In September, 1944, the Weather Bureau spotted a violent storm in the Atlantic, northeast of Puerto Rico. It grew in fury and moved toward the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The forecasters called it the “Great Atlantic Hurricane.” Being usually conservative, Weather Bureau forecasters seldom use the word “great” when warning of hurricanes and when they do, it is time for everybody to be on guard. In this case, the casualties at sea included one destroyer, two Coast Guard cutters, a light vessel and a mine sweeper. This should have been sufficient evidence of the power of the tropical storm to destroy modern warships, but just three months later a big typhoon caught the Navy off guard in the Pacific and proved the case beyond the slightest doubt. Typhoons are big tropical storms, just like West Indian hurricanes. They form in the vast tropical waters of the Pacific, develop tremendous power, and head for the Philippines and China, sometimes going straight forward and sometimes turning toward Japan before they reach the coast. Like hurricanes, they are often preceded by beautiful weather, allaying the suspicions of the inexperienced until it is too late to escape from the indraft of the winds and the mountainous seas that precede their centers. It was hard to keep track of typhoons in World War II. In large areas of the Pacific there are few islands to serve as observation posts for weathermen. Before the war, merchantmen on voyages through this region had reported by radio when they saw signs of typhoons. But many of the weather-reporting vessels had been sent to the bottom by enemy torpedoes and the remainder had been ordered to silence their radios. Thereafter, the only effective means of finding and tracking tropical storms was by aircraft, but reconnaissance by air had just begun in the Atlantic and was not organized in the Pacific until 1945. Late in 1944, our Third Fleet, said to be the most powerful sea force ever assembled, had drawn back from the battle of Leyte to refuel. The Japanese Navy had received a fatal blow from the big fleet. Nothing more terrible was reserved for the Japanese except the atom bomb. Far out in the Pacific, a typhoon was brewing while valiant oil tankers waited five hundred miles east of Luzon for the refueling operation so vitally needed by our warships after days of ranging the seas against the Japs. It was December 17 when the refueling began. By that time, the winds and seas in the front of the typhoon were being felt in force. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers and a host of other vessels rode big waves as the wind increased. The typhoon drew nearer and the smaller ships were bounced around so violently that it became impossible to maintain hose connections to the oilers. Before nightfall, the refueling had stopped completely and the fleet was trying to run away from the typhoon.