We were alone in rough sea as far as we were concerned and our great problem was keeping a sharp lookout for other ships so as not to collide with each other. The waves were by now whipping up thirty to forty feet high and they were breaking over our superstructure and no place on topside was safe. Several times men were nearly washed over and when the storm was over there was one man missing. The storm had taken its toll on the men-of-war though as nearly all the ships had been slightly damaged and some were less fortunate. We had refueled just before the typhoon started. We were lucky because two destroyers and two destroyer escorts capsized and sank because they ran out of fuel and had to lay dead I the water. As the heaviest roll of a destroyer was 72 degrees one can imagine how helpless these ships were. As long as you were underway you had a chance but dead in the water was a different story entirely. There were heavy casualties on the four ships that sank, although many were picked up after the storm was over. Some of the survivors were picked up as far as 100 miles from there position where they went down. We rolled 56 degrees and lost one man, with minor damage to the ship. The storm lasted nearly two days and one night and one never felt more helpless than then. You can fight the Japanese but you cannot fight the elements. I think all the crew have a heartier respect for the elements than they had before.
We entered port on December 24 and spent Xmas in port. While we were in port, I talked to one of the survivors of one of the destroyers. There were only 9 men saved from this ship. This sailor had just come from the states and was still a green recruit. He had been to sea only 4 days when his ship went down. He said he had just come top side when she rolled to starboard and he was washed over the side. He said she rolled completely over and sank in a very few minutes. He swam around as well as well as he could until he came upon a life raft which had 23 others hanging on to it already he said he passed out during the night and when morning came there was only 12 left and no one knew or cared what had happened. They were all out of their heads and had been in the water better than 14 hours then. Several men went completely crazy and started trying to swim away. When asked what they were trying to do they replied they were going to swim to the tip of the at wave and coast down the hill. They were watched as closely as possible but everyone was plenty weak by this time and three of them broke loose. The last they were seen was when they were swimming away from the raft. This left only nine men of the raft and these were picked up that afternoon after spending almost 23 hours in one of the worst typhoons in the world.
We stayed in port until December 30 and once more headed for Luzon and after strikes there we headed for Luzon and after strikes there we headed north to Formosa. After hitting Luzon for two days and Formosa for one day we slipped through the Bashi Channel which is close to southern tip of Formosa and quietly steamed all night over in the China Sea. This was the first time our task force had ventured into the Japanese held waters of the China Sea and we did not know what we were going to encounter.
For the first two days in China Sea we did not have any excitement and we were wondering what the score was. We refueled for the first time and then steamed south to Saigon, Capital of Indo China. We lay about 60 miles off the coast and sent in several air strikes. All one day our planes were hitting everything they could find and then we retired to refuel and encountered rough weather. Once more we were lucky and us and one other can was all that got a chance to refuel as by this time the sea was so rough it was unsafe to try to refuel anymore ships.