Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine

Welcome to Headline Wednesday from Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine, developed by Trackpads dot com.

Each week, we take one pivotal moment from United States military history and follow it from the first warning signs to the final outcome.

Today we go to the waters off Samar in the Second World War for the story of the last stand of USS Johnston.

Just after dawn on October 25, 1944, the destroyer USS Johnston rode gray Pacific swells off the island of Samar. Her decks were slick with spray, and the air carried the heavy mix of fuel oil, cordite, and coffee drifting up from the mess decks. Around her, the thin escort carriers of Task Unit seventy seven point four point three, known as Taffy Three, were already launching aircraft into a low, overcast sky, their short decks framed by a fringe of destroyers and destroyer escorts that sailors jokingly called the small boys. This stretch of water was supposed to be the quiet side of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the rear area where support ships guarded the invasion beachhead from submarines and air attack. It felt like a backwater.

On Johnston’s bridge, officers peered through binoculars at a hazy horizon that suddenly seemed wrong. Dark shapes were beginning to materialize through the morning mist, too large and too many to be the friendly cruisers some hoped they were. Lookouts started calling out masts, pagoda towers, and the long, low silhouettes of heavy warships turning onto a parallel course. A moment later, water erupted in towering white columns as enemy shells bracketed the formation, bright flashes appearing a heartbeat before the thunder rolled across the sea. The horizon looked wrong.

The small boys of Taffy Three were staring at something no one had expected to see in this sector. Bearing down on slow, lightly armored escort carriers was the main body of a Japanese surface fleet, including battleships and heavy cruisers. General Quarters was already sounding across the task unit, but now the urgency on Johnston sharpened into a hard edge as shell splashes marched closer. Radio reports from other ships crackled with fragments of disbelief and alarm as officers tried to make sense of the sight in front of them. This was no distant clash between matching battle lines far over the curve of the sea. It was a knife suddenly appearing at the ribs of the invasion force.

The men aboard Johnston understood that basic fact even before anyone found the exact words to say it over a loudspeaker. They could see the towering shell splashes, feel the ship shudder as she came up to speed, and hear the rising pitch in voices on the voice pipes and radios. This was not the kind of surface action the escort carriers and their thin screen had been built to fight. It was an emergency that had come to the supposedly safe side of the battlefield without warning. They sensed the danger.

To understand what was at stake off Samar that morning, it helps to pull back from Johnston’s spray soaked decks to the wider map of the Pacific in late 1944. American forces had landed on Leyte to begin the reconquest of the Philippines, a campaign meant to cut Japan off from vital oil and raw materials and to uphold General Douglas MacArthur’s promise to return. Those landings depended on a web of naval forces spread over hundreds of miles. Fast carriers and battleships ranged far to the north, heavy escorts guarded the approaches, and small escort carrier groups like Taffy Three provided close air support and anti submarine patrols near the beachhead. Leyte was a hinge.

These escort carrier groups were often called jeep carriers, and everyone involved understood their limitations. They were never meant to stand in front of a major battle fleet; they were thin skinned, slow, and lightly armed. On paper, heavier covering forces and battleships were supposed to intercept any powerful surface thrust long before it reached the waters east of Samar. The jeep carriers were supposed to launch aircraft, hunt submarines, and serve as floating airfields for the soldiers pushing inland. They were never meant to duel battleships.

Japanese planners saw the same map and reached for a bold answer. If they could smash the ships supporting the Leyte landings, they might not only destroy transports and carriers but also throw the entire Philippine campaign into chaos. The force that appeared off Samar that morning was the so called Center Force, a collection of battleships, heavy cruisers, and destroyers that had slipped through a gauntlet of submarines and air attacks. It had already been mauled but not destroyed, and now it had found a gap where the most powerful American surface units were absent, drawn north by a carrier decoy force. That gap was lethal.

