😱 When Yamato Attacked This TINY Ship – What 4 Sailors Did Shocked the Entire Japanese Fleet 😱 – HTT

😱 When Yamato Attacked This TINY Ship – What 4 Sailors Did Shocked the Entire Japanese Fleet 😱

At 6:58 a.m. on October 25th, 1944, lookouts aboard the USS Samuel B. Roberts spotted four Japanese battleships emerging 15 miles northwest as the destroyer escort steamed off Samar Island in the Philippines.

The Roberts displaced 1,745 tons and was armed with two 5-inch guns, manned by a crew of 224 sailors who had been together for exactly 5 months and 27 days since commissioning.

Leading the enemy formation was the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, displacing 72,000 tons with nine 18.1-inch guns capable of firing shells weighing 3,200 pounds up to 25 miles.

Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland picked up the intercom microphone and informed his crew of the situation: a large Japanese fleet had been contacted 15 miles away, consisting of four battleships, eight cruisers, and multiple destroyers, all heading directly toward the American task force.

Copeland told them this would be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival could not be expected, and they would do what damage they could.

The Japanese center force consisted of 23 warships: four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 11 destroyers, totaling 200,000 tons.

Opposing them were six American escort carriers designed to fight submarines, screened by three destroyers and four destroyer escorts, totaling only 25,000 tons.

The Japanese outweighed them eight to one.

Admiral William Halsey had taken every American battleship north overnight, chasing Japanese carriers, leaving Taffy 3 alone off Samar.

American intelligence reported the Japanese center force retreating after previous air attacks, but they weren’t retreating.

At 3:00 a.m., they had transited San Bernardino Strait undetected.

Now they were here, closing at 30 knots.

Escort carriers could make 18 knots maximum; they couldn’t outrun battleships.

In the Pacific War so far, 53 destroyer escorts had been commissioned, but none had ever engaged enemy battleships.

Doctrine called for screening convoys against submarines, not charging battleships.

In the previous three months, Japanese naval forces had sunk four American escort carriers in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The standard survival rate for carrier crews in surface actions was 40%, meaning 1,200 sailors had died in those engagements.

At 7:05 a.m., Admiral Clifton Sprague ordered his screen to attack.

Three destroyers turned toward the enemy: Johnston, Hoel, and Herman.

Behind them came four destroyer escorts, with Roberts last in line.

They had minutes before Japanese guns opened fire.

Will this tiny ship survive charging the Yamato?

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Back to Roberts below decks.

Chief Engineer Lieutenant Lloyd Trowbridge heard Copeland’s announcement over the intercom.

Navy regulations limited the Roberts to 24 knots, and safety mechanisms prevented the boilers from exceeding design specifications.

Trowbridge walked to the main control panel and began bypassing every safety system the Navy had installed.

His crew watched in silence, understanding the gravity of the situation.

Twenty-four knots would not be enough.

At 7:16 a.m., the Johnston opened fire first, and shells arced toward the Japanese fleet.

The enemy returned fire immediately, with 14-inch shells from battleship Congo sending water columns erupting 200 feet high.

The destroyer disappeared into smoke.

At 7:23 a.m., the Roberts turned toward the enemy, and Copeland ordered flank speed.

Trowbridge’s modifications pushed the destroyer escort to 28 knots, four knots faster than design specifications.

The ship vibrated, metal groaned, and steam pressure gauges climbed into the red zone.

Nobody cared; speed was life.

The Japanese fleet spread across 10 miles of ocean, with Yamato steaming in the center.

Heavy cruiser Chikuma led the right flank, eight miles ahead of the battleship, while cruiser Tone followed two miles behind.

To the left, cruisers Haguro and Chokai closed on the American carriers, with destroyers forming a screening line.

The Roberts had to penetrate that screen and reach torpedo range to fire and escape.

Torpedo range was 5,000 yards—2.8 miles.

Roberts’s three Mark 15 torpedoes could travel that distance at 46 knots, but getting within 5,000 yards meant running through a gauntlet of shells from ships that could hit targets at 25,000 yards.

The math was simple: for every mile the Roberts advanced, the Japanese could fire five miles worth of shells at her.

At 7:32 a.m., shells began falling around the destroyer escort.

Eight-inch rounds from heavy cruiser Chikuma fell nearby, with green dye markers in the splashes helping Japanese spotters track their aim.

One shell landed 50 yards off the port bow, another struck 20 yards to starboard, and water columns towered over the ship’s mast.

Copeland ordered hard left rudder, then hard right, zigzagging to keep the enemy guessing and force their rangefinders to work.

Gun Captain Lieutenant William Burton stood in the forward 5-inch gun mount.

His crew had trained for six months, firing thousands of practice rounds, but never against battleships.

The forward gun could fire 15 rounds per minute with a trained crew, and Burton had a trained crew.

He also had 608 rounds of ammunition total—304 per gun.

At 15 rounds per minute, that gave him 20 minutes of continuous fire.

If he didn’t conserve ammunition, the Roberts would run dry before the battle ended.

