USS Samuel B. Roberts

Also known as: USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) · Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) · DE-413 · Sammy B

Definition

USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort of the United States Navy, built by Brown Shipbuilding of Houston, Texas — keel laid December 6, 1943, launched January 20, 1944, commissioned April 28, 1944 — and lost in Philippine waters at the Battle off Samar on October 25, 1944, fighting as part of Taffy 3 (Task Unit 77.4.3), Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague’s escort-carrier unit covering the Leyte beachhead. Named for Coxswain Samuel Booker Roberts Jr., a Navy Cross recipient killed diverting Japanese fire at Guadalcanal in 1942, and called “Sammy B” by her crew, she charged a cruiser line in a ship designed for 24 knots and two 5-inch guns, fought a 35-minute gun duel at point-blank range, and was sunk by 14-inch shells of the battleship Kongō — earning the appellation “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship.” (Wikipedia — USS Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Under her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland, USNR, the ship made one of the celebrated torpedo runs of the Pacific war: 89 of her men were killed in the action and more died afterward of wounds and shark attack, while about 120 survivors of her 224-man crew drifted some fifty hours in the Philippine Sea before rescue. Her wreck, identified on June 22, 2022 at 6,895 meters in the Philippine deep by Victor Vescovo’s Caladan Oceanic expedition, is the deepest shipwreck ever located and surveyed — surpassing USS Johnston, whose 2021 find this wiki’s own USS Johnston entry documents. (Wikipedia — USS Samuel B. Roberts)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Samuel_B.Roberts(DE-413)
Wikidata	USS Samuel B. Roberts (Q787851)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q787851
DBpedia	USS_Samuel_B.Roberts(DE-413)	https://dbpedia.org/page/USS_Samuel_B.Roberts(DE-413)
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Samuel B. Roberts (Destroyer escort) (n96005471)	https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n96005471
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	USS Samuel B. Roberts DE-413 destroyer escort Battle off Samar Taffy 3 Copeland wreck 6895 meters	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22USS+Samuel+B.+Roberts%22+Samar
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413)
Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413)
DE-413
Sammy B

Examples and Analogies

A ship overdrafted to heroism: the John C. Butler design promised 24 knots, but in battle her engineer, Lieutenant “Lucky” Trowbridge, bypassed the boilers’ safety mechanisms and wrung out 28.7 — the destroyer escort fought her battle with power her builders never certified, the engineering counterpart of a fighter punching above his weight. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
The speech before the storm: Copeland told his crew over the 1MC, “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can” — the unit’s whole Samar doctrine in two sentences, delivered by a reservist to a ship of 224, and then executed without (indeed against) orders. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)
Ammunition arithmetic as heroism: firing more than 600 rounds of 5-inch — nearly her entire magazine — in 35 minutes, and running through high-explosive, armor-piercing, practice, and star shells as the types ran out, the ship kept her guns in action the way a boxer keeps swinging as his gloves come apart; the gunner’s mate Paul H. Carr fired some 325 rounds from his mount before dying at it, posthumously awarded the Silver Star. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
The namesake’s pattern repeated: Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts died in 1942 deliberately drawing Japanese fire to protect Marines; two years later the ship named for him died the same way — drawing battleship fire to protect carriers — so the ship’s last morning is the namesake’s sacrifice at ship scale. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Battle off Samar and Taffy 3

The Roberts record supplies the destroyer-escort third of the Samar story that this wiki’s Battle off Samar, Taffy 3, USS Johnston, and Ernest E Evans entries divide among themselves: the torpedo run at the cruiser Chōkai, the gun duel with the heavy cruiser Chikuma alongside Heermann, and the fatal 14-inch salvo from Kongō — with Copeland’s speech the action’s most-quoted order. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

2. Leadership and Military-Ethics Case Study

Military educators use the ship as the standard case of a smaller command’s duty under disproportionate attack — Copeland’s announcement of near-certain death, his decision to attack, and the crew’s fifty-hour survival ordeal after the sinking — cited alongside Commander Ernest E. Evans’s Medal of Honor charge in Johnston. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

3. Deep-Water Archaeology in the Philippine Trench

The 2022 discovery is the current record of human reach in deep-wreck archaeology: six dives by the Caladan Oceanic submersible Limiting Factor between June 17 and 24, 2022, identified the wreck on June 22 at 6,895 meters in the Philippine Trench, lying bow-first with the stern separated and the hull number “413” still visible — the deepest shipwreck ever located and surveyed by a crewed submersible. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

4. Tracing a Naval Namesake Lineage

Ship-naming historians follow the name through three hulls: the lost DE-413, the Gearing-class destroyer DD-823 (1946–1970), and the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate FFG-58 — which struck an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf on April 14, 1988, was saved by a five-hour damage-control fight, and four days later was avenged by Operation Praying Mantis, the largest American surface action since World War II. (Wikipedia — USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58))

