God Watched Over the Ship During the Typhoon

When I was 8 years old I gave my life to the Lord and became a Christian. Then back in 1975 I joined the U.S. Navy and upon completion of boot camp I was sent to a school to learn the job that I was going to be doing while I was in the Navy. My job in the Navy was to keep track of all of the paperwork on all of the maintenance of a squadron of Navy airplanes. Upon completion of my school I received a set of orders to a sea going squadron that was already on deployment to the Western Pacific onboard the USS Oriskany. The Uss Oriskany was a left over aircraft carrier from the second world war. This was my first deployment in the Navy so I had to fly 18 hours from the United States to the Phillipine Islands to catch up to the ship. When I caught up to the ship it was tied up to the pier at the Naval Base Subic Bay shipyard. That was January 4, 1976 and the next day the ship set sail for Hong Kong along with a bunch of other ships. We had been at sea for a couple of weeks when we came across a typhoon. The USS Oriskany was the biggest ship out of all of the bunch of ships in our task force. As we came close to the typhoon we onboard the Oriskany could see all of the other ships in our task force get bounced around by all of the big waves. We onboard the aircraft carrier could barely feel the ship rock from the big waves. Apparently all of the other ships in our task force decided to turn around and go back to the Phillipine Islands. The Comanding Officer of the Oriskany decided to keep going on to Hong Kong. The Captain tried to go around the typhoon but, every time he tried to go around the typhoon it moved right in front of the ship. All of the squadrons onboard the Oriskany tied down every airplane in the Hanger Bay and on the Flight Deck with 25 tie down chains on each aircraft. Also on the Flight Deck all of the canopies were closed and the intakes on the jets were covered to prevent water from getting in and damaging the aircraft. Then all of the hatches going outside were closed and locked. Then announcements were made that nobody was allowed outside the ship because they could be blown over the side of the ship and into the sea. I worked just behind the ready room for the squadron. Then one day somebody came into the ready room and wanted to see what was going on outside. They turned on the closed circuit TV set and tuned it into the channel for viewing what was going on outside. In the super structure on the flight deck there was a camera that was mounted and locked pointing towards the bow of the ship. We could see on the TV set the bow of the ship point to the sky and then see the bow of the ship point down and have waves crash on to the flight deck. The distance from the flight deck to the water is 90 feet. We figured that the waves had to be over 100 feet tall because they were crashing onto the flight deck. We remained in the typhoon for 7 days and during those 7 days the ship did alot of heavy rocking. After we had completed those 7 days the Captain decided to go back to the Phillipine Islands. When we got back to the Phillipine Islands the ship remained there for 2 weeks to repair the ship and then went back to the United States. This was my introduction to being at sea and God watched over the ship during the typhoon.