Burton’s gun crew consisted of 10 men: loader, rammer, powderman, fuse setter, trainer, pointer, gun captain, and three ammunition handlers, with an average age of 22.

Two had never been in combat before today, while the other eight had fought in submarine contacts.

This was different; submarines didn’t shoot back with 14-inch guns.

At 7:38 a.m., Copeland announced over the intercom that they were closing for a torpedo attack.

The Roberts was now 7,000 yards from Chikuma—still too far.

Copeland needed to close another 2,000 yards, which would take two more minutes at 28 knots.

That meant two more minutes of shells falling around his ship.

One direct hit from an 8-inch shell would penetrate the Roberts’ thin hull plating, detonate inside, and kill everyone in that compartment.

The forward gun mount had 3/8-inch steel plating designed to stop shrapnel, not 8-inch shells.

If a shell hit the mount directly, all 10 men inside would die instantly.

At 7:40 a.m., the Roberts crossed 5,000 yards from Chikuma—torpedo range.

Copeland ordered the tubes fired, and three Mark 15 torpedoes launched from the starboard side.

White wakes traced across the water at 46 knots, with a travel time to target of approximately two minutes.

The torpedoes ran hot, straight, and normal.

The Roberts immediately reversed course, hard left rudder, full speed away from the enemy, disappearing into the smoke screen before the Japanese could track her.

Chikuma’s lookout spotted the torpedo wakes, and the cruiser turned hard to port, executing an emergency maneuver.

Her rudder went to maximum angle, and the 8,000-ton warship healed over.

The first torpedo passed 50 yards ahead of her bow, the second missed the stern, and the third ran underneath without detonating.

Contact exploders on Mark 15 torpedoes had a 40% failure rate.

The Roberts had just fired three duds, but Copeland had achieved something more valuable than a hit.

Chikuma had turned away from the carriers, breaking off her attack run.

The heavy cruiser was now heading northwest away from Taffy 3, having lost five minutes of pursuit time—five minutes the escort carriers could use to run south, five minutes closer to potential rescue from Admiral Halsey’s fleet.

At 7:45 a.m., the Roberts emerged from the smoke screen.

Chikuma had completed her turn and resumed course toward the carriers, now 8,000 yards away—too far for another torpedo run.

Copeland ordered Burton to open fire with the forward 5-inch gun.

The gun mount rotated toward the target and elevated to maximum range before firing.

The first shell left the barrel at 2,600 feet per second, with a flight time of 12 seconds.

The shell landed 400 yards short, and Burton adjusted the elevation, firing again.

This round landed 200 yards short, while the third shot splashed near Chikuma’s bow.

The fourth shot hit; the shell struck Chikuma’s forward superstructure, penetrating and detonating inside.

Smoke poured from the impact point.

Burton’s crew settled into a rhythm: load, ram, fire.

Load, ram, fire.

Fifteen rounds per minute.

The gun barrel heated, the recoil mechanism cycled, and brass casings piled up inside the mount.

After five minutes of continuous fire, Burton had expended 75 rounds—5% of his total ammunition.

He had hits on Chikuma but couldn’t tell how much damage had been done.

The cruiser was still firing back, still closing on the carriers.

At 7:52 a.m., Chikuma shifted her fire from the carriers to the Roberts.

Eight-inch shells began landing close—very close.

One exploded 30 yards to port, while another struck the wall directly, sending stone fragments showering the Firefly.

A third shell hit the water 10 yards off the bow, and the splash drenched the forward gun mount.

Sea water poured through the gun ports, and Burton’s crew kept firing.

Water slushed around their feet, but the gun mechanism was designed to work wet.

It had to be; destroyers operated in all weather and sea states.

The crew had trained in simulated flooding, but this wasn’t simulation; this was combat.

And the Japanese were getting their range.

At 8:03 a.m., Destroyer Johnston took a hit from battleship Congo—14-inch shell, direct impact on her bridge.

The explosion killed her executive officer and wounded her captain.

Johnston’s speed dropped to 17 knots, with steering control shifted to aft steering.

The destroyer continued firing.

Three miles to the north, destroyer Hoel engaged heavy cruiser Haguro.

Hoel had already taken multiple hits, with her forward gun mount destroyed and number three engine room flooded.

She was making 15 knots on one engine.

The Roberts was still intact, still making 28 knots, and still firing at Chikuma, but ammunition was running low.

After 18 minutes of continuous fire, Burton had expended 270 rounds from the forward gun—90% of that mount’s ammunition.

He had 34 rounds remaining.

At the current rate of fire, that gave him 2 minutes and 16 seconds before the forward gun ran dry.

At 8:07 a.m., Copeland ordered Burton to shift fire to a new target.

Heavy cruiser Tone had closed to 7,000 yards, closer than Chikuma and more dangerous.

Tone mounted eight 8-inch guns and was firing at escort carrier Gambier Bay, with shells landing near the carrier and getting closer with each salvo.

