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Background: 'Vera' - 450-mile wide typhoon, swept west and northwards across Japan, Sept. 27, blasting apart houses, ripping through crops and hurling tidal waves against shipping.

1,400 people died, over 5,000 were injured and more than a thousand are missing. A million people were made homeless, 80,000 houses were wrecked or damaged, and another 350,000 flooded as rivulets were whipped into wild torrents.

Ships were tossed aground and others stripped of all portable deck fittings. A thousand fishing boats were destroyed, over a thousand and a half damaged and GBP2 million of oyster rafts swept away. Crop damages amount to over GBP10 million.

Eye-witnesses reported seeing bodies and tons of wreckage being swept out to sea by swollen, swirling rivers.

One ship tossed aground by the typhoon was the British vessel 'Chansha'. Thrown on to a sandback, she sat tight until the fury passed and in the morning her passengers walked ashore. The US Naval freighter Bald Eagle was driven aground off Kawasaki and the Japanese cargo vessel 'Shoryu Maru' was left high and dry near Nagoya - one of the worst hit areas.

'Vera' is the worst typhoon since weather records were first started in Japan in 1873.