The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

by James D. Hornfischer

Suddenly he heard a lookout shout, “Captain, there’s fourteen-inch splashes coming up on our stern!” The battleship Kongo lay some ten thousand yards in that direction, shooting with uncanny accuracy through the haze. At 7:22 her rangefinder had been disabled by strafing Wildcats. Now it was restored. As the Cyclops fixed on the Samuel B. Roberts, the Kongo’s guns boomed salvos of 1,485-pound shells Bob Copeland’s way. Copeland turned and saw a procession of foaming columns walking up from behind. Gauging the progress of the explosions—the closest of them smacked the sea fifty yards astern—relative to the movement of his speeding ship, he knew what he had to do: hit the brakes. The normal procedure, designed to spare strain on expensive reduction gears, was to ratchet down from flank speed to standard, two-thirds, one-third, and stop. But Copeland’s worries went beyond the condition of Lucky Trowbridge’s precious machinery. Like a driver speeding down the freeway shifting straight into reverse, he shouted into the voice tube, “All engines back full!” “That was the one time the old ship really shuddered and shivered and quaked,” Copeland wrote. “She just kind of lay down and pretty nearly backed her stern under water.” The destroyer escort’s bow wave collapsed as her forward movement stopped. Almost immediately there were more sounds like runaway freight trains and an ungodly buffeting of air. Directly over the ship flew another brace of battleship shells. They smacked the ...