Battle off Samar

Dawn on the horizon that should not have been there

At first light, the men of Taffy 3 saw shapes on the horizon that did not belong to their world. The escort carriers were built for close air support and convoy protection — slow, crowded, easy targets. They were surrounded by a handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts scouring the gray water for submarines. The morning was busy with the ordinary chaos of carrier operations: flight decks crowded, planes launching for strikes over Leyte, maintenance crews scrambling to rearm and refuel.

Then lookouts began to shout. Far to the west, beyond the safe arc of the invasion fleet, a dark line moved through the haze: cruisers, and behind them something larger — the blunt, black silhouettes of battleships. Men on the bridges did the only sensible thing they could: they reported, spread smoke, and braced.

The presence of those heavy ships where they were not expected was the result of one misread and one audacious move. Admiral William Halsey had taken the Third Fleet north after a Japanese decoy carrier force — part of the broader Sho-Go plan — and Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita had slipped the San Bernardino Strait before dawn, steering a battered but still formidable Center Force into the eastern approaches to Leyte Gulf. In those first terrible minutes, Taffy 3 faced what the U.S. estimates later called "a force of battleships and cruisers of a weight unequaled in modern naval history."

How a complex Japanese plan opened a door

The Japanese operation that week was not a simple run at Leyte. Sho-Go was a multi-pronged attempt to split U.S. forces and strike the invasion fleet. Vice Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa led a Northern decoy carrier force meant to lure Halsey’s powerful fast carriers away. South of Leyte, two columns under Vice Admirals Shoji Nishimura and Kiyohide Shima were to approach through Surigao Strait. Kurita’s Center Force — including the battleship Yamato and several heavy cruisers — would steam through San Bernardino Strait and strike the landing ships and carriers anchored off Leyte Gulf.

But Kurita’s force had already been weakened. The super-battleship Musashi had been sunk the previous day at the Sibuyan Sea, and Japanese ships carried damage and the scars of air attack. Still, he had enough metal and enough guns to devastate anything that stood before him. Halsey’s decision to follow Ozawa north left those straits dangerously thinly defended. It was a seam in the Allied disposition that Kurita exploited with cold professionalism.

The little ships that roared into the maw

Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague commanded Taffy 3 — six escort carriers, a ragged screen of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts. They were no match on paper for Kurita’s battleline. But on the morning of October 25 they became the thin edge that would either blunt a hammer blow or be shattered.

As the Japanese opened fire, the American response was raw and direct. Smoke was laid to hide the carriers. Pilots aboard planes meant for close support and anti-submarine patrol took whatever weapons they could and climbed into their dive bombers and torpedo planes to strike at capital ships. The carriers themselves had only anti-aircraft armament; they were little more than floating hangars with a brave heart.

The destroyers and destroyer escorts did the rest. They made the decision meant for smaller, harder men: they charged. At high speed and with barely a chance to calculate, USS Johnston, commanded by Commander Ernest E. Evans, steamed toward Japanese cruisers and drew their fire. USS Hoel, USS Heermann, and the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts drove home torpedo attacks that forced the larger ships to maneuver and disrupted their gunnery. They laid smoke, they fired, and they risked, repeatedly, the very things bigger ships rarely do: close-in attacks under the storm of heavy-caliber shells.

Torpedoes, smoke, and suicidally close passes

The torpedo runs were theater-sized acts of courage. Destroyers dove into the middle of the Japanese formation, their tiny profiles throwing thick, black wakes. They hoped to score torpedo hits that would at least slow Kurita’s advance and buy time for the carriers to flee or launch more strikes. When the guns of cruisers and battleships found them, the destroyers did not withdraw; they fought between the bigger ships and the carriers, taking salvo after salvo to preserve the soft-but-crucial air platforms.

Johnston’s captain and crew were relentless. She was hit, tossed, and reduced to a hulk, yet her crew continued to fight until she sank. Hoel’s last action is almost cinematic: after repeated hits and with her steering damaged, she continued firing her guns and making smoke before she went down. The Samuel B. Roberts, a destroyer escort built to fight submarines, ran herself as if she were a fleet destroyer, launching torpedoes and taking point until her hull broke and she slipped beneath the waves.

Aircraft doing what they were never designed for

The carrier planes began to scream in. These were not the heavy naval torpedo bombers or the fighter-bombers that formed fleet strike groups. They were Wildcats, Avengers, and Helldivers loaded with whatever ordinance could be shoved into racks and strapped to wings. Pilots who had trained for close air support over fields and jungles now flew low-level attacks against armor and superstructure.

They were accurate enough to wreak havoc on exposed topside fittings, to start fires, and crucially, to create confusion. The Japanese ships, already navigating by scattered and sometimes contradictory reports, had to peel away to fight the aerial onslaught or to put out fires in their own crews. The psychological effect of relentless, unexpected air attacks on capital ships — even when damage was limited — should not be underestimated. Kurita’s bridge officers received reports and sightings that inflated the apparent American strength. That fog of war, thickened by smoke and dust and the dying light of battered ships, shaped the choices to come.