Burton traversed his gun mount to the new bearing, elevated for 7,000 yards, and fired.

The shell arced toward Tone, landing short.

He adjusted and fired again, hitting the cruiser’s number two turret, penetrating the armored face, and detonating inside.

The turret stopped rotating and stopped firing.

Burton had just disabled one-quarter of the cruiser’s main battery with a 5-inch gun that wasn’t supposed to damage cruisers.

At 8:10 a.m., the Roberts’ forward gun fired its last round.

304 rounds expended; the barrel was scorching hot, with metal glowing dull red and the recoil mechanism starting to fail.

Springs compressed beyond design limits, and oil was smoking in the recuperator.

Burton’s crew had pushed the gun past every specification the Navy had established, but now they were done.

The forward mount had no more ammunition.

The aft gun mount under Gunner’s Mate Third Class Paul Henry Carr still had ammunition—325 rounds.

Carr was a 20-year-old from Chakakota, Oklahoma, who joined the Navy in May 1942, trained as a gunner at Great Lakes, and was assigned to the Roberts in April, six months ago.

This was his first surface action, and his gun crew consisted of 10 men, with an average age of 21.

They had been firing continuously since 7:45, for 25 minutes, and had expended 324 rounds.

One round remained.

At 8:15 a.m., the Roberts’ luck ran out.

Three Japanese heavy cruisers had bracketed her: Chikuma to the north, Tone to the northeast, and Haguro to the northwest.

They were closing in—6,000 yards, 5,000, 4,000.

The Roberts was running out of seawoom, running out of smoke, and running out of time.

She was about to take her first hit.

At 8:20 a.m., an 8-inch shell from Chikuma struck the Roberts amidships on the port side.

The shell penetrated the thin hull plating, traveled through the galley, and exited the starboard side without detonating, punching a hole three feet wide.

Seawater began flooding the lower decks, and damage control teams rushed to seal the breach, stuffing mattresses into the holes and shoring up buckled bulkheads.

The Roberts took on a 5-degree list to port.

Two minutes later, a second shell hit, detonating and tearing through the crew’s birthing compartment, killing six men instantly.

Ruptured steam lines filled the passageway with superheated steam, scalding four more sailors.

The Roberts’ speed dropped to 24 knots, then 20, then dead in the water.

Copeland ordered all remaining crew topside.

The ship was dying—no power, no steering, and three feet of water in the lower decks.

Fires burned in four compartments, and the Roberts was settling by the stern.

At 8:45 a.m., more shells hit—6-inch rounds from light cruiser Noshiro and 8-inch rounds from Haguro.

The Japanese were pounding the helpless destroyer escort, with each hit killing or wounding more men.

The Roberts had become a stationary target.

At 9:10 a.m., Copeland gave the order to abandon ship.

115 men were already dead or missing, and the remaining 109 sailors began going over the side.

They had three inflatable life rafts; two had been destroyed by shellfire, leaving one that could hold 16 men.

They put the wounded in the raft, and everyone else went into the water.

Three floater nets drifted nearby, and men clung to them, holding onto anything that floated—pieces of debris, empty shell casings, wooden planks.

At 9:35 a.m., a patrol craft spotted the survivors.

PC 11119 was escorting five landing craft north of Samar when the lookout saw something in the water—wreckage, bodies, and life jackets.

The patrol craft approached cautiously.

Japanese survivors were known to play dead and attack rescuers.

The PC stopped 50 yards away, calling out and asking who won the World Series.

An American voice yelled back, “St. Louis Cardinals.”

The patrol craft moved in, and rescue took four hours, with 95 men pulled from the water.

They were treated for dehydration, burns, wounds, and fuel oil poisoning.

The most serious cases were transferred to hospital ship Comfort, while the rest went to Leyte and then to San Francisco aboard transport Lurline.

They arrived on December 4th, three weeks before Christmas.

The battle off Samar became known as the greatest last stand in naval history.

Seven small ships had turned back 23 warships, saving an entire invasion fleet and preventing a disaster that could have prolonged the Pacific War by months.

Admiral Chester Nimitz called it the Navy’s finest hour, while historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that no engagement in naval history showed more gallantry.

The Roberts received the Presidential Unit Citation, and Copeland received the Navy Cross.

Paul Carr received the Silver Star posthumously.

In 1985, the Navy commissioned the guided missile frigate USS Carr, named for the gunner who died holding his last shell.

In 1982, frigate USS Copeland was commissioned, named for the captain who led his crew into impossible odds.

In June 2022, explorer Victor Vescovo found the Roberts, 22,621 feet down, 4.3 miles deep—the deepest shipwreck ever discovered, deeper than the Titanic.

The wreck sits upright, with the bow separated from the stern by the impact, but still recognizable.

The aft mount where Carr died is still there, visible in the footage, silent and waiting.

The last survivor, Alfred Lenore, died on March 20th, 2022, at age 97, just three months before they found his ship.

That’s the story of the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship—the tiny ship that charged the Yamato and the crew that refused to surrender even when survival seemed impossible.