Around this time Bob Copeland got his last look at the USS Johnston. When Ernest Evans’s destroyer passed close by the Roberts, and in the midst of his own ruin, Copeland was heartbroken to see up close what had become of the proud tin can. The image of the battered ship stayed with him for the rest of his life. I can see her right now. She had taken a terrific beating. Her bridge was battered and had been abandoned. Her foremast, a steel tubular mast, coming up just abaft of the bridge superstructure, had been split from shellfre and then bent down over itself…. It gave me a hurt feeling to
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