A carrier lost, men in the water, and an impossible decision

Gambier Bay, an escort carrier, was struck by Japanese surface guns and she sank with many of her crew. Destroyers exchanged steel for steel and took casualties by the dozens. The sea around Samar became an area of floating wreckage: oil, splintered deck planks, and life-rafts crowded with sailors clinging to survival. Rescue boats worked under the threat of returning fire; survivors were pulled from the cold water while others watched the great shapes of battleship funnels recede into haze.

For roughly an hour to a few hours, the engagement burned like an unmatched fuse. In that time, Taffy 3 lost several ships: USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), USS Johnston (DD-557), USS Hoel (DD-533), and USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) — vessels and crews paid for in steel and lives. Yet the accumulation of smoke screens, torpedo attacks, and air strikes convinced Kurita that he faced either the remains of a fast carrier force or a much larger screen than reality allowed.

Why he chose to withdraw remains debated. His ships had weight and firepower. He had already lost Musashi the day before and had sustained damage in several vessels. He faced the risk of sustained air attack if he lingered within range of American carriers. Communications were confused. Reports from lookouts and combat information centers exaggerated what they saw. In the thick calculus of command, Kurita ordered a retirement through San Bernardino Strait and back into the open ocean. The battlegroup that might have sailed into Leyte Gulf’s anchorage and wreaked very different havoc turned away.

The immediate tally and the wider bargain of war

The immediate U.S. losses at Samar were sharp and painful. Hundreds of men were killed or wounded in the sharp melee — sailors who had gone to battle on ships designed for other kinds of war. Escort carriers and small escorts had been lost. Ships that served as workhorses of the fleet were sunk, their steel joining a long list of wartime attrition.

But the strategic ledger reads differently. Kurita’s withdrawal meant the landing beaches at Leyte and the anchored support ships were spared a potentially catastrophic surface bombardment. The broader Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought across several engagements that same day, inflicted heavier and more lasting damage on the Imperial Japanese Navy. Lost ships, including Musashi and several cruisers, and the erosion of the IJN’s ability to operate as a coherent fleet followed in the coming days and months. For the Allies, industrial capacity would replace hulls and aircraft; for Japan, the loss of experienced sailors and irreplaceable capital ships spelled a more decisive decline.

Questions commanders still argue over

What stands out in the decades of scholarship is not a tidy answer but a cluster of hard questions. Did Halsey err by taking his carriers north after the decoy? Critics argue that leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded was a grave gamble. Halsey defended his decision, describing a need to strike what seemed like the main Japanese carrier threat. The controversy is not simply about personalities; it is about command relationships and the difficulty of making choices under incomplete information.

Kurita’s decision to withdraw is equally contested. Some historians emphasize fear of counterattack from carriers; others point to damage and confusion in his own formation that made continued action dangerous. Still others highlight how effective small-ship aggression can be in changing the psychology of an enemy commander. What is clear is that a combination of factors — American daring, Japanese misperception, and luck — combined to prevent an outcome that would have threatened the Leyte landings.

How the Navy learned and remembered

The Battle off Samar entered naval lore as an extraordinary example of courage and improvisation. The U.S. Navy’s after-action assessments looked closely at command structures, reconnaissance, and the need to guard critical waterways. Tactically, the engagement reinforced several truths: small, fast ships could disrupt larger formations with torpedoes and smoke; carrier aircraft could serve as a multi-role deterrent even when not fitted for fleet actions; and communication and cohesion between task forces mattered as much as raw firepower.

For sailors and commanders, the memory of October 25 is personal. Medals were awarded, and names were carved into memorials. Biographies of destroyer captains like Ernest Evans, histories of the escort carriers, and survivors’ accounts kept the story alive. Navies studied Samar in war colleges as a case study in command under uncertainty and the moral dimensions of leadership in combat.

A quiet sea after a shout

When the guns fell silent and the smoke began to clear, Leyte Gulf remained Allied-controlled. The Japanese Navy, already suffering, had been denied a decisive blow. The human cost at Samar — men lost in small ships doing big things — was sobering. Their actions did not win the war singlehandedly. But they shaped a day that shaped a campaign that, in the calculus of 1944, helped close the era of Japanese naval dominance.

The photograph of the aftermath — decks listing, men clinging to rafts, rescue boats moving carefully through slick oil and floating debris — is a sober counterpoint to tales of heroism. The best memorial to those who fought that morning is not rhetoric but the hard fact that they changed the course of one battle through courage and grit. For a few hours off Samar, a handful of underarmed Americans stood in the gap and altered the fate of an operation that would help define the final phase of the Pacific war.