October 25th, 1944.
659 a.m.
Philippine C.
A wall of steel and fire erupts from the horizon as 98.1in guns thunder simultaneously.
3,000 lb of death, screaming through the air at twice the speed of sound.
The shells slam into USS Johnston with the force of a freight train hitting a tin can.
The afterine room becomes an instant crematorium.
Superheated steam at 600°.
Flash boils through ruptured pipes, cooking men alive in their stations.
Commander Ernest Evans, a Cherokee Indian from rural Oklahoma, who had never expected to command anything larger than a fishing boat, watches two of his fingers disappear in a spray of red mist as shrapnel tears through the bridge.
His shirt is literally ripped from his body by the concussion.
Blood covers every surface.
Half his bridge crew lies dead or dying around him.
And yet in the next breath, this wounded man will make a decision that defies every rule of naval warfare ever written.
He will order his crippled destroyer to charge directly at the largest battleship ever constructed.
What happens next will become the most audacious naval action in recorded history.
A battle where ships weighing 2,000 tons attacked ships weighing 72,000 tons.
where destroyers armed with 5-in guns charged battleships carrying 18-inch guns.
Where the mathematics said impossible, but the outcome said victory.
This is the story of how ordinary American sailors, farm boys, and factory workers and short order cooks turned a guaranteed massacre into one of the greatest upsets in military history.
The year is 1944, and the Pacific War has reached its critical turning point.
For three years, American forces have island hopped across thousands of miles of ocean, paying for every beach with blood.
Now in October, General Douglas MacArthur has returned to the Philippines with 130,000 troops landing on Laty Island.
The liberation of the Philippines will cut Japan’s jugular severing access to the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia.
Without those resources, the Japanese war machine will strangle within months.
The Imperial Japanese Navy understands this existential threat.
They have devised Operation Shogo One, a desperate gamble involving every warship they can muster.
The plan is brilliant in conception, but requires perfect execution.
Three separate naval forces will converge on Lee Gulf from different directions, crushing the American invasion fleet between them like a hammer and anvil.
The bait force under Vice Admiral Ozawa will dangle four aircraft carriers before the American fleet, luring the powerful third fleet northward.
Ozawa knows his mission is sacrificial.
His carriers are hollow shells with barely trained pilots.
They exist only to draw American battleships away from the real killing blow.
The southern force under Vice Admiral Nishimura will strike from below through Surao Strait with two battleships and supporting vessels.
But the center force is the true instrument of destruction.
Vice Admiral Teo Kurita commands the most powerful surface fleet Japan has ever assembled.
The super battleship Yamato displaces 72,000 tons and carries 9 18in guns each capable of hurling a 3,000lb shell over 26 mi.
Her sister ship Mousashi sails alongside.
Four more battleships add their massive firepower.
10 heavy cruisers provide devastating support.
Light cruisers and 11 destroyers complete the Armada.
This force will transit San Bernardino Strait and fall upon the vulnerable American transport ships like wolves among sheep.
130,000 American soldiers on the beaches will be caught between Japanese guns at sea and Japanese forces on land.
It will be a slaughter unprecedented in modern warfare.
But something goes wrong with the plan.
American submarines USS Darter and USS Dace intercept Karita’s force in the Palawan Passage on October 23rd.
Their torpedoes sink two heavy cruisers and a third.
Karita himself is blown into the water when his flagship explodes swimming through sharkinfested seas before being rescued.
The next day, American carrier aircraft pound his fleet for hours, sinking the super battleship Mousashi after she absorbs 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs.
Admiral William Hollyy, commanding the American third fleet, receives reports that Karita’s battered force is retreating westward.
At the same time, he spots Ozawa’s carrier force approaching from the north.
The bait proves irresistible.
Hollyy takes his entire fleet, all six fast battleships and eight carriers, and races north to destroy the Japanese carriers.
He leaves San Bernardino Straight completely unguarded.
Not a single American ship watches the passage.
At half midnight on October 25th, Kurita reverses course and slips through the undefended straight.
His force has been reduced but remains terrifying.
four battleships including Yamato, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, 11 destroyers, all steaming south toward the American landing beaches at full speed.
Standing between this armada and 130,000 helpless American troops are three small task units of escort carriers.
Slow, unarmored ships built on merchant halls and never designed for surface combat.
Their maximum speed is 18 knots.
Their armor is non-existent.
Their weapons are one 5-in gun per ship.
The northernmost unit is designated Taffy 3.
Six escort carriers, three destroyers, four destroyer escorts commanded by Rear Admiral Clifton Sprag.
Aboard USS Fans Shaw Bay.
And aboard destroyer USS Johnston, the ship closest to the approaching enemy stands commander Ernest Edwin Evans.
Evans was born in 1908 in Pawne, Oklahoma to a Cherokee and Creek family with roots going back generations on tribal lands.
He grew up poor in the Dust Bowl, learned to hunt and fish and survive with nothing.
He joined the Navy because it offered three meals a day and a chance to see the world.
Nobody expected anything from him.
He was a Native American in an era when Native Americans were treated as secondclass citizens.
He was short stocky with features that marked his heritage clearly.
But Evans possessed something that rank and privilege could not grant.
He possessed an absolute fearlessness that bordered on recklessness and a tactical instinct that seemed almost supernatural.
At Johnston’s commissioning ceremony exactly one year and 2 days before Samar Evans had addressed his crew with words that became legend.
This is going to be a fighting ship, he told them.
I intend to go in harm’s way.
Anyone who doesn’t want to go along had better get off right now.
Not a single sailor requested transfer.
For 12 months, Evans drilled his crew relentlessly.
Gunnery practice every day.
Damage control exercises constantly.
Every officer cross trained on multiple stations.
Every enlisted man knew exactly what to do when the shooting started.
Now at 6:37 a.m.
on October 25th, Enen William Brooks spots the Japanese fleet approaching from the north during routine patrol.
His radio message freezes the blood of every man who hears it.
