Buckner F. Melton Jr.

This book does a good job of describing Halsey's encounter with his first typhoon (with a very brief discussion of his second, as well). The author by his own admission tries to avoid passing judgment in areas where he is not an expert, and I believe he was successful in that effort even though the writing does lead the reader to some definite conclusions (which were different from those of the Court of Inquiry).

The only thing I really didn't like was the actual writing style -- somewhat florid in the beginning, and maybe a bit informal for a non-fiction book. I haven't reviewed all the citations so I can't form a valid opinion on how accurate some of the stories are. My interest is piqued enough, though, that I'd like to read the entire transcript of the Court of Inquiry.

On the bright side, though, the story-telling nature made it clear that this was a book about human beings. As a former weather officer myself I was completely able to relate to the difficulties faced by the aerographers and I've done enough reading on the Pacific war to understand the problems with communications. While reading the book I was there alongside the various sailors and officers (except for Admiral King, for whom I've never felt any affinity).

I rated the book 4 because I don't think it quite merits a 5, but if we could give fractions I would have said 4.4. The basic facts are sound, but the writing style is just loose enough to make the reader wonder where liberties might have been taken.… (mais)

What do you do when something Too Big To Fail ... fails? Twice?

Melton is a teller of sea stories, with some emphasis on the legal aspects. Here he tells the story of how William F. Halsey, the "Bull" (Halsey actually was "Bill" to his friends), launcher of the Doolittle Raid, victor at Guadalcanal, legendary airman and carrier force commander, managed to sail the greatest fleet in history squarely into the path of a Category Four typhoon.

And do it again, four months later.

Melton is a bit shaky as a military historian, and this got the book off on the wrong foot for me. MacArthur, a general who thoroughly understood the use of sea power? Only two things kept me from spewing Postum over my keyboard as I read that: I wasn't in front of my keyboard, and Postum is no longer manufactured. Still. There are other annoying misintepretations as well, such as the notion, somehow thoroughly entrenched among writers who don't quite know enough about the Pacific War, that Spruance was the victorious admiral at Midway. (It was Fletcher. He was in command and the battle played out pretty much as he and Nimitz had planned it.)

However, once he gets into the storm and the aftermath, Melton is clearly in his element. His description of how tropical cyclones form is as accurate as a non-technical description can be expected to me and it is told well. The basic seafaring aspects of the encounter between Third Fleet and Typhoon Cobra shows a sound understanding of seafaring. The descriiption of the subsequent Courts of Inquiry shows some grasp of naval regulations.

Long story short: Weather prediction was in the midst of a revolution in 1944, and the Third Fleet was full of aerologists (the Navy's preferred term for meteorologists) who were young, recently trained, and probably too reliant on the new science of synoptic forecasting, at the expense of using their own eyes, ears, and instruments to see what was taking place immediately around them. It did not help that the Pacific was very poorly covered with weather stations; there was a good chunk of the northwest Pacific and east Asia that was bad about transmitting data to the U.S. Navy, for some reason.

Cobra was spotted by flights out of Ulithi, but it took twelve hours for the sighting to work its way through the system to Halsey. Meanwhile Halsey was frantically trying to refuel his thirsty destroyers in increasingly lousy weather in time for scheduled strikes on Luzon; he simply didn't seem to be paying attention to the significance of the local weather. His aerologist was relying on (poor) coverage from the surface network, which showed a disturbance four hundred miles away when it was a powerful typhoon within two hundred miles. Numerous ship captains and subordinate admirals sure felt like a bad storm was coming, but figured Halsey must have better information. Quite a few started ballasting and securing for bad weather, but it was not until the storm was on them that they felt justified in breaking formation to ride out the storm. Halsey, failing to appreciate that he was in a typhoon until the winds were near hurricane strength, and guessing badly where the storm was, directed his fleet right into the eye of the storm.

The upshot was that one carrier was nearly destroyed by fire when an aircraft came loose in its hanger and crashed into other tied-down aircraft; numerous carriers lost large numbers of aircraft from their flight decks; a destroyer lost its funnel, which reduced topweight enough to let the ship survive the storm; but, worst of all, three destroyers were quite literally blown over by winds in excess of 110 knots and capsized and sank. There was only a handful of survivors from one of the ships, more from the others, including the one destroyer commander to survive. The damage was equivalent to what might be expected from a major fleet engagement that had not gone entirely well.

