It’s the early morning of October 25th, 1944, near the strait of San Bernardino, in the Philippines.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Witcher Copeland is having his morning coffee at the bridge of USS Samuel B. Roberts
after a sleepless night patrolling the waters.
They are part of Taffy 3, a carrier group made out of 6 escort carriers, 3 Fletcher-class Destroyers,
and 5 Butler-class escort Destroyers like his own.
Their mission is to provide air support to the landings of Leyte Gulf,
which leaves the destroyers in a simple bodyguard and patrol role it’s shaping up as an uneventful task.
That is until he receives a radio transmission warning him of surface radar contacts heading their way.
Copeland doesn’t even have time to take any action before one of his lookouts reports
“Object on the horizon, Sir!”
“Everyone to battle stations!” He orders without skipping a beat.
Trouble lays ahead.
In the distance the Center Force of the Imperial Japanese Navy pushes into battle.
It’s made out of 11 destroyers, 2 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 3 Battleships,
and in the middle of them all is the biggest warship to ever grace the seas, the pride of the Imperial Navy, the Yamato.
The Commander of Taffy 3 immediately directs the carrier group to move east in haste and lay down smoke.
Aircraft take off from the carriers and engage.
The planes throw everything they can at the Japanese.
Bombs, Torpedoes, Depth charges as well as strafing runs.
But the Japanese force is just too vast
and the planes run out of ammunition and are forced to withdraw to rearm and refuel.
Copeland relays the order, and the men activate the chemical smoke generators as well as overload the boilers with fuel,
causing the vessel to billow black smoke out of the smokestack.
As they do Copeland spots massive colorful splashes rising up from the waves,
the Japanese are firing their first ranging shots.
The rest of the destroyers mirror the USS Roberts,
quickly deploying a vast wall of black and white smoke in front of the carriers as they continue their run East,
heading straight for an isolated storm.
The splashes get closer and closer as the Japanese gunners zero in on their target, threatening to strike at any second.
But to the American’s fortune they reach a rain squall and visibility drops drastically,
the torrent of rain and the smokescreen combine to hide the vulnerable ships from the Japanese.
The bombardment continues though but with limited visibility it becomes inaccurate and slows to a crawl,
giving the fleet precious time to regroup and prepare.
Copeland is still coordinating the release of smoke when he receives a transmission from the Commander.
All destroyers are ordered to attack with torpedoes.
Copeland swiftly asks if the commander wants Butler-class and Fletcher-class to attack simultaneously.
The response comes back negative, the Fletcher-class are to go in first.
The Fletcher-class ships push out into battle.
Copeland is left waiting, listening to the thunder of guns through the mist and smog.
The wait is torturous,
he thinks to himself
“My God, how are we going to work this?”
Contemplating the dangers ahead he gets on the loudspeaker and tells the crew,
"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.
We will do what damage we can."
The Fletchers complete the attack run and race away into the relative safety of the smokescreen,
receiving strike after strike from the enemy fleet.
Amidst the chaos the second attack run isn’t organized, and the Butler-class destroyers hesitate as to when to start.
But Copeland doesn’t wait, he slams the EOT to full power and the ship charges into battle.
He sails straight into the enemy at 20 knots.
He identifies the heavy cruiser Chokai as the first big target near by,
almost in ideal position for torpedo attack and orders to go straight for it.
Enemy shells begin falling around him, but they push on fearlessly.
Amidst the hellfire he radios Lieutenant Trowbridge, the engineering officer, and tells him
“Lucky! As soon as we fire our fish I will ring up flank speed and you give me everything you got!”
The shelling intensifies, geysers of seawater lift into the sky all around them, some striking mere yards away.
A shell impacts the ship’s mast and the debris rains down upon the deck,
a metal beam strikes the torpedo launcher, jamming it.
Copeland is warned but fortunately the launcher is already aiming overboard.
Already committed to the run,
he eyeballs a new attack approach to account for the angle of the launchers and keeps going.
Shells continue to pummel the seas surrounding him, but they too miss by sheer luck.
Coming in hot 4,000 yards away from Chokai, Copeland orders “Fire!” and the three torpedoes dive into the seas.
The fish are away.
The ship immediately turns to escape and Copeland slams the EOT to flanking speed.