Those are not our ships.
I can see pagod masts.
I see the biggest meatball flag on the biggest battleship I ever saw.
Admiral Sprag receives the report with disbelief.
Task Force 34 is supposed to be guarding San Bernardino Strait.
Those must be Hollyy’s battleships.
3 minutes later, Brooks confirms.
Definitely Japanese.
Four battleships, seven cruisers, 11 destroyers, heading directly toward Taffy 3 at high speed.
Colored splashes begin erupting around the carriers.
Red, green, yellow, blue.
Each color marking shells from a different Japanese ship.
A deadly rainbow walking across the water toward ships that cannot run, cannot hide, cannot fight back.
Sprag faces an impossible situation.
His carriers cannot outrun the Japanese.
His guns cannot penetrate battleship armor.
His aircraft are armed for ground support, not naval combat.
The nearest American heavy ships are 90 mi south and hours away.
He has perhaps 15 minutes before his entire force is annihilated.
In those 15 minutes, Sprag makes decisions that will be studied in navalmies for generations.
He orders all carriers to launch every aircraft immediately.
Pilots scramble to their planes still wearing pajamas.
Taking off with whatever weapons happen to be loaded, he turns his formation toward a rain squall 5 mi ahead.
He orders maximum smoke from all escorts and then he gives the order that changes everything.
At 7:16, AM Sprag commands his destroyers to conduct a torpedo attack against the Japanese formation.
But Ernest Evans has not waited for orders.
6 minutes earlier at 7:10 a.m.
Evans has already turned Johnston toward the enemy and begun his attack run.
He sees Yamato’s pagotamast on the horizon.
He calculates the mathematics instantly.
His ship weighs 2,000 tons against their 72,000.
His 5-in guns against their 18-in guns.
His 10 torpedoes against their hundreds of shells.
The numbers say suicide.
Evans does not care about the numbers.
Johnston’s turbines scream as she accelerates past 35 knots, racing directly toward the heart of the Japanese formation.
The range is 35,000 yd.
His torpedoes have effective range of 10,000 yd.
To launch, he must penetrate 17 mi of concentrated battleship fire.
His crew lays smoke as they charge, generating thick artificial fog.
At 7:07 a.m., Johnston opens fire on heavy cruiser Kumano with her 5-in guns at maximum range.
American radar directed gunnery proves devastatingly accurate even through smoke and rain.
Japanese optical rangefinders struggle to track the charging destroyer.
Over the next 10 minutes, Johnston fires 200 rounds at Kumano.
At least 45 shells strike the heavy cruiser starting fires, severing communications, devastating her fire control.
Kumano’s topside becomes a hell of exploding shells.
At 7:20 a.m., having closed to 10,300 yd, Evans launches all 10 torpedoes.
One, possibly two slam into Kumano’s bow.
The explosion tears off the entire front section of the cruiser.
Her speed drops immediately to 8 knots as water floods through the massive hole where her bow had been.
A 2,000 ton destroyer has just crippled a 13,000 ton heavy cruiser.
But victory comes at terrible cost.
At 7:30 a.m., Yamato fires a full nine gun salvo at what Japanese spotters have identified as an American light cruiser.
They cannot believe a mere destroyer would attack so aggressively.
Three 18-in shells strike Johnston simultaneously.
The first penetrates below the water line and explodes in the after engine room.
600° steam erupts as pressurized vapor flashes seaater into scalding death.
Men die instantly boiled alive.
The second shell destroys the aft engine, completely severing power to half the ship.
Speed drops from 35 knots to 17.
The third shell severs electrical power to three of five gun turrets.
Secondary shells from Yamo’s 6-in battery slam into the superructure.
The bridge becomes a slaughterhouse.
Evans loses two fingers.
His navigator loses part of his hand.
The quartermaster dies at his post.
Standard naval doctrine says Johnston should retreat immediately.
Ernest Evans does not know the meaning of retreat.
Within 10 minutes, his damage control parties restore power to the two forward guns through emergency cables.
They reestablish steering control to the emergency station on the fan tail.
Evans, bleeding heavily and refusing medical treatment, relocates his command to the fanail.
He shouts steering orders through an open hatch to sailors manually cranking the rudder by hand.
Johnston is still in the fight.
17 knots, two operational guns, half her crew dead or wounded.
And Commander Ernest Evans is about to order her back into battle against ships that outweigh her 50 to1.
Because the carriers still need protecting.
Because the mathematics do not matter when duty calls.
because some men are simply incapable of surrender.
But Johnston’s sacrifice is only the beginning.
At this very moment, USS Hoell and USS Herman are beginning their own torpedo runs.
The destroyer escorts Samuel B.
Roberts, Dennis John C.
Butler, and Raymond are preparing to follow.
Seven small ships against the mightiest surface fleet in the Pacific.
The next two hours will determine whether 130,000 American soldiers live or die.
In part two, we will witness the full fury of the battle as tiny American warships make suicide runs against Japanese battleships.
We will see a destroyer escort commanded by a man who told his crew that survival cannot be expected charged directly at heavy cruisers.
We will watch escort carrier Gambir Bay become the only American carrier ever sunk by surface gunfire.
And we will discover the shocking reason why Vice Admiral Karita with victory in his grasp suddenly ordered his overwhelming force to retreat.
In part one, we witnessed Commander Ernest Evans turn his crippled destroyer Johnston directly into the teeth of the most powerful battleship fleet ever assembled.
We saw his ship absorb three 18-in shells from Yamato.
We watched him lose two fingers, refuse medical treatment, and order his battered vessel back into battle with only two operational guns and half his crew dead or wounded.
But Johnston’s charge was only the opening act.
What happens in the next 90 minutes will see three more American warships sent to the bottom.
Over a thousand sailors will die in waters so deep their ships will not be found for 80 years.
And a 24year-old gunner’s mate from Oklahoma will fire his weapon until it literally explodes in his hands, then beg with his dying breaths for someone to load just one more shell.
