The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

by James D. Hornfischer

  The survivors’ groups took it upon themselves to remember their dead and celebrate their victory, in part because no one else would do it for them, least of all, for a time, the U.S. Navy. But ultimately it was the Navy’s decision to commission a ship in their own skipper’s honor that brought the Samuel B. Roberts survivors together and catalyzed their first efforts to hold a reunion. For thirty-eight years they had tried to suppress the painful memories of the war. But in 1982 the christening of an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate in Bob Copeland’s name helped show them the benefits of remembrance.

  The son of Roberts survivor Jack Yusen, an attorney in Washington state, saw it announced in the bar association newsletter that Bob Copeland, the Tacoma attorney and naval reserve rear admiral who had passed away in August 1973 at the age of sixty-three, would be honored with a namesake warship. The younger Yusen called his father and said, “Dad, wait till you see what I’ve got to show you!”

  Jack Yusen, a charismatic organizer and leader, and others began collecting names and addresses and tracking down Samuel B. Roberts survivors, as the men of the Gambier Bay and other ships had been doing for years. The USS Copeland (FFG-25) was commissioned on August 7, 1982. The Samuel B. Roberts Survivors Association’s first formal reunion was that same year, thirty-eight years since they had last gathered as a crew. The year before, unknown to them, another Perry-class frigate, the USS Clifton Sprague (FFG-16), had been commissioned. But that ceremony had been attended only by Sprague’s family. Three years later, in 1985, more official recognition followed when a frigate, the USS Carr (FFG-52), was named for the Roberts’s heroic gunner’s mate.

  The Taffy 3 reunions take place annually now, many of them in late October to coincide with the battle’s anniversary, others in May, over the Memorial Day holiday. The survivors from the destroyers, destroyer escorts, jeep carriers, and composite squadrons are proud of what they did. When Fanshaw Bay survivor Harold Kight undertook to gather an oral history of his wartime home, a shipmate wrote to him, “I think the more of us that get together, the more history may come to remembrance. A lot of history ain’t set down yet.”

  They’re a generation of optimists. The newsletter of the Roberts Association features a regular section titled, “Our family keeps on growing!” It is filled with news from shipmates and their families, from long-lost survivors found six decades after the battle. Of course, the family’s first generation is not growing. It is shrinking, as it must. The Taffy 3 associations will not be around forever. Though they are formidable negotiators, their reunion coordinators exert slowly diminishing bargaining power over hotel and conference center managers every year. The escort carrier associations get a robust turnout owing to the larger complement of their ships. The Samuel B. Roberts Survivors Association, on the other hand, now holds its reunions jointly with the Johnston survivors and the tiny group from the Hoel. Perhaps the children and grandchildren who appear in growing numbers at the annual events will sustain the reunions beyond the passing of the last survivor. One hopes that they will.

  To see the three groups of tin can sailors together at their joint reunion is like watching three tightly knit fraternities mingle, each with its own traditions, full of pride, but vaguely uncertain about the other groups. Though they have absolutely everything in common, they don’t seem to mix very much. While they show a cautious curiosity and no shortage of collegiality, there is not a lot of mingling and sharing of experiences. Maybe everything that can be said has been said. Maybe they’ve heard all the stories already. Or maybe the experiences are too painful still. If so, clearly they always will be.

  The Hoel guys, mindful that their ship was the first to sink and with the heaviest loss of life, seem leery of all the attention the Johnston has gotten. Historians have been understandably drawn to Ernest Evans’s dashing sortie against the Japanese fleet, to Bob Hagen’s vivid and detailed official action report, and to his gripping personal account published in the May 26, 1945, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. None of that ever kept the old skipper Amos Hath-away from griping at reunions, often in mixed ships’ company, that Ernest Evans had run off ahead of orders and fought his own war.

  To men from the other ships, a lot of the talk has sounded like bragging. Of course, there is a fine line between bragging and pride. The Roberts guys appear to walk it well. Just as Bob Copeland used to insist, they dress sharply. There’s a measure of solemnity and seriousness to them, but they have an unmistakable spark—the irreducible pluck of the destroyer escort sailor. Nevertheless, in the hospitality room, when all three groups are together, there is a palpable feeling that people are afraid to say the wrong thing, to inadvertently put down the contribution of another ship.

