With the recent death of former President Gerald Ford still making news headlines, I happened to begin reading a book given to me as a gift by my father. This book, Halsey's Typhoon, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, documents the encounter between the US Navy's Third Fleet and a typhoon on December 14-16, 1944. The fleet was en-route to cover General MacArthur's attempt to retake the Philippines and Admiral William "Bull" Halsey drastically underestimated an approaching weather front, which turned out to be a record-breaking storm that sent three naval vessels to the ocean bottom and killed 793 US sailors in addition to reducing several other vessels to virtual scrap.
One such vessel was the USS Monterey (CVL 26), one of the nine Independence-class light carriers that fought in the Pacific.
Here's the Monterey a month before the storm. Note the aircraft on deck. Every one of them would be lost overboard or otherwise destroyed during the storm.
When the storm hit the fleet, the Monterey was tossed around so badly by the 70+ foot waves that aircraft remaining on the flight deck broke loose and were swept away. Worse, aircraft in the massive hangar deck below the flight deck began to crash into one another and into the blukheads, until finally one exploded. The fires quickly spread to the other aircraft and within moments, the hangar deck was ablaze. Soon fumes from the fire were sucked down into the engine rooms, killing one sailor and forcing the others to flee. Three of the carrier's boilers quickly went out, leaving only one to provide power to the ship's propeller, electrical system, and fire-fighting pumps. Other ships in the Task Force reported that the carrier was burning from stem to stern and as good as lost, and Admiral Halsey, Force Commander, gave the order for the Monterey to be abandoned.
But the carrier's officers knew that if they tried to abandon ship in that storm, everyone would die, so Captain Ingersoll ordered the Officer of the Deck and future 38th President of the United States--Lt. (j.g.) Jerry Ford to "put those fires out". Despite being knocked off his feet at one point by a large wave and washed right to the edge of the flight deck before he managed to save himself by gripping a rail, Lt. Ford rallied a fire-fighting crew and led them down to the Hangar Deck where they eventually managed to put the fires out.
The Monterey eventually survived the storm, although she lost all of her aircraft and sustained damage sufficient to send her back home for repairs. Ford was instrumental in saving that ship and it's entire crew, and I have to wonder what someone like John Kerry or Bill Clinton would have done had they been in his shoes that day. (I know... Kerry would probably have been camped in the Surgeon's Bay seeking Purple Hearts for every paper cut and stubbed toe that he could provide proof of, while Clinton would most likely have AWOL'd at the first port.)
Ford was a brave man on that day, and his bravery saved many lives. And thirty years later he wound up in the White House. But few ever heard of his WW2 exploits, because (unlike John Kerry) he did not brag or boast about it in order to garner votes. Ford had class to go with that bravery. May he rest in peace.
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