This is the story of the men who knew they would not survive, but attacked anyway.
At 7:43 a.m.
USS, Hell begins her torpedo run.
Commander Leon Kintberger stands on Hoell’s bridge, watching the Japanese formation through binoculars smeared with salt spray.
He has just witnessed Johnston’s attack.
He has seen Evans score hits on Kumano.
He has watched the heavy cruiser’s bow disappear in a massive explosion.
Now it is his turn.
Hoel accelerates to flank speed, her bow cutting through the gray Philippine waters toward battleship Congo.
The range is closing fast.
15,000 yds.
12,000 10,000 Japanese shells begin falling around in increasing numbers.
Near misses send geysers of water cascading across her decks.
At 9,000 yd, Kinberger orders the first torpedo spread.
Five Mark 15 torpedoes streak toward Congo at 46 knots, leaving phosphorescent wakes pointing back at their launcher like accusatory fingers.
The battleship turns hard to starboard, combing the spread by presenting her narrow bow.
The torpedoes pass harmlessly down her length, but Kintar is not finished.
Hell continues closing, now targeting heavy cruiser Hagaro.
The range drops to 8,000 yd, 7,000, 6,000.
At this distance, Japanese gunners cannot miss.
8-in shells begin slamming into Hoell’s thin hull with sickening regularity.
At 7:54, AM Kinter launches his remaining five torpedoes at Haguro from under 6,000 yd.
Point blank range in naval combat terms.
At least one torpedo strikes the cruiser’s engineering spaces.
Water floods through the ruptured hull.
Haguro’s speed drops as damage control parties fight desperately to contain the flooding.
But has paid a terrible price for this success.
Over the next 45 minutes, the destroyer absorbs more than 40 major caliber hits.
An 8-in shell destroys her bridge, killing most of the officers stationed there.
Her forward engine room floods from hits below the waterline.
Her number two gun mount is blown completely off its foundation, the twisted metal pointing toward the sky like a broken finger.
All steering control is lost.
The ship can only be conned from the emergency station aft where sailors fight to keep her under some semblance of control.
Water pours in through dozens of holes punched through her hull.
At 8:30 a.m., H’s remaining engine room floods.
The ship goes dead in the water, listing heavily to port.
Commander Kinberger, wounded, but still commanding orders.
Abandoned ship.
Hell rolls onto her port side at 8:55 a.m.
and sinks Stern first.
Of her crew of 273, only 86 will survive.
187 men go down with their ship or die in the water, awaiting rescue that will not come for 2 days.
But even as dies, USS Herman is executing the most daring single maneuver of the entire battle.
Commander Amos Haway has observed the chaos developing in the Japanese formation.
Ships are maneuvering independently to avoid American torpedoes.
Communication between Japanese vessels has broken down.
Individual captains are making decisions without coordination.
Haway sees an opportunity.
At 7:54 a.m., Herman launches her full spread of torpedoes at battleship Haruna from 4,400 yd, less than 2 1/2 m.
The battleship turns hard to avoid her massive hull healing as she changes course.
The torpedoes miss, but Haruna is forced away from the carriers.
Then Herman finds herself in an impossible position.
Two columns of Japanese heavy cruisers are closing from different directions.
Battleship Congo steams to port.
Heavy cruiser Chakuma approaches to starboard.
Herman is trapped in a rapidly closing box with no apparent escape.
What Hathaway does next will be studied in navalmies for generations.
He orders Herman to charge directly between the two enemy formations.
The destroyer accelerates to maximum speed, racing toward the narrow gap between Congo and Chakuma.
She crosses both ships boughs at point blank range in a textbook crossing of the tea executed in reverse.
The Japanese commanders face an impossible choice.
An American destroyer has suddenly appeared directly between their formations at ranges under 5,000 yd.
If they fire, they risk hitting each other.
If they maneuver to avoid collision, they lose their firing solutions.
Both ships turn hard to avoid disaster.
Herman escapes through the gap with damage from near misses, but no direct hits.
Her aggressive attack and brilliant seammanship have disrupted the Japanese formation at a critical moment.
Two major enemy units have been forced to break off their pursuit of the carriers, but the destroyers are not fighting alone.
At 7:42, AM Rear Admiral Sprag orders the destroyer escorts to attack.
The little wolves, as they are called, are the smallest warships in Taffy 3.
Designed for anti-ubmarine warfare, they were never intended to fight surface ships.
Their displacement is barely 1300 tons.
They carry only two 5-in guns and three torpedo tubes.
Against them, steam heavy cruisers displacing 13,000 tons with 8in guns that can blow a destroyer escort in half with a single salvo.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland aboard USS Samuel B.
Roberts receives the attack order with complete understanding of what it means.
Before ordering his ship into battle, Copeland addresses his crew over the public address system.
His words will become legend in Navy lore.
This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.
We will do what damage we can.
No drama, no heroic speeches, just a simple statement of tactical reality.
They are about to charge heavy cruisers in a ship designed to hunt submarines.
Their chances of survival are essentially zero, but the carriers must be protected regardless of cost.
Copeland orders his engineering crew to push the boilers beyond their design limits.
Samuel B.
Roberts was built for a maximum speed of 24 knots.
Her boilers are rated for 440 lb per square in.
The engineering crew pressurizes them to 660 lb per square in.
The boilers could explode at any moment.
Every man in the engine room knows this.
They maintain the pressure anyway, coaxing 28.7 knots from a ship that should not be capable of more than 24.
Black smoke pours from Roberts’s stack as her boilers strain beyond anything their designers imagined.
At 8:10 a.m., Samuel B.
Roberts launches her three torpedoes at heavy cruiser Choai from approximately 4,000 yards.
Her 40mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns rake the cruiser’s superructure, shattering windows and killing exposed personnel.
One torpedo strikes Chokai’s stern engineering spaces.
The explosion causes catastrophic damage to her propulsion system, combined with a 500-lb bomb hit from a Taffy 2 aircraft.
