Sunday, October 25, 2026

The American sailors saw towering enemy ships on the horizon on the morning of October 25, 1944. They had been assigned to protect small escort carriers supporting the invasion of the Philippines, not to fight a battleship fleet. Yet through the morning haze off Samar came a Japanese force with four battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Among the battleships was Yamato, carrying some of the largest naval guns ever put to sea. The Americans had six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four smaller destroyer escorts.

The task unit was called Taffy 3. Its carriers were designed to send aircraft over soldiers ashore and defend against submarines. Their escorts were not built to stand in a line of battle against heavy warships. A Japanese decoy force had drawn Admiral William Halsey’s powerful Third Fleet north, while other American battleships were occupied farther south. The opening left Taffy 3 in the path of Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force, which had slipped through San Bernardino Strait during the night.

The American commander, Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague, ordered smoke and evasive movement while aircraft took off. Destroyers then did something that must have seemed reckless to anyone counting guns: they attacked. Johnston charged and launched torpedoes. Hoel and Heermann joined the desperate fight. The destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, smaller still, fired at Japanese cruisers. The crews were not trying to win a conventional gunnery duel. They were trying to disrupt the attack long enough for the vulnerable carriers to escape.

Aircraft added to the confusion. Some had been armed for missions against ground targets, not battleships, but pilots attacked with whatever weapons they carried and continued to harass the Japanese ships. Rain squalls and smoke obscured the view. Japanese officers were uncertain about the American force they faced. Kurita’s ships inflicted terrible damage, yet the repeated torpedo runs, gunfire, and aircraft attacks fractured their formation and complicated their advance toward Leyte Gulf.

The price was severe. Johnston, Hoel, Samuel B. Roberts, and the escort carrier Gambier Bay were sunk in the surface action. Later that morning a suicide aircraft struck and sank the carrier St. Lo. Hundreds of Americans died, and survivors from the lost ships endured a long wait for rescue. The U.S. Navy’s historical account credits the resistance with helping turn back the Japanese force; Kurita ultimately ordered a withdrawal rather than press on toward the invasion shipping.

There was no magic trick hidden in the smoke. The American ships were overmatched, and their losses were real. What changed the outcome was the way small crews used movement, torpedoes, aircraft, and time to create problems a larger enemy could not quickly solve. Taffy 3 later received a Presidential Unit Citation. Its story remains a sharp reminder that the size of a warship does not measure the courage of its crew, and that a battle can turn on whether an opponent believes the road ahead is still open.

Sources

1. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, The Battle off Samar: The Sacrifice of Taffy 3
2. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, 1944 October 25: Battle off Samar
3. U.S. Navy, Taffy 3 Presidential Unit Citation and Other Awards