Strategies

Carry the morning by its clock: the mast hit at 08:00 that jammed and then freed her torpedo mount, the torpedo launch at 2.0 nautical miles at Chōkai, the 08:10-onward 35-minute duel with Chikuma, the 08:51 boiler hit, and Kongō‘s decisive 14-inch salvo at 09:00 that left her without power — the documented sequence, sinking by the stern over the following forty minutes. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Account for casualties in their ledgers: 89 men were killed in the battle, with 25 more dying afterward of wounds and shark attack, and about 120 survivors of the 224 aboard rescued after roughly fifty hours — figures distinct from the round “90 dead” some battle accounts carry and from Taffy 3’s 1,161 killed and missing. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)
Attribute the nickname, not the sinking, precisely: “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship” is the ship’s earned appellation in the standard record; the sinking itself is credited to Kongō‘s 14-inch guns after cruiser-fire damage — two facts often blurred in retellings. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Handle claimed hits with Japanese records: lookouts reported a torpedo hit on Chōkai, but Japanese records do not support it — the documented method of the modern account, which corrects wartime claims against the other side’s ledgers. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

Security and Safety Measures

A war grave under law: the wreck lies protected as a Department of the Navy sunken military craft under the Sunken Military Craft Act, to be documented and never disturbed — holding most of her dead at 6,895 meters. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)
Deep-diving discipline: the site is far beyond any diving range, reachable only by full-ocean-depth submersibles such as the Limiting Factor; its study belongs to dedicated programs, and the 2022 expedition’s protocols are the working standard. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)
Survival and rescue lessons: the fifty-hour drift, with men lost to wounds and shark attack before rescue, is part of the documented case that shaped prompt search-and-rescue doctrine after surface actions. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)
Source discipline: the last surviving crewman, Adred Lenoir, died on March 20, 2022, closing the living record; claims about the action should now rest on the documented account rather than on late recollection. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

Historical Context

Roberts was built at Brown Shipbuilding in Houston — laid down December 6, 1943, launched January 20, 1944, commissioned April 28, 1944 — a 306-foot, 1,350-long-ton destroyer escort carrying two 5-inch guns, one triple torpedo mount, and depth-charge and Hedgehog anti-submarine weapons: a submarine hunter, by design. She reached the Pacific war in time for the Leyte operation, screening Taffy 3’s escort carriers off Samar. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

On the morning of October 25, 1944, Kurita’s Center Force — four battleships and their cruisers and destroyers — fell upon the unit, and Copeland took his “miniature destroyer” in. After the 08:00 mast hit she launched her torpedoes at Chōkai, then closed the Chikuma to ranges as short as 2.6 nautical miles, firing more than 600 rounds — with Heermann, scoring roughly 200 hits on the cruiser between them — until ammunition types ran out and star shells were all that remained. At 08:51 a shell damaged a boiler; at 09:00 Kongō‘s 14-inch salvo knocked out her remaining engine, and she sank by the stern over about forty minutes. Of her crew, 89 died in the action; 25 more died of wounds and shark attacks; about 120 survived roughly fifty hours in the water. The ship earned a battle star, shared in Taffy 3’s Presidential Unit Citation, and passed her name to two later warships — DD-823 and the mine-struck frigate FFG-58 — while Paul H. Carr’s Silver Star and the frigates Carr (FFG-52) and Copeland (FFG-25) carried the crew’s memory into the fleet. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Her afterlife became the record of the deep. Between June 17 and 24, 2022, Victor Vescovo’s Caladan Oceanic expedition, with Deep Ocean Search and EYOS, made six dives in the Philippine Trench and on June 22 identified the wreck at 6,895 meters — intact enough to show the hull number “413,” the stern separated by about sixteen feet — a site protected under the Sunken Military Craft Act as the grave of the ship the record calls “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship.” The find surpassed Johnston‘s 6,460-meter record of March 2021, which this wiki’s USS Johnston entry documents, and stands as the deepest shipwreck ever located and surveyed. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

Challenges and Controversies

The Torpedo-Hit Claim

Her lookouts reported striking Chōkai with a torpedo; the Japanese records do not support the hit. The episode is the standard example of why battle claims are checked against the adversary’s ledgers — the modern account carries both the claim and its correction. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)

The Casualty Count’s Layers

The loss figures come in layers — 89 killed in the battle, 25 more dead of wounds and shark attack, about 120 survivors of 224 — while the battle-level account rounds the dead to “90 men lost”; careless aggregation of the layers, or merging them with Taffy 3’s totals, distorts the ship’s true cost. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Credit for the Turnaway

As with Johnston, popular retellings sometimes crown a single ship with saving the beachhead; the standard history attributes Kurita’s withdrawal to the cumulative pressure of the whole Taffy 3 defense — torpedo attacks, continuous air strikes, smoke, and the Japanese commander’s picture of the battle — and the Presidential Unit Citation honors the unit, not any one hull. (Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

The Depth Record’s Framing

The 2022 find is properly “the deepest shipwreck ever located and surveyed” by a crewed submersible — a record of identification and survey, not merely of depth; and records of the deep are provisional by nature, a caveat the Johnston-Roberts succession (2021 to 2022) itself demonstrates. (Wikipedia — Samuel B. Roberts)