Minutes later, Chokai is left dead in the water with uncontrollable flooding.
She will be scuttled by her own destroyers rather than fall into American hands.
A destroyer escort has just killed a heavy cruiser.
Roberts then engages heavy cruiser Chakuma in an extended gun duel.
Her two 5-in guns fire 608 rounds in 35 minutes, over 17 rounds per minute per gun, an astonishing rate for manually loaded weapons.
The gun crews work with machine-like precision loading, firing, loading again in a rhythm that never falters despite Japanese shells exploding around them.
The aft gun mount is commanded by gunner’s mate, thirdclass Paul Henry Carr, 24 years old from Czecha, Oklahoma.
A farm boy who had never expected to see anything beyond the wheat fields of his home state.
Carr’s crew maintains their incredible rate of fire even after losing electrical power to the mount.
They manually crank the turret into position.
They handload each 54-lb shell into the brereech.
They fire.
They load.
They fire.
At approximately 8:50 a.m., a Japanese 8-in shell strikes Mount 52 directly.
The blast kills or wounds most of the crew instantly.
Carr is horribly wounded, his body ripped open from neck to groin by the explosion, but the gun is still functional.
Carr refuses to abandon his post with wounds that should have killed him instantly.
He continues trying to load the gun.
When rescue parties reach Mount 52 after the abandoned ship order, they find Carr dying at his station.
He is still holding the mount’s final shell.
He is begging someone to load it so the gun can keep firing.
Paul Henry Carr dies moments later still trying to serve his weapon.
He will be postumously awarded the Silver Star.
USS Carr, a frigot commissioned in 1985 will be named in his honor.
At 8:51 a.m., an 8-in shell penetrates Samuel B.
Roberts below the water line.
The explosion in the forward engine room is catastrophic.
Steam lines rupture.
Fuel oil ignites.
Water floods through the hole in the hull.
The engine room becomes a death trap.
At 9:10 a.m., with his ship dead in the water and sinking, Lieutenant Commander Copeland orders abandoned ship.
Samuel B.
Roberts capsizes and sinks at approximately 10:05 a.m.
Of her crew of 22489 are killed in action.
An additional 25 die from wounds or shark attacks during the two days survivors spend in the water.
120 men survive many bearing scars they will carry for life.
Throughout these surface actions, American aircraft swarm over the Japanese fleet in continuous attacks.
Pilots from Taffy 2 and Taffy 3 make run after run against the enemy ships.
Many have already expended their torpedoes on pre-dawn strikes.
Some carry only depth charges meant for submarines.
Some have empty wings, having launched without any weapons at all.
They attack anyway.
Young Enens with fewer than 200 hours of flight time dive on the most powerful battleships ever built.
They fly through walls of anti-aircraft fire so thick it seems impossible to penetrate.
When their bombs are gone, they make dry runs, diving at Japanese ships without weapons, forcing enemy commanders to maneuver and spoiling their gunnery.
The psychological impact on Vice Admiral Karita is profound.
Wave after wave of American aircraft attack his ships.
The ferocity seems impossible from small escort carriers.
The coordination suggests a much larger force than the six baby flattops he was briefed about.
Karita becomes convinced he is facing fleet carriers with heavy battleships nearby.
Meanwhile, escort carrier Gambir Bay falls behind the formation.
Her engines cannot maintain pace with the others.
By 8:00 a.m., she has become isolated.
A straggler separated from any protection.
Japanese heavy cruisers concentrate their fire on the struggling carrier.
8in shells begin finding their range.
At 8:10 a.m., shells hit Gambir Bays after flight deck starting fires.
At 8:20 a.m., a shell penetrates below the water line near the forward engine room.
Speed drops from 18 knots to 11.
More shells slam into her hull.
Her engine spaces, her hanger deck.
Fires rage through the riddled carrier.
At 8:50 a.m., Gambia Bay is dead in the water.
At 9:07 a.m.
she capsizes.
At 9:11 a.m.
USS Gambir Bay sinks, the only American carrier ever sunk by surface gunfire in World War II.
Of her crew of approximately 8147, die immediately.
Many more will perish in the water over the following 2 days.
Crippled Johnston, still fighting with two guns and one engine, attempts to draw fire away from the dying carrier.
Commander Evans, bleeding from multiple wounds and commanding from the fanale, orders his remaining guns to engage the cruisers, hammering Gambier Bay.
At 8:45 a.m., Evans observes Japanese destroyers forming up for a torpedo attack on the carriers.
Despite having only one operational gun turret, one barely functional engine, and steering controlled by men manually cranking the rudder.
Evans turns Johnston toward five enemy warships.
It is suicide.
Everyone aboard knows it.
Johnston’s remaining gunfires as fast as the crew can load, but five Japanese destroyers quickly surround her, pounding the American vessel from point blank range.
At 9:10 a.m., with all guns silenced both engines destroyed and fires raging throughout the ship, Evans orders abandon ship.
At 10:10 a.m.
USS Johnston rolls over and sinks.
As she goes down, sailors aboard Japanese destroyer Yukazi come on deck and stand at attention.
They salute the sinking American destroyer.
A gesture of respect from enemies who recognize extraordinary courage when they see it.
Commander Ernest Evans is seen abandoning ship in a life jacket.
He is never recovered.
Of Johnston’s crew of 327, only 141 survive.
186 die.
Evans will postumously receive the Medal of Honor, becoming the first Native American in United States Navy history to receive the nation’s highest decoration.
Four American ships now rest on the bottom of the Philippine Sea.
Over a thousand sailors are dead or dying in sharkinfested waters.
The surviving carriers are damaged, low on fuel, nearly out of ammunition, and Vice Admiral Karita’s battleships are still closing.
Victory is within his grasp.
Another 30 minutes of sustained attack will destroy Taffy 3 completely and leave the invasion beaches defenseless.
But at 9:25 a.m., something impossible happens.
Kurita orders his fleet to withdraw.
