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The fast destroyer Hoel, captained by Commander Leon S. Kintberger, was the flagship of the small destroyer and destroyer escort screen of Taffy 3. As splashes from Japanese shells began bracketing the ships of the task group, Hoel started zig-zagging and laying smoke to help defend the now fleeing CVEs .
Task Unit 77.4.3 was inadvertently left to fend off a fleet of heavily armed Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers off the island of Samar. Steaming through incoming shells, Samuel B. Roberts scored one torpedo hit and several shell hits on larger enemy warships before she was sunk. After the battle, Samuel B. Roberts received the ...
Escort ships of Taffy 3 laying smoke while under fire, 25 October 1944 At 0657, Sprague ordered Taffy 3 to head east at top speed and lay smoke. [ 33 ] Despite the overwhelming odds against the force, finding Johnston at the rear of the formation, [ 1 ] [ 34 ] Commander Ernest E. Evans ordered a turn to the northeast so that Johnston could ...
A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Military Book Club, the book tells the story of the remarkable two-and-a-half-hour sea battle fought on October 25, 1944, in which Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague's task unit, known as "Taffy 3" (7th Fleet's Task Unit 77.4.3), of escort carriers and their "tin can" escorts rose to the impossible challenge of beating back an overwhelming ...
Taffy 3's two other destroyers, Hoel and Heermann, and the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, attacked with suicidal determination, drawing fire and disrupting the Japanese formation as ships turned to avoid their torpedoes. As the ships approached the enemy columns, Lt. Cdr. Robert Copeland of Samuel B. Roberts told all hands via bullhorn ...
When Task Forces 51 and 53 dissolved and their ships reverted to Task Force 51, Hoel was assigned to Fire Support Section 3, Task Unit 51.17.3 (TU 51.17.3) of the Eniwetok Expeditionary Group. In the early morning darkness of 17 February 1944, Hoel reentered Eniwetok Lagoon with Portland to bombard Parry and Japtan Islands.
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Task units are sometimes nicknamed "Taffy", as in "Taffy 3" of Task Force 77, formally Task Unit 77.4.3. There is no requirement for uniqueness over time (e.g., the United States Seventh Fleet used TF 76 in World War II, and off Vietnam, and continued to use TF 70–79 numberings throughout the rest of the twentieth century, and up to 2012).