue. There were six of them - all that was left of Monaghan and her crew. Evan Fenn, is likely the last living survivor of the U.S.S. Monaghan.
|
BTW, this typhoon is also immortalized in fiction as the pivotal moment when Maryk relieves Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny".
She said that after she said that to the kid she turned and walked away, but noticed that he took the earring out of his ear and put it back on the card, returning it to the rack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