In part three, we will discover why the Japanese commander made the most controversial decision of the Pacific War.
We will see the aftermath of battle as survivors spend 50 hours floating in sharkinfested waters.
We will witness the first organized kamicazi attacks of the war strike Taffy 3 just hours after the surface battle ends.
And we will learn what happened to the men who charged battleships in ships that had no business surviving.
The mathematics said impossible.
The outcome said victory, but the cost was measured in blood.
In parts one and two, we witnessed the most lopsided naval battle in history unfold.
Commander Ernest Evans charged his destroyer Johnston directly at battleship Yamato.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copelan told his crew that survival cannot be expected, then drove his tiny destroyer escort Samuel B.
Roberts into the teeth of heavy cruisers.
Four American ships went to the bottom.
Over a thousand sailors died in waters so deep their vessels would not be found for 80 years.
And then at 9:25 a.m., with victory within his grasp, Vice Admiral Karita ordered his overwhelming force to retreat.
The most powerful surface fleet in the Pacific turned away from six defenseless escort carriers and steamed north, leaving 130,000 American soldiers on the beaches of Lee untouched.
Why? The answer lies in the fog of war, the chaos of battle, and the psychological toll of watching tiny American destroyers charge battleships with suicidal determination, and in the terror that gripped Japanese commanders when they realized what kind of enemy they were facing.
Vice Admiral Teo Kurita stood on Yamato’s bridge at 9:20 a.m., watching colored shell splashes erupt around the fleeing American carriers.
His ships had sunk four enemy vessels.
His cruisers were closing on the remaining carriers.
Victory was perhaps 30 minutes away, but Kurita was not seeing victory.
He was seeing chaos.
His formation had been scattered by aggressive American torpedo attacks.
Ships were maneuvering independently, each captain making decisions without coordination.
Radio communications had broken down under the stress of battle.
Karita could not determine with certainty where his own vessels were positioned, let alone the enemies.
And the air attacks would not stop.
Wave after wave of American aircraft dove on his ships.
Some carried torpedoes, some carried bombs, some carried nothing, making dry runs to force his ships to maneuver.
The ferocity seemed impossible from the small escort carriers his intelligence had described.
Karita became convinced he was facing fleet carriers.
If fleet carriers were present, American fast battleships could not be far behind.
Task Force 34.
The powerful battleship group he had been warned about might be racing south to trap him against the Philippine coast.
His force had already lost Mousashi.
His cruisers were being picked off one by one.
Fuel was running low after days of high-speed maneuvering.
At 911 a.m., Kurita received a garbled radio message suggesting American carrier aircraft were attacking Japanese forces to the north.
He interpreted this as confirmation that Hollyy’s carriers were nearby and closing.
The message was actually referring to the attack on Ozawa’s decoy force 300 m away.
But Kurita did not know this.
At 9:25 a.m.
he made the decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
All ships cease action.
Come north with me.
His staff officers were stunned.
Captain Tonosuk Otani Yamato’s commanding officer protested.
The enemy carriers were defenseless.
Another hour would see them destroyed.
The invasion beaches lay open.
Kurita was unmoved.
He had lost his nerve.
His confidence shattered by the ferocity of American resistance.
Ships that should have fled had attacked.
Destroyers that should have been annihilated had crippled his cruisers.
Pilots with empty wings had dove on his battleships.
What kind of enemy fights like this? The Japanese commander could not comprehend men who charged certain death without hesitation.
His tactical calculus could not account for Ernest Evans or Robert Copeland or Paul Henry Carr.
The mathematics of naval warfare said the Americans should have surrendered or fled.
Instead, they had attacked with such complete abandon that Karita believed he faced a much larger force.
His withdrawal saved Taffy 3.
But for the survivors floating in the Philippine Sea, the nightmare was only beginning.
Over 2,000 American sailors had abandoned ship during the battle.
They clung to wreckage life rafts and each other in the warm tropical waters.
Many were wounded.
Some were burned.
All were exhausted from hours of combat.
Help would not arrive for 50 hours.
The Philippine Sea teamed with oceanic white tip sharks.
Aggressive predators attracted by blood and the vibrations of struggling swimmers.
Survivors reported seeing fins constantly circling their groups.
Men who drifted away from the rafts simply disappeared, pulled under without a sound.
Seaman first class James Meyers from Johnston watched three of his shipmates taken by sharks during the first night.
We could hear them screaming, he later recalled.
Then the screaming would stop and we knew.
The tropical sun beat down mercilessly during the day.
Temperatures exceeded 100°.
Men with no fresh water began suffering severe dehydration within hours.
Saltwater sores developed on skin that was constantly wet.
Wounds that should have been survivable became infected.
Some men simply gave up.
They slipped out of their life jackets and let the sea take them.
Others went mad from thirst and exposure, drinking sea water and hastening their own deaths.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland of Samuel B.
Roberts organized his survivors into groups, rotating men onto the few available rafts to prevent exhaustion.
He led prayers.
He told stories.
He kept men focused on survival rather than despair.
Copeland would be credited with saving dozens of lives through his leadership in the water.
But rescue seemed impossibly far away.
American commanders did not realize how many men were in the water.
The chaos of battle had scattered survivors across miles of ocean.
Search aircraft flew overhead without spotting the tiny clusters of men among the endless gray waves.
It was not until the morning of October 27th, 50 hours after the battle ended that rescue ships finally located the survivors.
Of the approximately 2,000 men who went into the water, over 300 died before rescue arrived.
sharks, exposure, wounds, despair.
The sea claimed them all with equal indifference.
But even as survivors struggled in the water, a new horror descended on Taffy 3.
At 10:50 a.m.
on October 25th, less than 2 hours after Karita’s withdrawal, five Japanese aircraft approached the surviving carriers at low altitude.
They climbed to approximately 2500 ft, then dove directly at the American ships.
These were not conventional attacks.
The pilots had no intention of pulling out.
The divine wind had arrived.