Instead of running into the armored spearhead of the United States Third Fleet, the Center Force burst into the screen of small carriers and their handful of escorts. For Taffy Three, that mismatch translated into brutal arithmetic that every captain could feel in his bones. The escort carriers could not outrun battleships for long, and their few five inch guns and thin armor offered almost no protection against fourteen inch and sixteen inch shells. The destroyers and destroyer escorts were fast and aggressive, but they carried only light guns and a single bank of torpedoes. Everything behind them depended on it.

If this improvised shield failed, the road to the transport area and the Leyte anchorage would stand wide open. Thousands of soldiers, tons of equipment, and the fragile beginnings of an air and supply network ashore depended on those slow, vulnerable ships staying afloat just a little longer. The invasion could not afford to have its arteries cut by battleship fire from the sea. That is why, when Johnston and her fellow small boys began to turn toward the enemy instead of away, the choice mattered far beyond the horizon they could see. Their next moves would help decide whether Leyte was a foothold or a disaster.

The picture off Samar only makes sense when you zoom out from the destroyer’s bridge to the wider campaign. Earlier in October 1944, Japanese planners had launched a complicated operation to smash the Leyte landings with a three pronged naval attack. One force of carriers moved north as bait, intended to lure the fast American carrier groups away. Two powerful surface groups, including the Center Force that would later appear off Samar, threaded through constricted seas in the hope of slipping behind the invasion armada. Along the way, submarines and carrier aircraft tore into those columns, sinking the giant battleship Musashi and damaging other ships. To many eyes, it looked as if the danger had been blunted.

Reports flowed back that enemy fleets were retreating or destroyed, and those messages shaped the decisions higher commanders made. At the top level, American leaders believed the main crisis would unfold where their fast carriers could reach the enemy bait force. The heavy carriers and battleships surged north to finish what they thought was the last of Japan’s carrier strength. In doing so, they shifted far away from the San Bernardino Strait, the gap through which the Center Force could emerge into the Philippine Sea. On their charts, that strait was supposed to be covered. In reality, the shield was much thinner than anyone intended.

Closer to Leyte, escort carrier groups like Taffy Three focused on their assigned jobs. Their mission was direct support of the landings, flying close air support and patrolling for submarines near the beaches. They sailed on small escort carriers that were slow, lightly armored, and armed for aircraft operations rather than slugging matches with heavy cruisers and battleships. Their destroyers and destroyer escorts formed a light screen to keep submarines at bay and to throw up smoke and gunfire against air attack. On paper, those light forces would never be the primary wall between a major battle fleet and an invasion armada. Heavier covering forces were supposed to block any serious surface thrust long before it reached Samar’s waters.

When daylight finally revealed their presence, no line of American battleships waited for them. Instead, at first light, the Center Force saw only the thin silhouettes of escort carriers and the small boys that ringed them. Johnston and her sisters were exactly where they were supposed to be for their assigned mission of close support. The problem was that the enemy pounding toward them belonged on a very different page of the operational plan. A mismatch that was never meant to happen had become real in the gray light off Samar.

The first warning that this mismatch had turned into a shooting crisis came as enemy salvos crashed into the sea around Taffy Three. Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague ordered his escort carriers to turn away and run for rain squalls to the east, trying to use bad weather as a shield while his pilots clawed for altitude. From those small decks, crews launched every aircraft they could with whatever ordnance happened to be on hand. Some planes carried bombs or rockets. Others lifted off with depth charges intended for submarines or even empty racks, their value now measured in distraction and pressure rather than explosive power. Every aircraft that got airborne was one more moving threat the enemy had to track.

On the destroyers and destroyer escorts, captains faced a different kind of choice. Their ships mounted five inch guns and carried a single set of torpedo tubes. Those weapons could hurt even a battleship if the range closed enough. But closing the range meant turning toward the storm of incoming fire rather than away from it. It meant accepting that the only way to protect the carriers was to attack into the teeth of the Japanese battle line. On Johnston’s bridge, Commander Ernest Evans weighed that reality and chose aggression. His orders reflected it.

