From John Riise in Lake Isabella, California:
“Just read your book DOWN TO THE SEA and was compelled to scribble a few lines. My father was in Halsey’s Typhoon. He was aboard the light carrier Monterey. His recollection is just what you noted: planes breaking loose from their lashings and sliding all over into other planes and the sides of the hangar deck starting fires. I don’t recall him saying anyone was killed, but there were certainly injuries when trying to fight a fire in a heavily rolling ship with all sorts of heavy things slamming around. The smoke from the fires got sucked into ventilators which distributed it into living spaces below deck. The captain eventually ordered all stop on the engines and dropped both his bow anchors as drogues to keep the ship’s head into the wind and seas, which is how she rode it out. Dad always felt that Halsey’s conceit was mostly to blame. His impression was that Halsey DID know that he was sailing into a typhoon, but did it anyway. Your book certainly shed new light on that aspect for me…Great book.”
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I thought it was going to be some boring old site, but I’m glad I visited. I will post a link to this site on my blog. I believe my visitors will find that very useful.
I thoroughly enjoyed DOWN TO THE SEA (as I did your Arctic exploration book, TRUE NORTH). My compliments on a very fine piece of historical research and writing.
The Navy’s refusal to give any credence to the Army’s weather report about the typhoon strikes me as a classic example of the interservice rivalry that plagued the American war effort in the Pacific from beginning to end. One of the more notorious examples at the outset of the war was the War Department’s failure to give Admiral Kimmel, commander of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, timely warning of the likely commencement of hostilities on December 7, 1941, based on intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications. The Navy decoded the intercepts well before the attack, yet the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor was caught completely by surprise. The Navy refused to use the Army’s communications network to transmit a war warning to Kimmel when the Navy’s own communications network to Hawaii was down on the eve of the Japanese attack. Kimmel famously received the war warning in the middle of the attack by Western Union telegram.
I have one comment on your description of the passage of Kurita’s force through San Bernardino Strait as “unmolested.” Kurita’s ships navigated the strait and broke into Leyte Gulf unopposed, but Kurita’s squadron was attacked by both American submarines and carrier aircraft of Halsey’s Third Fleet. These aircraft later attacked Kurita’s force in the Sibuyan Sea the day before it transited the San Bernardino Strait, sinking the superbattleship Musashi and severely damaging another heavy cruiser. Even with these losses, Kurita had a formidable fighting force. Halsey’s decision not to cover San Bernardo Strait without knowing the precise whereabouts and intentions of this powerful group of warships after the initial attacks by U.S. forces was reckless and inexcusable. Only Kurita’s last-minute failure of nerve saved the Navy from a disaster that might have rivaled Pearl Harbor. Halsey showed similar recklessness in dealing with the threat posed by the typhoon.
Halsey was Patton-like in his aggressiveness and arrogance, but possessed none of Patton’s tactical brilliance. The U.S. Navy was fortunate that most of its decisive engagements in the Pacific were fought by admirals such as Raymond Spruance and Marc Mischer, who were far less prone than Halsey to “swing wild” and take a counterpunch on the chin.