The kamicazi special attack corps was making its first organized appearance of the Pacific War.
Young Japanese pilots, many barely out of their teens, had volunteered to crash their aircraft into American ships.
Their planes were loaded with bombs that would detonate on impact.
One zero fighter crashed into USS Kitken Bay’s port side near the waterline.
The explosion blew a hole in the carrier’s hull, but the damage was not fatal.
Her crew controlled the flooding.
Another kamicazi targeted USS White Planes, but was destroyed by concentrated anti-aircraft fire.
The aircraft exploded in midair and crashed into the sea, showering the carrier with debris, but causing no significant damage.
USS St.
Low was not as fortunate.
At 1053 a.m., A0 fighter piloted by Lieutenant Yukioi dove through heavy anti-aircraft fire and crashed through St.
Low’s wooden flight deck near the center line.
The aircraft’s 250 kg bomb detonated inside the hangar deck.
The explosion ignited aviation gasoline.
Armed torpedoes began cooking off.
Secondary explosions tore through the ship as bombs detonated in the intense heat.
Within minutes, flames consumed Saint Low from stem to stern.
The fires spread faster than damage control parties could contain them.
At 11:25 a.m., St.
low exploded in a massive fireball and sank within minutes.
The first major American warship lost to kamicazi attack.
Of her crew, 143 died.
The psychological impact was devastating.
American sailors had faced bombs and torpedoes throughout the war.
They understood those threats, but men deliberately crashing their aircraft into ships was something entirely different.
You could shoot down a bomb, an officer aboard Fans Shaw Bay observed.
You could dodge a torpedo, but how do you stop a man who wants to die? The kamicazis would claim thousands of American lives before the war ended.
But on October 25th, 1944, Taffy 3 had survived both the surface battle and the divine wind.
The cost was staggering.
Five ships sunk.
Johnston, Hell, Samuel B.
Roberts, Gambia Bay, St.
low over 1100 dead 913 wounded against this the American force had sunk or crippled three Japanese heavy cruisers.
Chokai scuttled by her own destroyers.
Chukuma sunk by aircraft attacks.
Suzuya destroyed when her torpedo tubes exploded.
More importantly, Taffy 3 had turned back the most powerful surface fleet in the Pacific.
130,000 American soldiers on the Lee beaches never faced Japanese naval gunfire.
The invasion proceeded uninterrupted.
The Philippines would be liberated.
Japan’s access to the oil and rubber of Southeast Asia would be severed forever.
The strategic consequences of the Battle of Samar rippled across the Pacific.
The Imperial Japanese Navy would never again sorty as a major fleet.
Fuel shortages and the loss of trained personnel reduced what remained to a defensive force incapable of offensive operations.
News of the battle spread quickly through the American military.
Admirals who had spent the war directing carrier task forces and battleship squadrons read the action reports with astonishment.
Destroyers had charged battleships.
Destroyer escorts had killed heavy cruisers.
Pilots had attacked without weapons.
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimttz, commander and chief of the Pacific Fleet, issued his assessment with words that would be carved in stone at the United States Naval Academy.
The success of Taffy 3 was nothing short of special dispensation from the Lord Almighty.
Admiral William Hollyy, whose decision to chase Ozawa’s decoy carriers had left San Bernardino Strait unguarded, would spend the rest of his life defending his actions.
The controversy over his tactical choices would fuel historical debate for decades, but no one debated the courage of the men who fought off Samur.
Presidential unit citations were awarded to the entire task unit.
The citation praised extraordinary heroism in action against powerful units of the Japanese fleet and noted that destroyers and destroyer escorts charged the battleships point blank.
Commander Ernest Evans received the Medal of Honor postumously.
His citation emphasized that he was the first to lay a smokeokc screen and to open fire, launching the first torpedo attack when his ship came under straddling Japanese shellfire.
In 2023, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro officially confirmed that Evans was the first Native American in United States Navy history to receive the Medal of Honor.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland received the Navy Cross.
Commander Leon Kintberger of Hoell received aostumous Navy Cross.
Commander Amos Hathaway of Herman was similarly honored.
Gunner’s mate, Third Class Paul Henry Carr, the farm boy from Oklahoma who died begging someone to load one more shell, received the Silver Star.
A warship would be named in his honor.
Dozens of silver stars and bronze stars were awarded to other officers and crew members, but many historians believe more decorations should have been given.
The battle occurred partly because of a massive communication failure between Hollyy and Concaid.
Neither commander wanted excessive attention drawn to an engagement that revealed serious problems at the highest levels.
The men who fought deserved more recognition than they received.
The battle of Laty Gulf as a whole was the largest naval engagement in history.
Over 200,000 personnel participated across four separate actions, fought over 4 days, and 500 m of ocean.
The Japanese lost 26 warships totaling 306,000 tons, three battleships, four carriers, 10 cruisers, nine destroyers.
Over 10,500 sailors died.
The Americans lost six ships totaling 37,000 tons.
Approximately 2800 killed.
The Imperial Japanese Navy ceased to exist as an offensive force.
The war in the Pacific would continue for another 10 months.
Ioima, Okinawa, the firebombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
But the outcome was no longer in doubt after Lee Gulf.
Japan could not replace the ships and men lost in those four days of October 1944.
The battle of Samar stands apart even within this massive engagement.
Never before or since has such a mismatch in forces produced such a result.
The tonnage ratio was approximately 10 to1 favoring the Japanese.
The gun power ratio was even more lopsided.
Yamo’s main battery alone could deliver more shell weight per salvo than all of Taffy 3’s guns combined could fire in 5 minutes.
Yet the smaller force not only survived but forced the larger force to withdraw without accomplishing its mission.
How American radar directed gunnery proved superior to Japanese optical systems in the smoke and reign of Samar.
Aggressive destroyer attacks disrupted Japanese formation integrity at critical moments.
American damage control kept ships fighting long after they should have sunk.
Japanese armor-piercing shells designed to penetrate battleship armor over penetrated the thin holes of American destroyers and escort carriers.
