At dawn on October 25, 1944, Commander Ernest E. Evans and the crew of USS Johnston found themselves between a vulnerable American carrier group and a force built to crush it.
Johnston was a Fletcher-class destroyer assigned to “Taffy 3,” a small task unit supporting the landings at Leyte. Its six escort carriers were protected by only three destroyers and four destroyer escorts.
Then the horizon filled with overwhelming firepower.
Four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers had surprised the Americans off Samar. The enemy force included the largest battleship ever built. Johnston carried five-inch guns, torpedoes, speed—and no armor capable of trading blows with battleships.
Evans turned toward them anyway.
His Medal of Honor citation records that Johnston was the first escort to lay a smokescreen and open fire. As enemy shells began straddling his ship, Evans launched the first torpedo attack, driving his destroyer directly toward the oncoming fleet to draw fire away from the carriers.
Johnston fought at ranges where a single heavy shell could tear through her.
Hits shattered the destroyer, knocked out engine power, and severed communications with the aft steering station. Evans was seriously wounded. Still, he kept his ship in the fight. He shifted command to the fantail and shouted steering orders through an open hatch to sailors turning the rudder by hand.
Again and again, Johnston placed herself between the enemy and the carriers.
For three hours, the destroyer fired, maneuvered, and supported attacks by the other escorts even as her speed, weapons, and structure failed. When Johnston finally lay burning and dead in the water, Evans gave the order to abandon ship.
The destroyer sank. Of her crew of 327, only 141 survived. Evans was last seen alive in the water and was never recovered.
But Taffy 3 had not broken. Its escorts and aircraft disrupted the attack until the vastly superior force withdrew. For Johnston’s extraordinary stand, the ship received the Presidential Unit Citation. Evans received the Medal of Honor posthumously.
Tenacity is not measured by the size of the force behind you. It is measured by the decision to stand between danger and those you are sworn to protect—even when the odds offer no promise that you will return.
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