Battle off Samar
October 25, 2006 8:25 AM Subscribe
On 14 April 1988, the missile frigate
Samuel B. Roberts was damaged by a mine in the Persian Gulf. Some 45 years before,
Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts was killed when he guided his boat in front of Japanese lines on Guadalcanal in an effort to distract their fire from a rescue party evacuating wounded marines. In between was the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, which on 25 October 1944 sailed into history in the
Battle off Samar. (Long post inside for history buffs.)
posted by forrest (21 comments total)
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The destroyer USS Johnston under Cmdr. Ernest Evans immediately peeled away from the task force and headed for the Japanese fleet, zigzagging and making smoke to hide the task force. It closed on the enemy fleet, launching all 10 of its torpedoes to disrupt the formation and scoring hits on the cruiser Kumano. The Johnston was hit by at least three 14" battleship shells ("like a puppy smacked by a truck") and lost one of its two engines, finally turning to hide inside a rain squall.
Meanwhile, Admiral Sprague issued the order, "Little fellows, make a torpedo attack" and the other two destroyers, the Hoel and Heermann, headed towards the Japanese ships. The commander of the Samuel B. Roberts, uncertain as to whether "little fellows" included his ship, decided this was his best chance to protect the task force and came with them. As they passed by the limping Johnston, it turned once more and joined the charge. The remaining ships of Taffy 3 turned south to run from the shells hitting them.
As soon as Taffy 3 had come under attack, the carrier commanders began launching aircraft to get them off the doomed carriers. The 30-some aircraft on each carrier were either loaded with ground-support weapons or not loaded at all. Nonetheless, the pilots flew at the Japanese ships as if they had effective weapons. Some pilots made their fake bombing runs simply to draw fire away from their fellow aviators who might have bombs.
The little fellows pressed their attack, launching torpedoes and closing to where they could fire their 5" guns. The Hoel was the first to go: both engines dead, drifting and listing, battleships and heavy cruisers firing point-blank into her, she fought until an errant shell set off the ship's whistle and the crew took it for the order to abandon ship. The others continued their run against the enemy fleet, which by now had cornered the carrier escort Gambier Bay and was in the process of sinking her. The Johnston began firing on the ships around the carrier to draw their fire. After taking four hits from a cruiser, the Johnston turned and took on the destroyer squadron threatening the remaining carriers. It charged the column, facing down the first and second destroyers in line and forcing the others to turn away before they came into torpedo range of the carriers. On the final run, his bridge destroyed, Cmdr. Evans stood on the fantail and shouted orders through an open hatch to the steering crew below. Finally, the Johnston was brought to a standstill: both engines gone and dead in the water, the Japanese surrounded and sank her.
The magazine of the aft gun on the Samuel B. Roberts held 325 shells. The gun crew fired 324 of them before the gun overheated and exploded, killing most of the men in the gun crew. Under fire from the battleship Kongo, the little ship first lost an engine, then took a direct hit that opened up a 50-foot long hole in its hull. As the crew abandoned ship, they discovered the dying chief of the aft gun, the 325th shell still wrapped in his arms.
With victory in his grasp, Vice-Admiral Kurita realized that he wasn't facing Halsey's carriers as he had thought. Land-based aircraft and aircraft from the two other task forces in the area were now arriving overhead to attack his ships. Furthermore, radio intercepts led him to believe that American reinforcements were on the way. He turned his fleet north and steamed away from Samar. As he left, the 5" gun on the escort carrier White Plains scored a lucky hit on the cruiser Chokai, setting off a torpedo that crippled the ship and caused it to be scuttled some hours later. The glory of this audacity was short-lived, however, as Taffy 3 was attacked by shore-based Japanese fighters minutes later and the escort carrier St. Lo was sunk.
The Battle off Samar is considered by many to be the US Navy's finest hour. Four tiny ships and a handful of aviators turned back the most powerful concentration of naval gun power the Japanese had ever assembled. If you haven't heard of this battle, it's no wonder. It was part of the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf and the blunders that led to Taffy 3 being left to face the Japanese fleet alone had to be glossed over. "Halsey acted foolishly" (as a famed Soviet submarine commander commented) when he was lured away by a decoy force of Japanese carriers. A communications mixup led Admiral Kincaid to believe he still had a screen of battleships protecting the northern end of the San Bernardino Strait (it actually sailed away with Halsey). Finally, the men of Taffy 3 who went into the water when their ships were sunk had to wait two days to be rescued because of another mixup by Kincaid. Exposure, drowning and sharks took more than 100 men in those two days, including Cmdr. Ernest Evans.
The Gambier Bay was the first and only US aircraft carrier ever sunk by surface gunfire. The White Plains scored the only direct gunfire hit ever by a carrier. The St. Lo was the first ship to be sunk by the new Japanese kamikaze tactic. The largest battleship ever seen fired its guns in anger for the first time. This was the last large-scale engagement between navies that the world has seen.
Cmdr. Ernest Evans was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor
posted by forrest at 8:29 AM on October 25, 2006 [2 favorites]