At 6:58 a.m. on October 25, 1944, lookouts
aboard the American destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts spotted
shapes on the horizon northwest of Samar Island in the Philippines. What
emerged from the morning haze was not a patrol group, not cruisers on a distant
screen—but a full Japanese surface battle force advancing at speed.
For the sailors aboard the Roberts, this moment marked
the collision between naval doctrine and raw reality.
The Roberts displaced just 1,745 tons, carried two
5-inch guns, and had been commissioned less than six months earlier. Her
crew of 224 officers and enlisted men had trained to protect convoys
from submarines—not to confront the heaviest warships ever built.
Ahead of them sailed Yamato, the largest
battleship in history, displacing 72,000 tons and armed with nine
18.1-inch guns capable of striking targets more than 25 miles away.
Around her moved cruisers and destroyers forming the Japanese Center Force,
a formation of 23 warships carrying a combined displacement exceeding 200,000
tons.
Opposing them were seven American ships,
totaling barely 25,000 tons.
The imbalance was historic—and immediately fatal if
allowed to unfold.
A Strategic Error and an
Unprotected Fleet
Hours earlier, U.S. command believed the Japanese
surface fleet had been turned back. Intelligence assessments suggested retreat.
That assessment was wrong.
During the night, the Japanese force passed undetected
through San Bernardino Strait, slipping directly toward the vulnerable
American escort carriers supporting the Leyte Gulf landings. Admiral
William Halsey had taken the U.S. fast battleships north, leaving Task Unit
Taffy 3 exposed.
The escort carriers were slow, lightly armored, and
designed for anti-submarine warfare, not surface combat. If the Japanese
reached them, the invasion of the Philippines—and potentially the broader
Pacific campaign—could collapse.
Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague, commanding Taffy
3, made a decision that would become legendary.
He ordered his destroyers and destroyer escorts to attack.
Charging a Fleet Built to
Destroy You
Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland,
captain of the Samuel B. Roberts, informed his crew over the intercom that they
were about to engage a vastly superior enemy force. He made no promises of
survival. He spoke only of duty.
Below decks, Chief Engineer Lieutenant Lloyd
Trowbridge made a choice that violated peacetime engineering limits but
matched wartime necessity. He bypassed safety systems to push the ship beyond
its rated speed. The Roberts surged forward at nearly 28 knots, well
above her design specifications.
Speed was no longer a guideline.
Speed was survival.
As Japanese shells began falling around the ship, Copeland
ordered evasive maneuvers while closing the distance required for a torpedo
attack. The mathematics were brutal: the Roberts needed to travel miles
under fire from ships that could accurately engage targets far beyond her own
maximum range.
Yet she pressed on.
Torpedoes Against Titans
The Roberts reached torpedo range of the heavy cruiser
Chikuma and launched her Mark 15 torpedoes. Although none
detonated, the effect was decisive. Chikuma was forced to turn away, breaking
her attack run on the escort carriers.
In naval warfare, forcing an enemy to maneuver
can matter as much as sinking them.
Those minutes mattered.
They allowed the escort carriers to escape farther
south. They added confusion to Japanese command assessments. And they
contributed to a growing misinterpretation that the Japanese were facing
full-sized fleet carriers rather than lightly built escorts.
When a 5-Inch Gun Changed
the Battle
With torpedoes expended, Copeland ordered his guns to
open fire.
The Roberts’ forward 5-inch gun, never intended
to duel cruisers, began scoring hits through disciplined fire control and
relentless pacing. One shell struck a Japanese cruiser’s superstructure.
Another disabled a turret on Tone, temporarily silencing part of her
main battery.
These were not lucky shots.
They were the result of training, leadership, and refusal to disengage.
As the battle intensified, Japanese fire increasingly
concentrated on the Roberts. She took damage, lost speed, and eventually lost
power. Still, her crew continued fighting, maintaining damage control under
conditions no manual could fully prepare them for.
A Ship That Would Not Yield
By mid-morning, the Roberts was no longer
maneuverable. Fires burned. Compartments flooded. Yet even then, Japanese
forces continued to engage her, convinced they were under attack by a much
larger American formation.
That misjudgment would shape the outcome of the
battle.
Believing they faced fleet carriers and heavy escorts,
Japanese commander Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita ultimately ordered a
withdrawal. His force had suffered damage, expended ammunition, and lost the
initiative.
The invasion fleet survived.
Aftermath and Legacy
The Samuel B. Roberts sank at 9:35 a.m.,
becoming the deepest-sunk U.S. warship ever discovered. Of her crew, 95 men
survived, rescued after days in the water through discipline, leadership,
and collective endurance.
The Battle off Samar would later be described
as one of the greatest last stands in naval history.
Seven small American ships had turned back a force
designed to annihilate them.
Admiral Chester Nimitz called it one of the
finest moments in U.S. Navy history.
Historians would later agree that courage, confusion, and audacity had
altered the course of the Pacific War.
In 2022, explorers located the wreck of the
Samuel B. Roberts more than 22,000 feet below the surface, deeper than
the Titanic. She rests upright, silent testimony to a moment when a ship built
for escort duty chose instead to confront the impossible.
The story endures not because the Roberts was large or
powerful—but because, for one morning in 1944, she refused to behave like a
small ship.
She behaved like a decision.
And that decision helped save a war.
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