Many shells passed completely through without exploding.
Had the Japanese been firing high explosive rounds with impact fuses, the destruction would have been catastrophic.
But the fundamental factor was human courage executed with such complete commitment that it convinced the enemy they faced a much larger force.
Men who should have retreated attacked instead.
Ships that should have fled charged directly at battleships.
Pilots who had expended their weapons made dry runs to distract Japanese gunners.
This behavior was incomprehensible within Japanese tactical doctrine.
It caused confusion and uncertainty that contributed directly to Kurita’s decision to withdraw.
The story of Taffy 3 would be taught at navalmies around the world.
It would be cited as the ultimate example of courage under impossible odds.
But what happened to the men who survived? What became of the commanders who ordered suicide charges? What lessons did the Navy learn from a battle that defied every rule of naval warfare? In part four, we will follow the survivors home.
We will discover the fates of Robert Copeland and Amos Hathaway.
We will visit the deepest shipwrecks ever discovered where Johnston and Samuel B.
Roberts rest four miles beneath the surface.
And we will learn why 80 years later the battle of Samar still matters.
The mathematics said impossible.
the outcome said victory.
But the legacy is measured in lessons that transcend any single battle.
This is a story that changed how navies think about courage, sacrifice, and the limits of what determined men can achieve.
And it has one final chapter that few people know.
In the first three parts of this story, we witnessed the impossible unfold.
Commander Ernest Evans, a Cherokee Indian from rural Oklahoma, charged his destroyer directly at the largest battleship ever built.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copelan told his crew that survival cannot be expected, then drove his tiny ship into heavy cruisers.
Gunner’s mate Paul Henry Carr died begging someone to load one more shell into his shattered gun.
Four American ships went to the bottom.
Over,00 sailors perished.
Survivors spent 50 hours floating in sharkinfested waters before rescue arrived.
And yet, against all mathematics of naval warfare, six escort carriers escaped destruction.
130,000 American soldiers on the Lee beaches never faced Japanese naval gunfire.
The most powerful surface fleet in the Pacific turned away without accomplishing its mission.
But what happened to the men who made this impossible victory possible? What became of the survivors who watched their ships sink and their shipmates die? And why 80 years later does the battle of Samar still matter? The answers reveal something profound about courage, sacrifice, and the limits of what determined men can achieve.
This is the final chapter of a story that few people know completely.
Commander Ernest Edwin Evans was never recovered from the Philippine Sea.
His body lies somewhere in the depths where Johnston sank four miles beneath the surface.
He was 40 years old when he died, a career naval officer who had risen from poverty on Cherokee land to command one of the most famous destroyers in American history.
Evans left behind a wife but no children.
His Medal of Honor was presented to his widow in a ceremony that received little public attention.
The war was still raging.
Ioima and Okinawa lay ahead.
There was no time for elaborate memorials.
For decades, Evans remained largely forgotten outside naval circles.
His story was taught at Annapapolis, but the general public knew little of the Cherokee commander who had charged battleships with reckless abandon.
That changed slowly over the following decades.
In 2023, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro officially confirmed what historians had long believed.
Ernest Evans was the first Native American in United States Navy history to receive the Medal of Honor.
The recognition came 79 years after his death.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland survived the battle and the 50 hours in the water that followed.
He returned to the United States, a hero awarded the Navy Cross for his leadership of Samuel B.
Roberts.
After the war, he resumed his legal career, eventually becoming a respected attorney in Tacoma, Washington.
Copeland rarely spoke publicly about the battle.
When asked, he deflected attention to his crew.
They were the heroes.
He would say, “I just tried to keep us together.” He lived until 1973, dying at age 63.
His obituary in the Tacoma News Tribune mentioned his Navy Cross, but gave few details of the action that earned it.
The battle of Samar remained obscure, overshadowed by more famous engagements at Midway and Lee Gulf’s other actions.
Commander Amos Haway of Herman, whose brilliant seammanship had threaded his destroyer between enemy battleships and cruisers, continued his naval career after the war.
He retired as a rear admiral in 1956 and lived until 1979.
His crossing of the T- maneuver, executed in reverse, remains one of the most audacious ship handling feats in naval history.
Of the approximately 5,000 men who served in Taffy 3 on October 25th, 1944, fewer than 100 were still alive by 2020.
The last verified survivor of USS Johnston died in 2021, just weeks before the wreck of his ship was discovered.
The men who had charged battleships in tin cans passed quietly from the world.
Their stories largely untold outside family gatherings and naval reunions.
But the legacy they left behind transformed how navies think about combat courage and what smaller forces can achieve against overwhelming odds.
The battle of Samar became required study at navalmies around the world.
Not because of the tactical lessons which were situational and difficult to replicate, but because of what it revealed about human factors in warfare.
The mathematics had said impossible.
The outcome had said victory.
The difference was the human element.
Men who refused to accept defeat even when defeat was mathematically certain.
commanders who understood that aggressive action, even suicidal action could create opportunities that defensive postures never would.
The United States Navy incorporated these lessons into its tactical doctrine.
The concept of the aggressive defense attacking even when outmatched to disrupt enemy plans became standard teaching.
The idea that initiative and audacity could offset material disadvantage was proven in blood off Samar.
The Mark 37 fire control system that had given American destroyers such accurate gunnery evolved into increasingly sophisticated targeting computers.
By the Korean War, American destroyers carried systems that could track multiple targets simultaneously and compute firing solutions in real time.
The radar directed gunnery that had allowed Johnston and Hoel and Herman to score hits through smoke and rain became the foundation for modern naval combat systems.
Today’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers use direct descendants of those World War II fire control concepts enhanced by technologies that Evans and Copeland could never have imagined.
The destroyer escort concept itself evolved.
The small, cheap, quickly built ships that had performed so heroically at Semar, proved their value beyond convoy escort duty.
The modern frigot, now serving in over 40 navies worldwide, traces its lineage directly to vessels like Samuel B.
