My second encounter with a typhoon came a few years after the first. We were en route to Okinawa where all the amphibious forces in the US Seventh Fleet were assembling for a major exercise. It seems someone had also invited the typhoon to meet us there. Some of the ships had already arrived and were waiting i Buckner Bay. We were just North of the Philippines. The predicted track of the storm would take it right across our path, and straight to Buckner Bay.
I plotted the track and recommended that we avoid the storm, insofar as that was possible, by changing course and sailing at right angle to the predicted path. That was what we dd. The typhoon did not hit us directly. But the ships in Buckner Bat decided to ride out the typhoon at anchor. That was the same thing the Valley Forge had done earlier. But Buckner Bay was on the unprotected side of Okinawa. When the storm hit, it hit with full force. One ship began to drag her anchor and her skipper decided to head out into the open sea to ride out the storm. Easier said than done. As that ship neared the entrance to the bay the winds drove her off her intended track and she actually collided with another ship. The first vessel suffered a crumpled bow, and the second had a small hole punched in her stern.
Those two got away easy. There was a converted destroyer escort that weighed in at about 3000 tons. She was the smallest ship in the Amphibious force. She anchored out in the bay, or at least tried to do so. The Typhoon literally picked up the entire ship and deposited her, upright, some 500 yards inland from the original water’s edge. No one was killed, The crew managed to get off after the storm abated. But the ship was a total loss. She was too far away for any attempt to pull her back into the water. Ultimately, she was scrapped at the site where she was left. In the meantime, she remained as a monument to the power of a typhoon that could just pick her up and toss her ashore like a little toy.
Wetherhorn 