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We related in an earlier story from Bill Wells, one of the KIDD's
damage control assistants during the Korean War. Bill told of how the KIDD
ran into a typhoon off the Korean coast while returning to port in Japan
for repairs with only one propeller operating.
This next story comes from
Richard Springer
who was a corpsman aboard ship at that time. Here, Richard relates his
experiences in the midships passageway—Bill was on the bridge—during
that same typhoon. As you can see, while the bridge crew was busy keeping
the ship from being swamped, Richard and his shipmates farther aft were
busy trying to keep the ship from being torn apart. |
"Typhoon!"
— Part II
I don't remember whether it was
before we went to Hong Kong or after, but it was in the month of
December when we encountered a typhoon.
I realize the art of predicting the weather then was not as
sophisticated as it is now, but one would think that we could have
been forewarned by some method to be able to avoid a typhoon.
Being a corpsman, I was located in the midship's passageway. There
were several of us there, and we were listening to the 40mm gun
[ammunition] boxes sliding all over the deck above us. They had
been torn loose from the deck by the terrific waves hitting the
ship.
Someone volunteered to go up and try to secure them in some
manner, so we tied a rope around him and sent him out into the
fierce typhoon. I don't know where the rope came from. It was
somewhere close by. Five or ten minutes passed when there was a
banging on the hatch. It was our man who had volunteered. When we
opened the hatch and let him in, all that he was wearing was the
rope that had been tied around him. He was suffering from
exhaustion and exposure.
Outside of sickbay, there was—or is—a clinometer [device used
to measure the roll of the ship]. I was standing there looking at
it, and at one point, the ship took a 59-degree roll. I thought we
were going to go over. Somehow we managed to survive the typhoon.
I was told that there was another ship in our division or nearby
that had its 5-inch gun mount taken right off the fantail as
though it was cut with a sharp knife.
There was some new ensigns that had come aboard prior to our
going on Formosa patrol, and they were laying in the passageway
near sickbay doing the "vomitus projectus." They were
not feeling too good.
With the modern technical equipment that we have today, I am sure
that we would not have been in harm's way.
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