The Battle off Samar, a part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, ranks among the greatest battles of naval history. A David vs. Goliath scenario, the battle saw a relatively small U.S. Navy task force face off against Japan's main battle fleet and win. How? Mostly, thanks to the remarkable bravery, skill, and audacity of the U.S. Navy's small destroyer escorts. The men aboard these escorts, when faced with overwhelming odds, turned and ran right at the battleships and cruisers of the Japanese fleet, fighting so ferociously that Japan's VADM Kurita eventually turned and ran.

This book brings the Battle off Samar to life, mixing personal recollection with historical record to craft a compulsively readable and altogether fascinating history. I listened to the audiobook version of Hornfischer's work, so I can't be sure whether the small errors I noticed were the fault of the author or reader ('aerobics' for 'aerobatics,' for instance). Still, these errors were minor and barely detracted from the overall experience of listening to the book.

I heartily recommend this book to naval officers of all nations, as well as laymen with an interest in naval history. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is worth your time.

This is the absolutely amazing story of perhaps the greatest sea battle that you have never heard of. While there bigger and more powerful counterparts were away, a group of tin can ships (carrier escorts and destroyer escorts) that were never supposed to see real battle were engaged by a massive Japanese fleet.

The tiny American ships are forced to outlast their enemies through nothing but seamanship, fortitude, and inferior weapons (and maybe a little luck). The ensuing battle is amazing and should be retold in every history book that has anything to do with WWII.

I've heard others say that the first half of the book if fairly slow, and I don't necessarily disagree with them. The author does go to great pains to ensure that the reader knows who the sailors are and where the ships came from. If there is one weakness, he does introduce a lot of characters, and it is difficult to remember all of them.

Overall, though, this is an amazing story, and I highly recommend it.

This book is written like a History Channel documentary. It’s definitely helpful to have a map of ship positions while reading this book to follow along with the battle. This was the end of an era for ship to ship battle and this story is the crazy ending to that era. If interested check out Battle off Samar by The Operations Room on YouTube

This is an incredible story of the sea battle that could have changed the course of the Pacific battle. Against overwhelming odds, a group of courageous "Tin Cans" (smaller Destroyers) fought the BEST that Japan had in Naval carriers. The courage of our smaller ships fought with true heroic effort.

Where were our carriers? A famous Naval Admiral had gone against orders and chased a diversion of Japanese freight ships which fortunately was not aware of the successful feign. If it had realized of their success in diverting our Large carriers, what would the results have been?

This is a good read with a lot of personal stories of everyday guys who acted with such unbelievable effort. These guys are the true hero's of WW2 -- and an inspiration to all.

Probably the best work that'll ever be created with first-hand interviews and accounts from Taffy3 participants, and for that it's a valuable book. Still, I felt like something was missing. (I do not know what that something is)

5 Battle Stars! There are few books that will impact you physically as well as mentally. This is one of them. I sit drained and awe-inspired. Hornfischer will take you into the heart of this final major sea battle off the coast of the Philippine Islands, a battle that should have been a slaughter of American ships by a vastly more powerful Japanese force. But a small force of destroyers/destroyer escorts and swirling naval air attacked, and attacked, and attacked until the Japanese force finally withdrew. The writing is so intense, I had to take breaks. Even after the battle, the American survivors fight to survive for 3 nights and 2 days when the rescue forces go to the wrong location. This surface battle and the naval air battle overhead filled me with awe at the sheer courage displayed. I can't think of another battle history that exceeds the power of this story. All time best book!

Best historical non-fiction in the genre. The valiant stand of Taffey-3 (poorly defended escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts) that broke the effectiveness of the last Japanese fleet in WWII. The Americans "jeep carriers" got away due to a combination of desperate torpedo attack by destroyers and destroyer escorts and continued (often bluff) air attacks that forced the Japanese to evade and not keep chase speed.

Fire control technology has replaced good eyesight for gunnery, and kept the American destroyers in the fight much longer than they had any right to be. The escort carriers also had single 5" mounts aft, which were put to good use in this engagement.

Also pointed out that 88/100 naval aviators in 1923 went back to surface ships, that the "gun club" of battleships and heavy cruisers was the entrenched culture of the day. I add that we are doing the same thing with drones today.