  The men bonded with each other at an age when bonds harden like epoxy, in their late teenage years and early twenties. Tested by traumatic experience, the bonds became all the more enduring. Through the years the dynamics have stayed largely the same. Joe Downs, in his seventies, still seems to regard Bill Brooks, in his eighties, the way a seventeen-year-old enlisted aircrewman regards a twenty-four-year-old commissioned pilot who holds the younger boy’s life in his hands, which is to say, as nearly a superhero. “Oh man, I like that guy,” he said. “A hell of a hunk of a man.” They see each other as they did six decades ago. Picture a black-and-white photo of young Jack Kennedy, skipper of PT-109, having cheated death and with his whole life in front of him. This is how they see each other, but in living color. Brooks’s VC-65 squadronmate Tom Van Brunt joked, “At this time in my life, one of my greatest pleasures is finding my glasses before I forget why I’m looking for them.” But they see each other just fine. This time-travel magic does not seem to work outside the immediate naval fraternity. When a survivor meets someone from another ship, it’s understandable that the natural bond isn’t always there: he sees not an eighteen-year-old but an old man.

  At the 2001 joint reunion of the Samuel B. Roberts, Johnston, and Hoel associations in Albuquerque, the banquet speaker told a story that punched a sizable hole in this barrier of time. Capt. Paul X. Rinn, a fifty-five-year-old New Yorker who prickles with smarts, was the skipper of the third ship to bear the name Samuel B. Roberts, a Perry-class guided-missile frigate, FFG-58. On April 14, 1988, escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers through the Persian Gulf in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, the Roberts entered a minefield. Captain Rinn backed her down gingerly, but the ship struck a mine nonetheless, reeling from a monstrous blast that lifted the ship so high that when she fell back to sea her bow plunged under water. The explosion fractured the ship’s keel, blew eight-thousand-pound gas turbine engines from their mounts, and opened a twenty-eight-foot hole in her side. The volume of inrushing water was so great that in less than a minute, according to Rinn, the Roberts “went from being a 4,000-ton ship to a 6,000-ton ship.” She was sinking at a rate of a foot every fifteen minutes. Flames were rising 150 feet above her, nicely silhouetting the frigate for the missile-armed Iranian patrol plane and fast attack boat that were closing in.

  “We took care of the Iranians, and they went away,” Rinn told the Albuquerque reunion gathering, “but there was no doubt it was not going to be a good night. And at one point about an hour and a half into this, after I’ve thought, I’m not sure we can save this ship, but we’ve got to try our damnedest—do you remember the film Titanic, when the lights start to flicker, then go out?—well, we had our Titanic moment. The lights flickered—and then they went on. And I remember standing on the bridge thinking, I don’t know how that happened, but God is good. Let’s see what we can do to save this ship.”

  Captain Rinn then told his elder tin can sailors the reason his ship survived. It had to do with the teamwork and courage of an entire 214-man crew—and in particular the enterprise of two enlisted men, a fireman named Jim Tilley and a third class petty officer named George Carr. Tilley was not the most shipshape sailor. He had been a regular defendant at Captain’s Mast, where Rinn, against the repeated advice of his senior chief, always e
nded up giving the kid another chance. When the Roberts hit the mine, Tilley was manning auxiliary machinery room number one, a belowdecks compartment that was supposed to have been evacuated owing to the threat of mines in the area. Something told Tilley that the ship might need emergency power, and so he dogged down the hatch and stayed at his station.

  Trapped belowdecks by ladders and bulkheads that had collapsed on top of his station, Tilley brought the auxiliary diesel on line with the generator, a job that usually required three people, tripped in the gear connection using an emergency technique known as a “suicide start” for the possibly destructive consequences of a malfunction, and restarted the flow of electricity that powered the lights and the pumps fighting the flooding. Tilley singlehandedly kept the Roberts from succumbing to its “Titanic moment.”

  From that point on, petty officer George Carr—who shares a surname but no family heritage with petty officer Paul Henry Carr, insofar as George is black—kept the pumps running in a critical aft compartment for about thirty-six hours straight. Aware that operating a finicky pump even for just an hour was no minor feat, Rinn was amazed—and puzzled. He couldn’t remember Carr ever having gone to P-250 school, where the Navy taught the kind of advanced pump maintenance that Carr would have needed to know to do what he did. When Rinn asked, the thirty-one-year-old petty officer said no, he never went to P-250 school. “Captain, you’ve gotta understand something about me: I can’t swim a lick. I saw those sharks and I saw those snakes in the waters around here, and I decided there was no way those pumps were stopping.”

