How Lieutenant Ford Saved His Ship

NY Times ^ | December 28, 2006 | ROBERT DRURY and TOM CLAVIN

[neverdem]

FOR Americans under a certain age, Gerald Ford is best remembered for his contribution to Bartlett’s — “Our long national nightmare is over” — or, more likely, for the comedian Chevy Chase’s stumbling, bumbling impersonations of him on “Saturday Night Live.” But there’s a different label we can attach to this former president, one that has been overlooked for 62 years: war hero.

In 1944, Lt. j.g. Jerry Ford — a lawyer from Grand Rapids, Mich., blond and broad-shouldered, with the lantern jaw of a young Johnny Weissmuller — was a 31-year-old gunnery officer on the aircraft carrier Monterey. The Monterey was a member of Adm. William Halsey’s Third Fleet, and in mid-December, Lieutenant Ford was sailing off the Philippines as Admiral Halsey’s ships provided air cover for the second phase of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” Philippine invasions.

The Monterey had earned more than half a dozen battle stars for actions in World War II; during the battle of Leyte Gulf, Lieutenant Ford, in charge of a 40-millimeter antiaircraft gun crew on the fantail deck, had watched as a torpedo narrowly missed the Monterey and tore out the hull of the nearby Australian cruiser Canberra. Two months later, in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, the Japanese were the least of the Monterey’s worries, as it found itself trapped in a vicious Pacific cyclone later designated Typhoon Cobra.

Lieutenant Ford had served as the Monterey’s officer of the deck on the ship’s midnight-to-4-a.m. watch, and had witnessed the lashing rains and 60-knot winds whip the ocean into waves that resembled liquid mountain ranges. The waves reeled in from starboard, gigantic sets of dark water that appeared to defy gravity, cresting at 40 to 70 feet. In his 18 months at sea, Lieutenant Ford had never seen waves...

[Gator101]

Good find. I revise my statement back again since I found that same picture of CVL-22 (USS Independence) on this site as well identified as the same. It also shows Independence Class carriers as having one catapult.

[Mr. Silverback]

A darn fine performance by Lieutenant Ford.

[DMZFrank]

Or Operation Drumbeat, the U-Boat massacre off the Eastern Seaboard where a couple dozen U-Boats sunk 500 ships in a 6 month period starting in June of 1942.

[quietolong]

The FReeper Foxhole Revisits Typhoon Cobra ~ Disaster at Sea (18 December 1944) - Dec. 27th, 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1047211/posts

Typhoon Cobra strikes Third Fleet - December 1944
http://www.odyssey.dircon.co.uk/cobra.htm


the book:
Typhoon the other enemy.

[reg45]

Yes

[JSteff]

"This guy needs to do a little research before saying something like that."

The NY Times has a history of showing you do NOT need to do any research before having an article posted.

[neverdem]

Three destroyers were eventually capsized by Typhoon Cobra, a dozen more ships were seriously damaged, more than 150 planes were destroyed, and 793 men lost their lives. It was the Navy’s worst “defeat” of World War II.

"Aside from Gerald Ford, that's an interesting sentence. The author calls this the Navy's "worst 'defeat'"? Uh, what about Pearl Harbor (over 2000 sailors and soldiers killed) or even the Battle of Savo Island in '42 (over 1000 allied sailors lost). This guy needs to do a little research before saying something like that."

I'll disagree. If Halsey did that in peacetime with all of those losses, he would have been sacked. Gratuitous insults to the NY Times advances nothing and yields no insight. If you want to know what they are thinking, they have to be read.

[Gritty]

Thank you for the links. Somehow, I missed them when they were active.