Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort, a small ship built to guard convoys. She was named for Coxswain Samuel Booker Roberts Jr., killed at Guadalcanal after he took a Higgins boat in as a decoy so Marines could be pulled off. Brown Shipbuilding in Houston laid her down on 6 December 1943, launched her on 20 January 1944, and commissioned her on 28 April 1944 under Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland, USNR. The portrait is Navy photograph NH 90603, off Boston about June 1944.
Shakedown off Bermuda ran from 21 May to 19 June. She left Norfolk on 22 July, transited the Canal on 27 July, reached Pearl Harbor on 10 August, and escorted to Eniwetok and back before joining TU 77.4.3 at Manus for the northern air-support group off Samar.
On the morning of 25 October she was one of the four destroyer escorts with Taffy 3. The destroyers went in at Kurita's force. She went in with them, against battleships and heavy cruisers. Around 0740 Copeland saw Heermann's run and turned his own ship into a torpedo attack on the leading heavy cruiser. She fired her three torpedoes and then closed with both 5-inch guns, expending nearly all of her ammunition at ranges a destroyer escort was not built for. Later accounts credit a torpedo hit and dozens of 5-inch hits. No ship is credited to her as a kill, and no ship is pinned to her as a sinking.
A battleship salvo, the usual account says 14-inch, opened a hole about 40 feet long and 10 feet wide in the port side at the number 2 engine room. She was abandoned and sank. Of about 224 men aboard, 89 were killed in the action and others died of wounds or in the water. About 120 were picked up after roughly 50 hours by patrol craft escorting landing craft. The ships that hit her are not pinned down. She was lost that morning with Hoel, Johnston, and Gambier Bay. Copeland received the Navy Cross. The ship shared the Presidential Unit Citation to TU 77.4.3 and was struck on 27 November 1944. One battle star.
On 22 June 2022 a team led by Victor Vescovo found the wreck in the Philippine Trench at 6,895 meters (22,621 feet), then the deepest shipwreck ever located. The hull still shows the battleship-shell damage, including the fallen mast.