  Captain Rinn had made a large bronze plaque displaying the image of old DE-413 and the names of all her crew, mounting it on the bulkhead in the amidships passageway leading to the quarterdeck. The plaque was always a focal point during the initiation of new crew members. Now it found another use. “It sent a chill through me on the night of the mining, as we were fighting to save the ship, to see crew members passing the plaque and reaching out and touching it, not just one or two guys but seemingly everyone who passed it. Clearly they were bonding with the heroism of the past.”

  Here, then, beyond citations and medals and newspaper articles and unexercised bragging rights, is the true legacy of the Battle off Samar. It gave substance to a living tradition. The story, the history, of Navy men in extremis animates the idea that Americans can do anything when it is necessary and when it counts. As Captain Rinn put it:

  Legend, tradition, history can drive a commitment to excellence that raises people and has them perform at a level above anything they ever dreamed they could do. And it makes all of us realize the potential that everybody has who serves for you and goes to sea on ships.

  The veterans should be celebrated for the distinguished citizens they have become. But they should be remembered too as they remember themselves: as kids, frozen in time.

  “I’m still trying to impress my dad,” Bud Comet said. “I’m still trying to tell him, ‘Hey, I’ve been a good son. I’ve honored you and I’ve honored Mom, and I hope that you’re pleased. I hope, if you’ve been watching over me all these years, that you’re pleased with the way I’ve conducted myself.’”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am proud to acknowledge the cooperation and friendship that so many veterans of the Battle off Samar offered to me during the several years of research and writing that produced this book. Unfailingly gracious and generous, they made it possible to breathe life into events nearly sixty years old. Without their support, this book couldn’t have been written.

  I owe a particular debt to Royce Hall, Bill Hewson, Harold Kight, Thomas Lupo, Elden McClintock, and Bill Murry of the USS Fanshaw Bay/VC-68 Survivors Association; to Hank Pyzdrowski of the Heritage Foundation of the USS Gambier Bay/VC-10 Association; to Edwin Bebb and Harold Whitney of the USS Heermann Survivors Association; to Myles Barrett and Paul Miranda of the USS Hoel Association; to Bob Chastain, Bob Hagen, and Bill Mercer of the USS Johnston Association; to Tom Glenn and Owen Hilton of the USS Kalinin Bay/VC-3 Survivors Association; to Dean Baughman of the USS Kitkun Bay Survivors Association; to George Bray, Dick Rohde, Tom Stevenson, and Jack Yusen of the USS Samuel B. Roberts Survivors Association; and to Bill Brooks, Larry Budnick, Holly Crawforth, Joe Downs, John Ibe, and Les Shodo of the USS St. Lo/ VC-65 Association.

  In addition to the many survivors who allowed me to interview them (they are listed in the Bibliography), many veterans and family members sent me valuable written records, accounts, and other documents as word spread of my project. Thanks to Myles Barrett, Michelle Bedard, Marvin Cave, Jackie Weaver Dennison, Bob De-Spain, Ed DiGardi, John Downs, Bob Heflin, Don Heric, Owen Hilton, John N. Hines, Bob Hollenbaugh, John Kaiser, William Katsur, John Land, Robert LeClercq, Bill Long, Donald E. Mackay, Mike McKenna, Vernon Miller, James Murphy, Sam Palermo, Sr., Tony Potochniak, Paul Rinn, Brad Scholz, Art, A.J., and JoAnn Sosa, Ron Vaughn, Ellsworth Welch, David C. Wright, and Zachary Zink.

  Because Bantam Books senior editor Tracy Devine was my friend before she became my editor, I know her better than to think that the careful attention she gave to this book was anything other than her professional order of the day. In ways large and small, Tracy’s smarts and good sense touched and improved almost every page of the manuscript.

  I am grateful to Bantam publisher and president Irwyn Applebaum and deputy publisher Nita Taublib for their belief in and faithful sponsorship of this project; to assistant editor Micahlyn Whitt for professionally and creatively overseeing maps and illustrations; to copy editor Janet Biehl for her many good saves and suggestions; and to designer Glen Edelstein for his fine visual aesthetic. Frank Weimann, my literary agent, creates opportunities for writers every working day. I am glad he helped create this one for me. John F. Wukovits deserves thanks for his generosity with his research materials on Taffy 3. Ron Powers offered valuable comments on portions of early drafts.

