Today is the 69th anniversary of this epic fight! My dad is 87 now, he was 18 then. He was on the USS Johnston as it charged the Japanese central fleet repeatedly and with a few other small ships protected MacArthur and the tiny flattops supporting the landings. When the Johnston's bridge was knocked out, the captain, Ernest E Evans, went back to the aft steering room where my dad and another sailor manually steered the ship while Capt Evans barked down directions. When the ship was finally sunk, my dad spent 52 hours in the ocean, watching friends get attacked by sharks or swim away never to be seen again. He eventually found a raft and pulled in 8 other survivors. God bless the Greatest Generation!
You speak much of the truth. Do a Search in the forums for Samar to find more threads about this. I would recommend Tin Can Sailors for the uninitiated.
Please extend to your father my humblest regards. The men of the Johnston certainly earned their pay that day. I have read of the heroics of your father and his crewmates in books such as Lou mentioned above. The Last Stand of Tin Can Sailors is a great book The men of the USS Johnston, what a mighty crew!
The fantastic website Fold3.com has a 26 page Action Report of the engagement and eventual sinking of the USS Johnston. The report also includes casualty lists of the killed and wounded. There is also a separate 2 page Report of Loss of Ship which I have included below: View attachment 19684
Thanks for the reminder. The defense of Taffy 3 was certainly one of the bravest naval actions during the war. There was another member on here whose father was a Johnson survivor as well. I think he joined about a year ago. If I recall correctly, he said his father was one of the last men off the ship.
Thanks Tommy. I'm not a member of Fold3, so reading this was both exciting and informative. Certainly both the Johnson and Gambier Bay deserve both our attention and remembrance.
No problem, Lou. If you'd ever like info on a ship just send me a PM. Navsource.org has some great photos of the Gambier Bay during the Battle off Samar. At the same time, it is very sobering when one thinks of what the crew was going through when those photos were taken.