1944-10-25
Battle off Samar
Off Samar, east of Leyte
On the morning of 25 October 1944 Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's center force came out of the squall north of Taffy 3, Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague's escort carriers. Kurita had four battleships, Yamato, Nagato, Kongo, and Haruna, six heavy cruisers, the light cruisers Noshiro and Yahagi, and eleven destroyers. Musashi had already gone down in the Sibuyan Sea. Atago, Maya, and Takao were already out of the force. Sprague had six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts. Taffy 1 and Taffy 2 were farther south. Their aircraft came into the fight. Those ships were not the ones under the guns. Johnston turned in on her own. Hoel and Heermann and the destroyer escorts went in with her. Gambier Bay, Hoel, Johnston, and Samuel B. Roberts were sunk by the Japanese guns. The ships that hit them are not pinned down. Hoel fired all ten torpedoes and is not credited with a hit. The usual account is that one of Johnston's torpedoes tore the bow off Kumano. Kumano left and was not sunk that day. St. Lo got clear of the guns and was sunk later that morning by a kamikaze. Chokai and Chikuma were disabled and lost that day, not pinned to one American ship. Suzuya was sunk by aircraft. Nowaki, standing by Chikuma, was sunk the next day. Hayashimo was lost the next day off Semirara. The rest of the force turned north.
A diagram of how this fight went will go here.