  For assistance with research, thanks to Ellen Holzman at Traditions Military Video, Jane Yates, Director of the Citadel Archives & Museum, Charles Kahler and Cynthia Nunez at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery, Mike and Cyndy Gilley and Ray Gourlay at Do You Graphics, Shelley Shelstad at History on CD-ROM, Janea Milburn at the Naval Historical Center, and Patrick R. Osborne at the National Archives and Records Administration. Special thanks to Elsa Hornfischer for help in transcribing interviews with survivors.

  And last and foremost of all, thanks to Sharon Hornfischer, for the vital and many-faceted support that only a spouse can provide.

  MEN OF TASK UNIT 77.4.3 KILLED

  IN ACTION, OCTOBER 25–28, 1944

  Bibliography

  Books

  Astor, Gerald. Crisis in the Pacific: The Battles of the Philippine Islands by the Men Who Fought Them. Donald I. Fine, 1996.

  Battle Stations!: Your Navy in Action. Unattributed compilation. William H. Wise & Co., 1946.

  Blair, Clay, Jr. MacArthur. Pocket Books, 1977.

  Cox, Robert Jon. The Battle off Samar: Taffy III at Leyte Gulf 2d ed. Ivy Alba Press, 2001. Available on the author’s website, www.bosamar.com.

  Cutler, Thomas J., The Battle of Leyte Gulf: 23-26 October 1944. HarperCollins, 1994.

  J. Doscher, Henry, Jr. Little Wolf at Leyte: The Story of the Heroic USS Samuel B. Roberts, DE 413, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II. Eakin Press, 1996.

  Dull, Paul S., A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-45). Naval Institute Press, 1978.

  Dunnigan, James F.,and Albert A. Nofi. Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific. William Morrow, 1995.

  The Pacific War Encyclopedia. Facts On File, 1998.

  Fahey, James J., Pacific War Diary, 1942-45. Houghton Mifflin, 1963.

  Falk, Stanley L. Decision at Leyte. W W Norton, 1966.

  Field, James A., Jr. The Japanese at Leyte Gulf: The Sho Operation. Princeton University Press, 1947.

  Friedman, Norman. U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History. Naval Institute Press, 1982.

  Halsey, William F.,and
J. Bryan III. Admiral Halsey’s Story. McGraw-Hill, 1947.

  Hara, Tameichi. Japanese Destroyer Captain. Ballantine, 1961.

  Hopper, E.B. Foreword to Ships of the United States Navy: Christening, Launching and Commissioning. Navy Department, Naval History Division, 1975.

  Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy, 1775-1991. Random House, 1991.

  Hoyt, Edwin P., The Battle of Leyte Gulf. David McKay Co., 1972.

  The Men of the Gambier Bay. Paul S. Eriksson, 1979.

  Hurley, Vic. Jungle Patrol: The Story of the Philippine Constabulary. E. P. Dutton, 1938. www.bakbakan.com; last viewed by author Nov. 22, 2002.

  Ito, Masanori, with Roger Pineau. The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Translated by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau. W. W. Norton, 1962.

  Jernigan, Emory J. Tin Can Man. Vandamere Press, 1993.

  Kernan, Alvin. Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket’s World War II Odyssey. Naval Institute Press, 1994.

  Lawson, Robert, and Barrett Tillman. Carrier Air War: U.S. Navy Air Combat, 1939-46. MBI Publishing Co., 1996.

  Layton, Rear Adm. Edwin T., USN (Ret.). “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets. William Morrow, 1985.

  Love, Robert W., Jr. History of the U.S. Navy, vol. 2: 1942–1991. Stackpole, 1992.

  Macintyre, Donald. Leyte Gulf: Armada in the Pacific (Ballantine’s Illustrated History of World War II, no. 11). Ballantine, 1969.

  Mahan, Alfred Thayer. Mahan on Naval Warfare. Little Brown , 1941.

  Manchester, William. American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964. Little, Brown, 1978.

  Mason, Theodore C. Battleship Sailor. Naval Institute Press, 1982.