#Hurricane #USNavy: December 17/18, 1944, Admiral Halsey catastrophically orders his vaunted TF38 straight into #TyphoonCobra. TF38 has seven fleet carriers, eight battleships, ~60 light carriers, cruisers, and destroyers. In all, the USA loses three... 1/
2/ destroyers on December 18 killing 790 sailors. BB Iowa, CL Miami, etc., damaged. Light carriers like Langley and Cowpens (above tweet) roll through 70 degrees, sending airplanes overboard or into each other, starting bad fires. Total aircraft lost...
3/ ... is 146! In contrast, USA lost 123 aircraft in June 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea. Destroyers Hull↖️, Monaghan↗️ and Spence↙️ sink. Maddox↘️ and others take heavy poundings but survive. In all, 30 US Navy warships sunk or damaged! #hurricanes
4/
↖️Hull (capsized; sunk: 202 men drowned; 62 survived)
↗️Monaghan (capsized; sunk: 256; 6)
↙️Spence (capsized; sunk: 317; 23)
↘️Maddox (survived)!
+Cowpens: 1 dead; Monterey; 3 dead. When after Pearl Harbor did #USN lose so many in a day?
5/ Here ↖️are the mighty Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey @BattleshipNJ and Essex-class USS Hancock in the storm. USS Iowa @ussiowa herself required floating drydock repairs↗️, and further repairs in San Francisco↘️, where she also underwent modernization.
6/ DD Maddox was an Allen B. Sumner class destroyer. To give you a better idea of what it must have been like aboard her, please see my thread of her only surviving sister ship, DD Laffey, which was hit by many kamikaze planes. .
7/ This thread will give you a bit more insight to what life was life aboard the two Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey @BattleshipNJ and USS Iowa @ussiowa.
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