One of these bastards nearly killed me one fall on George’s bank.
Got a face-full of another on a flat calm day at sea that left me bruised and laughing on the deck after being flipped like a rag-doll.
They also don’t stick around long enough to be measured as they tend to only exist at one point in time, rather than the standing waves of normal swells.
Both of the waves that hit me I never saw, I was fine one moment, and then I was seeing nothing but foam.
I have seen watery mountains rise up out of the surrounding seas and then vanish before, very strange!
Yep, they do exist… estimated 60+ footer hit the USS Forrestal a number of years ago and wiped an F-14 tow truck and 6 people off an elevator on the side of the ship as they were bringing the bird to the flight deck. None of them were recovered.
To echo OldNFO, in ’72 when I was in the Navy, we were on the way to WestPac and had a rogue wave hit us. Did some damage to the port sponson deck and struck the underside of the flight deck angle. Made the whole ship shudder which is saying something for an aircraft carrier.
Repaired an LPD back in my college days. Had to replace the glass in the flag bridge and staterooms and replace the steel in the gun tubs around the 3 inch 50s. That is about the only high strength steel on an amphib. Oh yeah, the tubs are 40 feet off the water and the other damage was ABOVE them. HY80 steel looked like a crushed beer can.