Below deck Trowbridge bypasses every safety measure,
the boiler pressure rockets past its design limit and the ship accelerates to a blistering 28 knots.
“She cannot take much more, captain!”
Behind them the HIJMS Chokai is rocked by an explosion as one of the torpedoes hits its mark.
But they have no time to celebrate as other ships keep up their rain of shells.
They keep running with all they have, zigzagging through a storm of high explosives.
In the middle of it all Copeland sees an allied destroyer, torn to pieces, limping along.
The captain is standing on her stern, bloodied and hurt,
still commanding the ship by shouting orders down a hatch to the engine room below.
The Captain gives Copeland a friendly wave as they sail by in the midst of battle.
Copeland returns to a devastating scene, nearly the entire fleet has suffered heavy damage, yet they still fight.
Copeland radios his gunners and orders to open fire upon the nearest enemy, the Cruiser Chikuma.
The 5-inch weapons fire upon the cruiser.
They are pitiful compared to the firepower wielded by the Japanese, but the gunners are determined to make it count.
They fire round after round into the exposed superstructure of the Chikuma, all the while dodging 8-inch fire themselves.
Inside turret #2
the Gunner's Mate Third Class Paul Henry Carr fires anything and everything that comes up the ammunition hoist,
Armor Piercing, High Explosive, AA Proximity Fuse,
even smoke and Starshells used for lighting up battlefields at night.
A similar scene takes place in turret #1 as the little destroyer tears through the superstructure of the Chikuma,
their accurate fire disables an 8-inch turret and the Starshells light fires all across the deck.
The fight drags on for 45 minutes during which the gunners fire nearly all of the 5-inch ammunition stored on board.
But then a lookout shouts inside the bridge, “Captain! 14-inch splashes behind us!”
Copeland looks back just in time to see the massive water geysers lifting up into the sky inches away from their stern.
He runs for the EOT and pulls it to full reverse, the ship’s hull shudders under the stress as it grinds to an abrupt halt.
They even begin reversing
when Copeland hears a loud “WHOOSH” of shells streaking overhead and sees them slam into the waters in front.
Having dodged them he pushes the EOT back to full flank ahead,
but it’s too late.
An 8-inch salvo impacts the warship.
A shell pierces the engine room and bursts the steam pipes of one of the two boilers,
another one hits below the waterline, and a third takes out all power and communications.
The ship is wounded, and the Japanese can tell.
The 14-inch main guns of Battleship HIJMS Kongo take aim and fire.
The 1400 pound shells smash into the vessel, tearing a huge hole under the waterline.
Copeland orders abandon ship.
The Destroyer sinks as her gunners stubbornly continue to fire.
An explosion rocks the insides of turret #2,
the barrel and breach are now so hot that it had prematurely detonated the shell’s powder charge.
A crewmember enters the turret and finds Carr against the wall, heavily wounded, shell in hand.
The crewmember tries to help,
but Carr only begs him for help loading one more shell into the breach, not realizing the gun was inoperable.
Back at the bridge Copeland has no more control, no power or communications there is nothing he can do.
He abandons the bridge alongside 1st Officer Lloyd Gurnett as shells still fall around and into the dying ship.
The pair run to the very bow of the vessel as it rises into the air, and spot a life raft floating below, they jump.
The burning USS Samuel B.Roberts remains afloat for one more hour until it finally capsizes and sinks under the waves,
taking with her 90 of the 210-man crew.
The Japanese attack was repelled by the unprepared carrier fleet at the end of the day,
thwarting their attempts to intervene in the Leyte invasion and sinking 3 heavy cruisers, including Chokai and Chikuma.
But the allied fleet suffered greatly.
2 carriers and 3 destroyers were sunk and the rest sustained heavy damage.
The chaos of the aftermath delayed the rescue,
men weren’t picked up from the sea until 24 hours after the battle had ended,
some spending up to 50 hours floating adrift.
Engineering Officer Lieutenant Herbert W. Trowbridge and Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Paul Carr died in the encounter,
they would both be posthumously awarded the Silver Star for their brave final acts
and Carr would have a guided missile frigate named in his honor.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Witcher Copeland was rescued from the water alongside his crew,
he would be awarded the Navy Cross for his actions and a frigate was named in his honor.
He survived the war and resumed his law career back home.
He passed away in his home city of Tacoma, Washington on August 25, 1973,
aged 62.
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