Roberts.
In fact, the United States Navy has commissioned three ships named Samuel B.
Roberts since 1944.
The latest FFG-58 served from 1986 until 2015.
During that time, she struck an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf and survived a testament to the damage control traditions established by her predecessors crew.
The lessons of Samar extended beyond technology and tactics.
They reached into the psychology of combat leadership.
Robert Copelan’s address to his crew before the battle.
This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected became one of the most studied examples of combat leadership communication in military history.
Psychologists and leadership experts analyzed why those words rather than demoralizing his crew had actually strengthened their resolve.
Copeland had acknowledged reality.
He had not lied to his men or offered false hope.
He had simply stated what everyone already knew and given them permission to accept it.
In doing so, he freed them from fear of death because death was already expected.
What remained was duty.
We will do what damage we can.
Those words transformed certain death into purposeful action.
They gave meaning to sacrifice.
They allowed men to face impossible odds not with despair but with determination.
Every military leadership course worth its salt now teaches Copelan’s example, the power of honest communication, the importance of giving purpose to sacrifice.
The way leaders can transform fear into resolve through simple acknowledgement of truth.
But perhaps the deepest lesson of Samar lies in what it reveals about the nature of courage itself.
The men who fought that morning were not special forces operators or elite warriors.
They were ordinary Americans, farm boys from Oklahoma, factory workers from Detroit, short order cooks from California, high school graduates who had joined the Navy because it seemed better than the draft.
They had received the same training as thousands of other sailors.
They served on ships identical to dozens of others in the fleet.
Nothing distinguished them from any other naval unit in the Pacific until the moment when distinction was demanded.
When that moment came, they rose to meet it.
Not because they were braver than other men, but because their training, their leadership, and their understanding of duty prepared them for the impossible.
Commander Evans had spent a year drilling his crew relentlessly.
Lieutenant Commander Copeland had trained his men until damage control procedures became automatic.
The gun crews who maintained impossible rates of fire under enemy shells had practiced those exact motions hundreds of times before.
When the shooting started, muscle memory took over.
Fear was present but subordinated to training.
Men did what they had been taught to do even when what they had been taught to do was charge battleships.
This is the true legacy of Samar.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
Courage is training, preparation, and leadership that allows ordinary people to perform extraordinarily when circumstances demand it.
Any unit properly led and properly trained can rise to impossible challenges.
Any person given purpose and preparation can find reserves of courage they never knew they possessed.
The battle of Samar proved this conclusively at a cost measured in blood and lives.
And there is one final detail that most people do not know.
For 77 years, the ships that sank off Samar lay undiscovered in the depths of the Philippine Sea.
The Philippine trench features some of the deepest water in any ocean.
Depths exceed 20,000 ft in the area where Johnston Hoell, Samuel B.
Roberts, and Gambir Bay went down.
Until very recently, the technology did not exist to explore such depths.
In March 2021, explorer Victor Vesco located the wreck of USS Johnston using the deep submersible limiting factor.
The destroyer rests at a depth of 21,180 ft.
Broken into sections, but largely intact.
The discovery made Johnston the deepest shipwreck ever surveyed by a man submersible.
Visco’s cameras captured haunting images.
the bridge where Evans lost two fingers and watched his crew die.
The shattered gun mounts that had fired until they could fire no more.
The hull plates torn by 18in shells from Yamato.
15 months later, Visco found Samuel B.
Roberts at 22,621 ft.
The deepest shipwreck ever discovered.
Roberts lies broken in two sections exactly where the 8-in shell penetrated her engine room.
The forward section rests upright.
The aft section lies on its side about 10 m away.
Mount 52, where Paul Henry Carr died, begging for one more shell, is visible in the debris field.
Both wrecks are protected under the sunken military craft act, designated as war graves that cannot be disturbed.
The extreme depths provide natural protection.
Johnston and Samuel B.
Roberts will rest undisturbed for eternity.
memorials to the men who served aboard them.
When Vesco’s team first spotted Johnston’s hull emerging from the darkness four miles beneath the surface “One of the expedition members,” a naval historian began to weep.
“These men charged battleships,” he said.
“And here they still are, exactly where they fell, still on station.
The wrecks of the destroyers that charged battleships lie deeper than any other warships ever found.
Even in death, they hold the record for going further than anyone thought possible.
From a Cherokee farm boy who never expected to command anything larger than a fishing boat to a Medal of Honor that would not be fully recognized for 79 years.
From destroyer escorts built to hunt submarines to ships that killed heavy cruisers in pointblank gun duels.
From certain mathematical defeat to victory that defied every tactical calculation, the battle of Samar proved that courage, leadership, and determination can overcome impossible odds.
Over,00 men died to save 130,000 soldiers on the beaches of Lee.
Their sacrifice shortened the Pacific War by months, perhaps years.
The strategic consequences rippled forward through the liberation of the Philippines.
the isolation of Japan and the eventual end of the most destructive conflict in human history.
Today, their story is taught at every major naval academy in the world.
Their example inspires military leaders across all services and all nations.
Their legacy lives in the doctrine, the technology, and the understanding of human courage that emerged from those two terrible hours in the Philippine Sea.
Historian Samuel Elliot Morrison, the official chronicler of United States Naval Operations in World War II, provided the definitive tribute to the men of Taffy 3.
In no engagement in its entire history has the United States Navy shown more gallantry guts and gumption than in those two morning hours between 07:30 and 09:30 off Samar.
The mathematics said impossible.
The outcome said victory.
And the legacy says this.
When tiny destroyers charged battleships head-on, they proved something eternal about the human spirit.
That ordinary men properly led and properly prepared can achieve the extraordinary.
That courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.
That sacrifice given freely for others is the highest expression of duty.
The men of Taffy 3 rest now in the deepest waters on Earth, 4 miles beneath the surface of the Philippine Sea.
They are still on station.
They will never be relieved and their story will never be forgotten.
