Wreck of USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, destroyer (ship), United States Navy

Laid down in December 1943 at the Brown Shipbuilding Yard of Houston, TX as the 46th member of the John C. Butler Class of Destroyer Escorts, USS Samuel B. Roberts commissioned into US Navy service in April 1944 under the command of LCDR R. W. Copeland as a member of the US Atlantic Fleet.

Making her way Northward along the US Atlantic Coast escorting convoys on her shakedown cruise, the Roberts was off the coast of Maine en route to Halifax when she struck a breaching whale, badly damaging her Starboard propeller and shaft seriously enough to require the ship to call at the Norfolk Navy Yard for major repairs. This fortuitous encounter would result in the Roberts being under repair long enough to miss the major thrust to build up Allied forces in advance of the Invasion of Normandy and instead brought orders to join the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Conducting routine training and convoy escort assignments around the Hawaiian Islands for the two months after her August arrival at Pearl, the Roberts was ordered to steam in convoy for Manaus Island, where the majority of the US 7th Fleet was massing for the planned invasion of the Philippines at Leyte. Upon her arrival she joined Escort Carrier Task Unit 77.4.3, which departed Manaus on October 12th as part of a massive Naval armada bound for Leyte Gulf. The Roberts and her Task Unit screened the invasion convoy until its safe arrival off Leyte on October 19th, and following the successful establishment of a beachhead on the 20th she moved seaward with the Escort Carriers and joined the Northern Air Support Group in providing on-call airstrikes to ground forces. Gaining the nickname "Taffy 3" to differentiate their group from the other two Escort Carrier forces in unit 77.4, the ships of the Roberts' unit continued their routine of airstrikes for the next five days in support of US ground forces as Japanese resistance from land, sea and air began to grow increasingly stiff. Following a series of large sea battles which took place on the 23rd and 24th that seemed to repulse a coordinated Japanese Naval Attack Force, the Roberts and the ships of Taffy 3 prepared for another day of airstrikes on the morning of October 25th.

A terse report received from an airborne recon aircraft from the USS St. Lo (CVE-63) at 0637hrs quickly changed the scope of the days plan of action, as its pilot reported that an enormous Japanese Naval force consisting of 4 Battleships, 6 Heavy Cruisers, 2 Light Cruisers, and 11 Destroyers was rounding the North Coast of Samar and closing in on the Leyte beachhead. With the Roberts and the ships of Taffy 3 being the Northernmost formation and therefore the first to encounter the inbound Japanese ships, crews aboard the ships frantically prepared for battle against an enemy force which while already being numerically superior contained the SuperBattleship HIJMS Yamato, a vessel which alone weighed more than the ships of Taffy 3 combined and shipped the largest rifles ever fitted to a warship. Despite the long odds of the coming engagement, the Roberts and her fellow three Destroyer Escorts and four Destroyers screening the four Escort Carriers immediately moved Southward to open the distance to the onrushing Japanese vessels, laying down thick smokescreens as the first shells from the Yamato began to rain down on the ships at 0700hrs. With the Carriers safely delivered to the relative protection of a rain squall line LCDR Copeland joined the rest of the escort ships and swung the Roberts around to bear down on the enemy fleet, his engineers dumping as much as 660psi of steam from her boilers into her turbines and pushing the Roberts to the unheard of speed of 28.7 knots as her topside crew prepared for close-quarters combat.

The sudden onrush of American ships caused confusion among the Japanese Fleet, allowing the Roberts to hide under smokescreens long enough to get within 2.5 miles of the Heavy Cruiser HIJMS Chōkai which she promptly attacked with torpedoes before moving back into the protective cover of smokescreens. With her lookouts sighting the Heavy Cruiser HIJMS Chikuma lying dead ahead the Roberts closed to within 5,000 yards of the enormous ship where her gun crews unleashed savage mauling of the Chikuma’s superstructure from point-blank range. Too close for the Chikuma's main or secondary batteries to engage, the Roberts crew sent the majority of their available 5in, 40mm and 20mm shells into the Japanese ship before increasingly accurate fire from other Japanese ships forced the Roberts to disengage and being evasive maneuvering. Struck by at least three shells of Heavy Cruiser caliber at 0851hrs, the Roberts lost her forward boiler and had her speed reduced to 17 knots, making the ship an easier target for determined Japanese gunners. Still doggedly engaging enemy vessels while dodging their fire, an emergency stop ordered by LCDR Copeland to avoid a salvo of enemy fire left the ship broadside to the Battleship HIJMS Kongō, whose battle-tested gunners promptly sent a salvo of 14in shells crashing into the ship from point-blank range for the ships powerful rifles.

The impact of at least three of Kongō’s armor-piercing shells made short work of the Roberts’ thinly armored hull, blowing a 40ftx10ft hole in her Port side before passing through her aft boiler and engine room and exiting through the Starboard side, leaving a trail of death and damage in their wake. Left dead in the water by the loss of her only operational engine, the Roberts came under attack from no fewer than five Japanese ships as she wallowed to a halt, her surviving crew scrambling topside and into the water to get clear of the rapidly floundering ship. Kept under fire right up to her last moments on the surface, the USS Samuel B. Roberts finally gave out and sank Stern-first in this general area at 1007hrs on October 25th, 1944, taking 89 of her crew with her to the bottom. The Roberts’ 120 surviving crew would have a ringside seat for the rest of the Battle off Samar before spending the next 50 hrs clinging to liferafts and debris before being rescued by American forces.

For her actions in the battle that sank her, USS Samuel B. Roberts earned the Presidential Unit Citation and her first and final Battle Star for World War Two service.

www.navsource.org/archives/06/413.htm