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

It was preposterous to send a destroyer escort against an enemy’s main surface fleet. They didn’t do it on paper at the Naval War College, and it had not happened in the whole course of the war leading up to October 25. As the Dennis and the Raymond sortied, Bob Copeland’s ship was fighting like a true hunter-killer, bidding to take down a heavy cruiser on the open sea. The Hoel had fired two salvos of five torpedoes each. The Heermann had fired seven, then three. If Copeland was lucky, the Samuel B. Roberts would soon be in position to fire her single salvo of three. In a quieter time, in Hawaii, before the ship’s departure for the far reaches of the western Pacific combat zone, the admiral who commanded U.S. destroyer forces in the Pacific had informed Copeland that he had recommended replacing the Roberts’s torpedo tubes with a new forty-millimeter gun mount. Copeland had surprised even himself with the tenor of his refusal: “Admiral, someday somebody is going to forget we’re boys and send us over to do a man’s work. If I’m ever sent to do a man’s work, I want a man’s weapons.” Then Copeland smiled a little. “Admiral, as far as my ship is concerned, the torpedo tubes will be removed over my dead body.” Due either to Copeland’s persuasive skills or to lack of follow-through by the bureaucracy, the Samuel B. Roberts left Pearl Harbor with her one triple torpedo mount in place.