Evans directed his crew to lay a thick smoke screen to hide the fleeing carriers, then swung Johnston out of that protective cloud and drove straight toward the approaching battle line at high speed. The destroyer knifed through her own smoke wall and into clearer water where enemy gunners could see her more easily, but where her torpedoes could also reach their targets. Shell splashes climbed around the charging ship, some bracketing so close that fragments spattered her hull and superstructure. Still, Johnston pressed in, closing the gap until torpedoes could be loosed at heavy cruisers that loomed like gray cliffs on the horizon.

When those torpedoes ran true and an enemy cruiser staggered under the blows, smoke pouring from its hull, the men on Johnston saw proof that their risk was not symbolic. A small ship could make a giant bleed. That first hit was more than a tactical result. It was a signal to friend and foe alike that the small boys of Taffy Three were not going to simply screen and retreat. They were going to attack. In the chaos of a surface battle, that kind of unexpected aggression can bend the course of events.

Elsewhere along the line, other small boys followed similar paths. Destroyers like Hoel and Heermann, and destroyer escorts such as Samuel B. Roberts, laid their own smoke, darted in and out of the swirling cover, and launched torpedo attacks while firing rapid salvos of five inch shells at much larger opponents. From the flight decks of the escort carriers, officers and deck crews watched their escorts weave and heel over, white bow waves foaming as they repeatedly charged into the teeth of the enemy. Sailors on the open decks could see towering geysers where battleship shells struck the sea and the orange blossoms of explosions when shells struck home. The fight off Samar was becoming a violent tangle.

Overhead, aircraft from the escort carriers and from nearby groups joined the struggle. Pilots dove through cloud breaks and smoke to strike at cruisers and battleships, sometimes with full bomb loads and sometimes with nothing more than machine guns and resolve. Each attack, even when it failed to sink a ship, forced enemy gunners to split their attention and adjust their aim. Down on the water, destroyer captains used each moment of confusion to shift course, lay more smoke, or make another torpedo run. The air and sea fight had merged into a single, swirling engagement in which every extra second bought by one crew could be used by another.

Chaos worked in both directions. Japanese gunners struggled to track small, maneuvering targets that vanished into or emerged from smoke while larger targets loomed beyond. Smoke screens drifted and thickened, sometimes hiding friendly ships and sometimes exposing them at the worst possible moment. Aircraft swarmed low over the waves, forcing captains on both sides to divide their focus between the sky and the surface. In that confused, violent space, Johnston and her fellow escorts bought precious minutes and miles for the escort carriers trying to stay ahead of the battle line.

Their charges and smoke screens did not end the danger, but they began to erode the neat firing lines and clear solutions that a powerful battle fleet needed to crush a weaker opponent quickly. Instead of a simple pursuit and execution, the Center Force found itself in a knife fight with small ships that refused to break. Every torpedo wake, every bomb splash, and every new curtain of smoke added to the impression that the enemy screen was thicker and more dangerous than it actually was. The question hanging over every bridge, Japanese and American alike, was whether these small ships and their aircraft could buy enough time before the sheer weight of metal finally told.

What ultimately turned the fight off Samar was not a single shell or torpedo, but a chain of audacious moves that shook the confidence of a much larger fleet. USS Johnston’s first torpedo run showed that the small boys could land real blows, and her crew watched with grim satisfaction as an enemy cruiser reeled and smoke poured from its hull. The price was immediate and brutal. Enemy shells slammed into Johnston, wrecking her topside, knocking out communications, and eventually crippling her engines. Even as the destroyer slowed and bled energy, the fight around her only grew more intense. The situation was desperate.

Commander Ernest Evans refused to treat Johnston as a spent force. Using what maneuverability remained, he kept his damaged ship between the escort carriers and the closing cruisers and destroyers whenever he could, turning her battered hull into a moving shield. Gun crews shifted to manual control where power was gone, working in smoke and splinters to keep their five inch mounts firing. Wounded men stayed at their stations, passing ammunition, relaying orders, or calling out splashes even as the ship shuddered under fresh hits. Johnston was no longer a sleek, fast destroyer. She was a wounded animal that kept turning back toward the threat.

