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The lookouts of Taffy 3 spotted the anti-aircraft fire to the north. The Japanese came upon Taffy 3 at 06:45, achieving complete tactical surprise. At about the same time, others in Taffy 3 had picked up targets from surface radar and Japanese radio traffic. At about 07:00, Yamato opened fire at a range of 17 nmi (20 mi; 31 km).
Shortly after dawn on 25 October, Samuel B. Roberts was protecting Taffy 3's escort carriers whose aircraft were supporting the Army assault. The warships were steaming off the eastern coast of Samar when the Japanese Center Force, a 23-ship task force under the command of Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, appeared on the horizon and opened fire.
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 ...
USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy. [1] During the Battle off Samar, part of the overall Battle of Leyte Gulf, during a successful effort to turn back a much larger attacking Japanese surface force, Gambier Bay was sunk by naval gunfire, primarily from the battleship Yamato, taking at least 15 hits between 8:10 and 8:50.
Kurita's forces mauled Taffy 3, sinking the escort carrier Gambier Bay, the destroyers Hoel and Johnston, and the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, and inflicting significant damage on most of the other ships. But continual air attacks by aircraft from Taffy 3 and Taffy 2 stationed farther south and a determined counterattack by the U.S ...
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 ...
Dawn of 25 October 1944 found "Taffy 3" steaming northeast of Samar operating as the Northern Air Support Group. "Taffy 2" was in the central position patrolling off the entrance to Leyte Gulf , and "Taffy 1" covered the southern approaches to the Gulf some 150 miles (240 km) to the southeast of Hoel ' s "Taffy 3".
With three heavy cruisers sunk and a fourth crippled, Admiral Kurita ordered a retreat from the battle, prompting Tone to disengage Taffy 3. While retreating, Tone was hit by two bombs from carrier aircraft, one was a dud, but the other disabled her steering wheel, forcing her crew to manually control the rudder.