Johnston was a Fletcher-class destroyer, DD-557, named for John V. Johnston, a Navy officer in the Civil War. The class was the destroyer of this war: about 2,100 tons, five 5-inch guns, ten torpedo tubes, a hundred and seventy-five hulls. Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding launched her on 25 March 1943. She was commissioned on 27 October 1943. Ernest E. Evans, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, was her only captain. At the commissioning he told the crew he meant to take her into a fight.
She bombarded Kwajalein on 1 February 1944, and Eniwetok from 17 to 22 February. On the night of 16-17 May, off Bougainville, she was with Franks and Haggard. The three destroyers depth-charged the submarine I-176. The sinking is credited to the group, not to Johnston alone. On 21 July she bombarded Guam in company with the battleship Pennsylvania. Through the autumn she screened escort carriers, first at the Palaus and then off Leyte.
On the morning of 25 October 1944 a Japanese force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers came down on the escort carriers she had been screening, east of Samar.
Evans did not wait for the order.
Johnston made smoke and closed. She fired her 5-inch guns, then all ten torpedoes. The usual account is that one of her torpedoes tore the bow off the heavy cruiser Kumano. Kumano left the fight. She was not sunk that day.
Heavy gunfire from the Japanese force hit her while she was still in it. Steering and the after guns went out. Evans was badly wounded and kept command. The torpedoes were already gone. She stayed in and kept firing. Hoel was sunk in the same fight. Heermann was there and was not sunk. The destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts was sunk there too.
By about 9:30 she was dead in the water. The gunfire that finished her came from the Japanese force. It is not pinned to one ship. At 9:45 Evans ordered the crew off. She rolled over and sank at about 10:10. Of 327 men, 141 were saved. Evans was not among them.
He was awarded the Medal of Honor. The ship received the Presidential Unit Citation, and six battle stars. She had been in commission less than a year. Her wreck was found in 2021, in deep water off Samar.
