The Cobra Connections

The major World War II event we take notice of every December is Pearl Harbor. But this month also sees the 80th anniversary of another significant event in World War II: On December 18, 1944, Typhoon Cobra almost destroyed the 3rd Fleet in the Pacific Ocean.

Remarkably, what happened thousands of miles away in the southwest Pacific has several personal and local connections.

One personal connection is that Jim Clavin, my father’s older brother, was on one of those ships. I don’t recall him ever talking about it, and it was years after his death when I first learned of him being one of the thousands of sailors at risk.

Both a personal and local connection is how I learned of the event and what came of that knowledge.

About 20 years ago, for the book “Dark Noon,” I was reading accounts of naval disasters. One was “In Harm’s Way” by Doug Stanton, about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. It included three paragraphs about a typhoon striking the mighty Pacific fleet commanded by Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.

I was surprised by the offhand way this information was provided, as though everyone knew about it. Well, I was a pretty good student of history, but I didn’t know about it, so I did a bit of research. And, as some of you know, “Dark Noon” is the story of the Pelican, the fishing boat that capsized off Montauk in September 1951.

One evening, I was in a can’t-stop-thinking-about-it state when I stopped in at an East Hampton watering hole, and my friend Bob Drury was there. He had recently published “The Rescue Season” to enthusiastic reviews. When I told him about “Halsey’s Typhoon,” he immediately saw it as a riveting story. That local conversation turned into the first of eight books Bob and I would write together (so far).

Another connection is, of course, Halsey. This was one of the founding families of Southampton. Part of it branched off to the west. William F. Halsey Sr. was born in April 1853 in New York City. He served in the U.S. Navy, and his ancestors included Captain John Halsey, who made a specialty of raiding French shipping while in the Royal Navy during Queen Anne’s War in the early 1700s.

Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. was born in New Jersey in October 1882, and he died in August 1959 on Fishers Island, which, though off the coast of Connecticut, is part of the Town of Southold.

By the way, how did “Bull” Halsey earn his nickname? The people back in the States during the war believed it was because of the admiral’s aggressive, charge-ahead style of fighting the enemy. The less-dramatic truth: In one of the war’s earlier dispatches from the Pacific Theater, a drunken reporter bashed the wrong typewriter key and turned Bill Halsey into Bull Halsey. The editor liked it, the name stuck — but Halsey himself never cared for it.

About that deadly storm: In mid-December 1944, Halsey’s fleet was steaming west to support General Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” invasion of the Philippines. The admiral did not realize until too late that his fleet was on a collision course with Typhoon Cobra — the first major storm named by the U.S. government.

On the 18th, that collision occurred. Three ships were sunk, others were badly damaged, and of the 900 men tossed into the raging sea, only 80 were rescued.

One survivor was the communications officer of the U.S.S. Hull, Lieutenant Lloyd Rust. When the destroyer capsized, he was forced to swim underwater to escape. Fortunately, he’d strapped on his kapok vest long before the ship went over. Alone, he bounced from wave to wave throughout the night, kept afloat by his vest.

Then, sometime after daybreak, Rust spotted a floatplane skimming the waves. Earlier, he had kicked off his shoes and doffed his pants, as he felt they were dragging him below the ocean surface. Now, with nothing to wave at the floatplane, he took off his white boxer shorts and brandished them as high as he could reach. The aircraft’s crew did not see him.

Sometime that afternoon, Rust saw a destroyer bearing down on him. She was so close that he could make out the actions of her deck crew. But when the ship was within several hundred yards, she took an abrupt turn to starboard and steamed back over the horizon.

Lloyd Rust was ready to give up hope. Only his anger saved him.

He decided that he was “mad at the Good Lord,” angry with Him for sinking his ship, and even angrier with Him that two rescue searches had failed to spot him. But then he turned some kind of spiritual corner. “He’s just testing me,” Rust decided. “He just wants to see if I really want to stay alive. Well, I guess I’ll show Him what I’m made of.”

Rust began stroking west, vowing to swim all the way to the Philippines if necessary. He swam under the searing sun. He swam under the glittering stars. He swam until the eastern horizon bloomed with the faint glow of sunrise on December 20, when he could swim no more. He rolled over on his back and lapsed into unconsciousness.

That afternoon, the destroyer U.S.S. Knapp’s rescue swimmer Owen “Red” Atkinson, a 20-year-old from Georgia, dove into the sea and swam toward a man floating face-up in his kapok. When Atkinson reached him, he slid a bight under his arms and gingerly slapped the seaman’s cheeks to see if he was still alive. At that the floater’s eyes blinked open and his arm shot up from beneath the surface. In his hand was a pair of white boxer shorts.

“Lieutenant Lloyd Rust, C.I.C., U.S.S. Hull,” the officer said to a befuddled rescuer. “The good Lord has tested me, and it appears that I have passed His test.”

Bob and I interviewed two dozen survivors for “Halsey’s Typhoon,” yet for our most recent World War II book, “The Last Hill,” published in 2022, no one from the 2nd Ranger Battalion remained. The Veterans Administration estimates that by 2036 there will be no veterans of that war still alive, and that is probably optimistic. It is sad we’re losing that eyewitness connection.