At first light on October 25, 1944, the sailors of Taffy 3 looked north and saw the horizon filling with gun flashes. The ships coming at them were not supposed to be there. Japanese Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita had brought battleships, cruisers, and destroyers through San Bernardino Strait and into the waters east of Samar. Between that force and the lightly protected invasion shipping off Leyte stood six small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts built for work far less brutal than a battleship duel.
On paper, the answer was obvious: run. In the water, with shells already falling, the little ships attacked.
A fleet built for another kind of fight
Taffy 3 was the radio name for Task Unit 77.4.3, commanded by Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague. Its escort carriers carried aircraft for patrols, submarine defense, and close support of the American landings on Leyte. Their thin hulls and modest speed were acceptable for that job. They were never intended to trade broadsides with capital ships.
The screen was just as badly outmatched. USS Johnston, USS Hoel, and USS Heermann were destroyers—fast, hard-working warships, but fragile beside cruisers and battleships. USS Samuel B. Roberts, USS Raymond, USS Dennis, and USS John C. Butler were smaller destroyer escorts. Their heaviest guns were five-inch weapons. Kurita’s force included four battleships, eight cruisers, and roughly a dozen destroyers. Among them was Yamato, carrying the largest naval guns ever mounted on a warship.
The carriers turned toward rain squalls and began launching every aircraft they could put into the air. Escorts made smoke. Sailors watched colored shell splashes rise like towers around the formation as Japanese gunners walked their salvos closer.
Ernest Evans turns toward the guns
Commander Ernest E. Evans of Johnston did not wait for a comfortable solution. Around 7:00 a.m., he drove his destroyer toward the enemy at flank speed. The move cut directly against the instinct of survival and directly toward what mattered: buying time for the carriers.
Johnston fired rapidly, closed the range, and launched torpedoes at the Japanese line. Her attack damaged the heavy cruiser Kumano badly enough to blow away its bow. Then battleship and cruiser fire found the destroyer. Shells smashed machinery, cut speed, and tore into the ship. Evans, wounded, kept fighting.
The other escorts followed into the storm. Hoel attacked and was overwhelmed. Heermann threaded through friendly ships and enemy fire to make her torpedo run. The much smaller Samuel B. Roberts closed to a range where its five-inch guns could hurt a cruiser and fired until ammunition and ship were both nearly spent. Long afterward, the destroyer escort would be remembered as “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship.”
This was not one clean charge. It was smoke, squalls, sudden turns, torpedo wakes, jammed communications, and crews working damaged guns while larger ships hunted them. The escorts kept forcing Kurita’s commanders to maneuver, breaking up their formation and pulling fire away from the carriers.
Aircraft with anything—or nothing—left to drop
Above the surface fight, pilots from Taffy 3 and nearby carrier groups attacked again and again. Some aircraft carried bombs or torpedoes suited to ground support rather than armored warships. Others went after Japanese ships with depth charges, machine guns, or whatever remained aboard. When their ammunition was gone, some pilots returned to make dry runs, diving as if another weapon were coming and forcing enemy gunners to react.
The attacks did not erase the imbalance. They made it impossible for the Japanese formation to settle into an orderly pursuit. Combined with the escorts’ torpedoes, smoke, and gunfire, the constant air pressure helped turn what should have been a simple destruction into a confused, punishing fight.
The price was severe. Japanese gunfire sank the escort carrier USS Gambier Bay. Johnston, Hoel, and Samuel B. Roberts also went down. After the surface action, a kamikaze struck USS St. Lo, setting off explosions that destroyed the carrier. More than 1,000 American sailors and airmen were killed in the fighting off Samar.
The order that changed the morning
At about 9:25 a.m., Kurita ordered his force to turn away. The reasons remain debated—confused identification, scattered formations, damage, relentless air attacks, and concern about stronger American forces all played a part. What matters at deck level is that Taffy 3 had made the stronger fleet pay in time, cohesion, and certainty.
The vulnerable transports and landing ships off Leyte were not reached. American and Filipino forces ashore kept the beachhead that would help open the way back into the Philippines. The Battle off Samar became the most fiercely remembered action within the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Taffy 3 received the Presidential Unit Citation. Evans was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The honor belongs just as surely to the engine-room crews who kept damaged ships moving, the gun crews who stayed at their mounts, the pilots who attacked with empty racks, and the sailors who pulled shipmates from an oil-dark sea.
What the sailors of Taffy 3 left behind
There is a temptation to tell Samar as a miracle, as though luck alone saved the landing fleet. Sailors know better. Luck may decide where a shell lands. It does not turn a destroyer toward battleships. That takes training, trust, and the decision to do the job when the odds have stopped making sense.
That same hard standard runs through other sea stories in the Fair Winds log—from Douglas Munro’s last covering action at Guadalcanal to the sailors who endured the sinking of USS Indianapolis. Browse more true stories in Emerald Coast & Nautical Life, or carry a little of that saltwater spirit in the Best of Fair Winds collection.
Off Samar, seven small escorts and six small carriers met a force that should have swept them aside. They did not win by matching steel for steel. They won the minutes the invasion fleet needed—and paid for every one.