There had to be a Court of Inquiry, of course. Melton does a pretty good job of describing its proceedings. One gets the impression that Halsey was treated gently; he was simply too big, too important to the war effort, to condemn. There were lots of recommendations, and the surviving destroyer commander was more or less exonerated, but the gist of the findings was "Halsey screwed up, but understandably considering he was under pressure to fight the Japanese." Nimitz and King accepted this finding with some reluctance and focused on making sure it never happened again.

Except it did. Four months later, Halsey steamed his force right into the eye of Typhoon Viper. This time he wasn't in the middle of refueling, no ships were lost, and casualties were a relative handful of sailors; but twice... So something had to be done, and what was done was to scapegoat Halsey's tactical commander, John S. McCain. Yes, the grandfather of the Senator. There was talk that Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy, wanted to retire Halsey, but Halsey was simply too big and too popular for that to happen.

The funny thing is that Melton reports the findings and the reactions to them without making any judgements of his own at all. In the afterward, he talks a lot about how wrong it is to second-guess a military commander from the comfort of an armchair. Well, okay, but that's a historian's job.

My own airchair view: The war had outgrown Halsey, and he was not competent to run as vast a fleet as Third Fleet. Spruance was cool, distant, uncharismatic, unflamboyant, almost unknown to the press, and had few friends in Washington apart from King, but he was also brilliant, competent, and perfectly qualified to lead the world's greatest fleet at the climax of the world's greatest naval war. But politics is politics.

Thumbs up.… (mais)

4792. Sea Cobra Admiral Halsey's Task Force and the Great Pacific Typhoon, by Buckner F. Melton, Jr. (read 17 Jan 2011) This book, based on much original research, tells well the story of the typhoon of Oct 18, 1944, wherein three destroyers (Hull, Spence, and Monaghan) were sunk. It is complementary to the excellent book by Bruce Henderson, Down to the Sea, which I read 2 Feb 2008. This book not only covers the awful ordeal the surviving sailors endured but the courts of inquiry into the losses in that typhoon and in the typhoon of June 1945 which Halsey again sent his task force into.… (mais)

A very readable history of the only mutiny on a U.S. Naval vassal the U.S. Brigg of War Somers in 1842, that resulted in the three ring leaders being hanged. The result of which led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy.

On the surface you would say O. K. discipline in those days were harsh and these things happened in those days.. But it ends up that these three young men were hanged without a court Marshall or the benefit of legal council of any kind.

Add to the mix that the mastermind of the mutiny was a young acting Midshipman named Phillip Spencer whose father was John Canfield Spencer was Pres. John Tyler's secretary of war, and had arranged the boy's commission with the help of Capt. Oliver "Hazzard Perry.You now have the setting for high drama and what sounds like a Hollywood script.

The book is written in a very low keyed tone. Every chapter is more of an essay on the main people involved and each part of the event as it unfolds. Overall it gives a good account of the facts as known and the condition both political and physical of the U.S. Navy and the Country ain 1842.

The story is a who's who of America and American Maritime History. James Fenmore Cooper, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and almost every member of the Perry family. William H. Seward who would be Pres. Lincoln's Sec. of State in the Civil War.

The Lt. aboard the Somers was Melville's cousin and may have been the source for Melville's book Billy Budd. There are some very striking similarities between Capt. Mackenzie and Captain Vere. The last exchange between Capt. Mackenzie and Seaman Smalls is touching ;
Capt. Meckenzie - "Small" ..."what have I done to you that you won't bid me goodbye?"
..... "I did not know that you would bid a poor bugger like me goodbye Sir,"
.... Now Meckenzie it was who asked forgiveness of Small. He told the seaman that he had to go through with the execution; both the honor of the flag and the safety of the crew demanded it. "Yes, Sir and I honor you for it," replied Small. "God Bless that Flag!"

Billy Budd years later says ""God bless Captain Vere!"… (mais)