Those attacks, multiplied by similar charges from Hoel, Heermann, and Samuel B. Roberts, created an illusion of greater strength than actually existed. Thick smoke hid exact numbers, and constant torpedo wakes convinced Japanese commanders that they were facing a screen of fleet destroyers backed by heavier ships just beyond the haze. Every new plume of water, every sudden flash on the horizon, hinted at more weapons than were really there. From a distance, the small boys looked like the front edge of a much larger force. That impression mattered.

Overhead, waves of carrier planes harried the battle line. Pilots dove in with bombs, rockets, or whatever ordnance they had left, then returned to strafe with guns when their racks were empty. Many made repeated attacks with no bombs at all, counting on noise, flashes, and splinters to add to the pressure on already hard pressed gunners. Each run forced enemy ships to swing their guns skyward, throw up bursts of anti aircraft fire, and maneuver in ways that spoiled their aim at the carriers. On the Japanese side, fragmentary reports of torpedo hits, air attacks, and burning cruisers began to add up. It started to feel like a trap.

In that atmosphere of uncertainty, the raw advantage of battleships and heavy guns no longer felt absolute. Admirals studying radar returns and hurried visual reports struggled to reconcile what they had expected to find with the chaos in front of them. If they pressed on, they might stumble into what they believed to be the main American carrier groups or a waiting battleship line. If they broke off, they would walk away from a rare chance to strike at the heart of the invasion force. The cumulative effect of Johnston’s first charge, the torpedo attacks of her sisters, and the relentless harassment from the air tilted that decision. Instead of rolling over Taffy Three in a clean, crushing sweep, the Center Force began to falter, maneuver, and then turn away from the very escort carriers it had nearly overwhelmed.

From the surviving decks, aircraft continued to fly to support the soldiers ashore, even as damage control teams fought fires and patched holes. In strictly tactical terms, a small, outgunned force had been mauled but had achieved its most important mission. It had protected the slow, vulnerable heart of the campaign long enough for that heart to keep beating. The cost was heavy and personal for every ship and squadron involved. The outcome was decisive for the larger battle.

In the months that followed, the United States Navy searched the wreckage of the engagement for meaning as well as for bodies. Official histories and after action reports examined how communications, assumptions, and deployments had left a narrow door open at San Bernardino Strait in the first place. At the same time, those documents recorded in careful detail the behavior of the small boys that had stood in that doorway when larger ships were elsewhere. Taffy Three received a Presidential Unit Citation for its stand. Commander Ernest Evans of Johnston was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for leading his destroyer into action against overwhelming odds, and the names of his ship and her crew entered the shared memory of destroyer sailors for generations.

The legacy of Samar is more than an uplifting story about courage under fire. It is a case study in how initiative at the lowest practical level can alter an enemy’s perception and decision making when the odds look fixed. It underscores how air power, even from small decks, can complicate the life of a surface fleet in ways that pure tonnage cannot measure. It shows how smoke, maneuver, and aggressive use of torpedoes can stretch the value of light forces far beyond what their specifications suggest. Those are hard earned lessons.

For students of naval history, staff ride groups, and museum visitors standing before a model of Johnston or a painting of Taffy Three, the lesson remains stark. On some mornings at sea, the thin gray line between disaster and survival is made up of ships and crews who know they are outgunned but turn toward the threat anyway. Their decisions ripple outward through time, shaping campaigns and memories long after their hulls have rusted away on the ocean floor. Listening to their story is one way to keep that thin gray line in view. Sharing it keeps their example alive.

You can hear narrated Headline Wednesday features through the Dispatch audio editions and find more conversation and daily facts in the United States Military History Group on LinkedIn. Headline Wednesday is developed by Trackpads dot com as part of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine.