One thousand seven hundred forty-five tons against seventy-two thousand. A destroyer escort against the most powerful battleship ever built.
On October 25, 1944, USS Samuel B. Roberts found herself directly in the path of twenty-three Japanese warships off Samar Island. No reinforcements. No heavy guns. No escape route. Just two 5-inch guns, three torpedoes, and a crew that had never fired a shot in combat. Her mission was simple — stop Yamato and her escorts from reaching the undefended American invasion fleet. The math said it was impossible.
What her crew did in the next fifty-one minutes earned Roberts a nickname that still echoes through naval history. And what happened to her survivors over the following fifty hours is a story most people have never heard.
In 2022, her wreck was found four miles beneath the ocean — the deepest shipwreck ever discovered.
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