I thoght it was more like trough to crest. This is much more meaningful.
Look, if anyone sensed the full fury of the ocean, it was the USN in October of '44.
Lot's of rough sailing (icluding one DD that supposedly went 'Turtle') but relatively little loss of life. There was one Essex class carrier that had its bow stoved in by an 80'+ swell, but who's counting.
The History Channel includes the two typhoons in the piece on Halsey.
Interesting interview of the commander of some destroyer that took a lot of damage.
The task force wanted him to catch up so that they could take a look at the damage. He wired them that it might be better
if he stayed where he was, picking up survivors. They wired back agreeing with the obvious, and sent back a couple
of destroyers to help. One survivor said he thought the ship was Japanese, since he didn't recognize it from the damage.
Halsey, I guess, barely escaped from being relieved of command, given the fact that he managed to hit two typhoons.
Can't recall the info about the weather reports, or lack thereof.
Fending off a Russian Cruiser trying to get near our Carrier, The Coral Sea, in the Med (87-88), the Sea was pretty rough and the Ruskie was perpendicular to the waves.
I broke the orders and went topside up to the signal shack to get a good view.
The Russian Cruiser was going over to one side so far that al you could see was superstructure, like you were photographing from above, and then over the other way and I could see 2 of it's 3 screws and a whole lot of hull.
I'd have hating to been on board that ship.
The signal shack got smacked so hard by a wave that it was torn loose from the deck and had to be tied back down to keep it from going over the side and a window on the bridge got blown out.
It was real nice in Sonar Control too, what with it being almost all the way forward and 3 decks down. Up and down, pass the sardines and mustard sauce.
Halsey was almost courtmartialed for that.