In the following questions Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

One of the American Navy’s greatest losses during World War If was inflicted not by the Japanese, but by the weather. On the evening of 17 December 1944, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers of the Third Fleet Task Force 38 were replenishing stocks of food, fuel and ammunition during a sea rendezvous with support ships when a savage tornado struck the Philippine Sea. One of the commanders said later: ‘My ship was riding as though caught in some giant washing machine. We were rolling between heaving cliffs of water. caught in so strong a vice of wind and sea that our 50,000 horse-power engines were helpless.’ It was nine hours before he regained control of his ship, after the fleet had bobbed like helpless shuttlecocks, unable to prevent collisions in the sledge hammer waves.