One of the costliest battles of World War II happens to be one of the least known. After failing to stop the attack of Admiral Takeo Kurita at Leyte Gulf, Admiral “Bull” Halsey made a desperate attempt to engage the Japanese Imperial Navy in a full-scale battle. Acting against better judgment and in a desperate attempt at redemption, Halsey led his crew into the raging path of a typhoon, which resulted in the loss of nearly one thousand sailors—the most costly mission of the Pacific war. 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. Roland Green Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved The Greatest Generation meets The Perfect Storm in this riveting account of one of the most devastating episodes in the Pacific during World War II. In the final year of the Second World War, as the United States Navy fought Japanese forces in the largest sea battle in human history, none could foresee that just a few weeks later the Pacific Fleet would be fighting another foe: the Pacific Ocean itself. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Japanese Navy had unleashed a new weapon of desperation, the dreaded kamikaze squadrons, in an effort to stave off defeat. Admiral “Bull” Halsey, his reputation clouded after controversial decisions at Leyte, grew obsessed with destroying kamikaze air bases in the Philippines. Meanwhile, a tropical storm in the Pacific was slowly gaining power, unseen, untracked, unsuspected. It was headlong into this storm, dubbed Typhoon Cobra, that Halsey would lead his fleet. Sea Cobra tells the dramatic story of the ships and men of the famed Fast Carrier Task Force as fate lands them squarely in the path of this killer typhoon. Using survivors' interviews and other firsthand accounts, seasoned historian and author Buckner F. Melton Jr. tells the story of a modern fleet encountering one of the most destructive forces of nature. As bomb- and gasoline-laden aircraft carriers—and destroyers critically low on fuel—are overtaken by towering waves and hundred-plus-knot winds, the fleet is pushed to the brink of disaster. Melton recounts the many heroic efforts in the fleet's struggle to survive, and he also examines the ensuing court inquiry ordered by Admiral Chester Nimitz, as officials sought to make sense of this perilous mission. In the tradition of Joseph Conrad and Herman Wouk comes a gripping, real-life story of men versus the sea—and against the typhoon named Cobra. Buckner F. Melton Jr. is a historian and a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and University Press Fellow at Mercer University. He is the author of A Hanging Offense and Aaron Burr . Used Book in Good Condition