Stormy Weather

The Atlantic, a raucous old fury during four winters of war, behaved just as badly last week in the first winter of peace. Over her smoking, heaving wastes she hurled 100-foot waves, 80-mile-an-hour winds at bucketing U.S. sailors and soldiers who had only one objective--to make home ports.

With battered superstructures, the battleship Washington, carrying 1,606 troops, and the carrier Enterprise (5,057 troops) limped into New York on Christmas Eve--as the Navy had promised. Said the Washington's Captain Francis X. McInerney: "The worst storms I have ever experienced in 26 years at sea . . . far worse than the typhoons in the Pacific last year."

Sailors on the Washington reported that "at least half" of their G.I. passengers had upchucked. Fiddles on the mess tables were useless--crockery, cutlery and food were dashed to the deck as the inclinometer showed a list of 31 degrees.

During one twelve-hour siege the giant Enterprise had been driven back 41 miles. Steel gun shields were crushed. Catwalks were swept away as waves thundered over the flightdeck 50 feet above the water line. Water pouring through her open fo'c'sle deck split the seams of a 60-foot strip of steel bulkhead and flooded officers' quarters forward.

In another heaving expanse of ocean the heavy cruiser Portland, en route from Le Havre with 1,159 troops, had two of her G.I. passengers killed by a giant wave which crashed through a hangar door, a third washed overboard, and 52 injured, 22 of them so badly that they were put ashore to be flown home.

But in the face of this lashing most G.I.s remained philosophic. The important thing was that they were going home. Sighed one G.I.: "When I saw that New York skyline again . . . nothing else counted."

The Navy, temporarily thrown off its "magic carpet" schedule by the need for repairs, knew that more storms could be expected in the next three months. Thousands of waiting G.I.s might fume, but there was nothing the Navy could do about the raging sea.

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