Of every battle that the United States engaged in during the Pacific War, this is the one that truly defined what courage in the face of not just overwhelming, but seemingly impossible odds to achieve even a modicum of success, looked like. I will spare most of the details as I would assume most everyone who studies World War II as a hobby, or like myself as part of a career that will span the rest of my life going forward, knows about this battle.
What I do want to draw attention to is that at the outset of hostilities on December 7th, 1941, the high command of the Japanese forces almost universally believed that America did not have the stomach to take part in a war like this one. They thought the decadent Americans would not be able to engage in the all out warfare required in a fight like this. They did not believe that the national essence of the Americans was on the level of their own.
THEY WERE WRONG ON EVERY COUNT.
The American sailors aboard the Hoel, the Heermann, the Johnston and the Samuel B. Roberts, famously known as “The destroyer escort that fought like a battleship” got wind of a massive fleet headed their way that fateful morning. Captain Robert Copeland of the Samuel B. Roberts uttered perhaps the greatest phrase ever said by a US naval commander as they made the decision to engage the center force of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
“A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.”
The temerity to make that statement while knowing you are taking on the Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, a ship so large that it outweighed all of the ships of Taffy 3 by itself, is just stunning. It’s a wonder the Samuel B. Roberts hadn’t sank already considering all the excess weight of Copeland’s balls of steel.
Commander Ernest Evans of the Johnston took his Tin Can straight into the belly of the IJN Center Force beast and blew the freaking bow off the heavy cruiser Kumano with a well aimed torpedo. He did not even wait for orders to enter the fray. He just did it. This caused a second cruiser to exit the battle to protect the Kumano. Evans was a Native American graduate of the Naval Academy and he said shortly before his ship left the west coast that it was a fighting ship and anyone who did not want to fight could leave. No one did. Evans and the crew of the Johnston fought like the hounds of hell that morning before finally being stopped dead in the water. Surviving sailors from the Johnston recalled the sailors aboard an IJN ship saluting them as they were floating in the open sea. Ernest Evans was never seen again. He would be posthumously awarded The Medal of Honor. That we do not have a statue of this man in every single state in the US is a travesty. I have no doubt he would have retired an admiral had he survived this encounter. His actions and those of his sailors, as well as those in the rest of Taffy 3, won perhaps the most improbable naval victory in history. Just sheer courage and a willingness to not back down won that morning’s brawl and saved an untold amount of lives in the invasion force on Leyte.
This doesn’t even include the bravery of the pilots that flew as many as 20 dummy torpedo runs on the IJN Center Force just to shield their comrades from taking fire on the escort carriers that they took off from. Some would land on shore and reload and head back from Leyte to rejoin the fight. Good God the fight those men showed was just on a level I will never fully comprehend.
Anytime I tell this story to people I have to at times just stop because it chokes me up a bit to recount the bravery and heroism on display 80 years ago today. None of us here will ever be in the position those men were in. They stepped in to save their fellow sailors on the escort carriers as well as the soldiers of the invasion force on Leyte under MacArthur’s command. They were what an actual hero looks like. Heroes are not those who compete in sports. Heroes are these men who would sacrifice their own life to save others. So many of those heroes went to the bottom of the ocean that morning. They would never return home to marry and start a family. They would never make it to old age. Many of them gave the last full measure of their life at a very young age 80 years ago today. If you have a Navy vet in your family or amongst your friends tell them thank you today. If you know a family member of one of the veterans of The Battle off Samar tell them they have not been forgotten.
And also I know that the animosity towards Admiral Halsey has never completely died down for chasing the carriers and leaving things wide open for the IJN, but I look at it from a different angle. Bull Halsey chasing the decoy fleet allowed what transpired to happen. We owe a debt of gratitude to those men that we can never repay for that morning 80 years ago. I will tell and retell this story for as long as I live and can educate folks on what happened out there. Just a bunch of young men that took on a force they had no business fighting, but they did anyhow and they won because they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be capable of what they did.
Not bad for a bunch of comfortable Americans who would never withstand the rigors of warfare. Not bad at all.