Sea Cobra

January 1, 2007
The ripple of interest in the typhoon that struck the U.S. Third Fleet in December 1944, sinking three destroyers and drowning 800 sailors, swells onward in this absorbing naval adventure saga. Historian Melton (Aaron Burr
) paints a wider canvas than do Bob Drury and Tom Clavin in Halsey's Typhoon
(reviewed Oct. 9). Like them, he regales readers with firsthand recollections of the shrieking winds and titanic waves that battered ships to pieces, the ordeal of survivors besieged by thirst and sharks, and the heroism of sailors who rescued them in mountainous seas. He recounts at length the subsequent navy inquiry into the performance of meteorologists, Adm. William Halsey and Cmdr. James Marks of the sunken destroyer Hull
, who are pilloried by Drury and Clavin but largely exonerated here. Melton pads out the story with a blow-by-blow of the preceding Battle of Leyte Gulf, an account of another typhoon Halsey sailed the Third Fleet into in 1945, and a chapter on Japanese kamikazes. Melton's prose can be purplish—"The beast was still growing in the heart of the sea... feeding on the heat of the water as if it were mother's milk"—but when the storm breaks, he settles down to a straightforward, gripping narrative. Photos.

March 1, 2007
The author of " A Hanging Offense" (2003), on the 1842 " Somers" mutiny, takes to sea again in fine style in this powerful account of the great typhoon off the Philippines in the autumn of 1944, which inflicted major damage on Admiral "Bull" Halsey's U.S. Third Fleet. This book ranges more broadly than Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's " Halsey's Typhoon" (2006), covering more kinds of ships (the light carriers really took a pounding) and the subsequent court of inquiry in greater detail. It adds an afterword on Typhoon Viper, which struck the Third Fleet off Okinawa in 1945, and at no point does it err on the side of charity to either Halsey or the U.S. Navy's weather forecasting. It does offer unstinted praise for the men of the Third Fleet, few of whom, except the Annapolis graduates, had seen saltwater before Pearl Harbor but who fought their ships through the worst weather disaster ever to strike the U.S. Navy. A solid shelf mate for " Halsey's Typhoon" and the burgeoning numbers of nautical-calamity tomes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)