“When a heavy round from a naval rifle hits a ship and explodes, the energy released pulverizes the hardened steel of the shell and swirls up the shattered remnants of surrounding metal decks and bulkheads. All of this metal rushes outward on the edge of a wave of blast pressure that a typical shipboard compartment cannot hope to contain. The sudden and overwhelming ‘overpressure’ turns the compartment itself into a weapon, its remains churning up into a superheated storm of fragmented or liquefied metal. The blast wave’s effect on people is horrific. It collapses body cavities, crushes organs, and blows flesh from bone…”
-tJames D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

The Battle off Samar on October 25, 1944 is a curious incident to categorize. On the one hand, as James Hornfischer argues, it was the United States Navy’s “finest hour,” a heartening epic of an outgunned and outnumbered force sacrificing their lives for the greater good. On the other hand, it was an embarrassing near-catastrophe borne out of gross tactical negligence that sent a lot of good men to the bottom of the Philippine Sea.

In The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, you will hear a lot about the former, and almost nothing of the latter. As a result, this is a very good book with some serious limitations.

Taking place as a piece of the larger battle of Leyte Gulf – one of the biggest naval clashes in all history – the Battle off Samar pitted a Japanese force of massive battleships (six total), heavy cruisers (six total), and destroyers (eleven total) against a collection of thirteen United States ships, including six escort carriers (small, slow, poorly armored), three destroyers (small, fast, relatively lightly armed, and poorly armored), and three destroyer escorts (relatively fast, poorly armed, and poorly armored) in an old-fashioned surface action reminiscent of the days of Nelson.

The encounter came about as part of a three-pronged push by the Japanese to get their fleet to the landing beaches of Leyte Gulf, to destroy the transports disgorging American troops bent on retaking the Philippines. A Japanese force under Admiral Ozawa feinted from the north, enticing the over-aggressive Admiral William Halsey into giving chase with his fleet carriers and fast battleships. Meanwhile, from the west, two Japanese naval columns attempted to force the San Bernardino and Surigao Straits. The Japanese were stopped dead at Surigao, but the Center Force under Admiral Takeo Kurita managed – with an assist from American bungling – to pop through San Bernardino in such a surprising fashion that they were almost within big-gun range of Task Unit 77.4.3 (Taffy 3) before they were spotted.

With the escort carriers taking fire and unable to outdistance the faster Japanese ships, the destroyers and destroyer escorts of Taffy 3 tried to buy time by making a headlong series of torpedo runs, right into the teeth of the Japanese force (which included the Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed). After expending their torpedoes, the American ships tried to bang it out with the Japanese, despite the self-evident futility.

Ultimately, two American escort carries were sunk (one by kamikaze, the other by naval gunfire), as well as two destroyers and a destroyer escort. Yet the sacrifice of the destroyers and destroyer escorts (the “tin cans” of the title) bought enough time for the other carriers to escape. It also convinced the fatigued, emotionally spent Admiral Kurita to pull back, even though he was on the verge of a smashing victory.

Roughly the first third of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is dedicated to setting up the context in which the Battle off Samar took place. This includes the usual strategic overview that you would expect. It also includes, however, a rather detailed look at many of the ships – especially the destroyers and destroyer escorts – and men involved. For example, Hornfischer introduces us to Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland, a Naval reservist called into action to command the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts. By providing an efficient look into Copeland’s background, as well as that of several of his men – both officers and enlisted men – he gives you a pertinent reason to pay attention during the battle to come. While naval warfare can be shockingly impersonal, with violent death flung by huge guns over many miles, Hornfischer makes the results of that warfare painfully intimate.

(Hornfischer also provides a dramatis personae, so that you can quickly reference the ships involved, as well as their commanders. While this won’t help you remember the dozens of enlisted men that are introduced, it is helpful as an abbreviated order of battle).

Just as important to an understanding of the Battle off Samar is Hornfischer’s descriptions of the various ships involved. By explaining the virtues and deficits of destroyers and destroyer escorts, he demonstrates the kind of courage it took for them to dash into the teeth of the Japanese battle group. It’s not simply a matter of big versus small; it is a matter of what a sixteen-inch naval shell can physically do to a destroyer escort’s 3/8 inch steel decks.

The Battle off Samar takes up a majority of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, and Hornfischer proves himself a master of the battle narrative. The retelling is visceral, forceful, and graphic. Especially well told are the anxious moments as the small U.S. ships make their initial torpedo runs, soaked in the spray of near-misses, waiting for the fatal blow to fall. Hornfischer covers the frantic efforts of pilots – many of them flying with antipersonnel rather than anti-ship ordinance – to harry and distract the large Japanese warships as they sought an angle to catch the American carriers. He describes the brutal gunnery duels, including the ghastly, deformative results of a solid hit.

In some ways, this is an old-fashioned book, highlighting the glory and damn-the-torpedoes heroics of the engagement. Nevertheless, the interpretation that Hornfischer presents is unvarnished and frequently ugly, with torn limbs, battered bodies, and blood running in the scuppers. I only have two minor criticisms of this section. First, it goes on too long. For the sake of comprehensiveness, Hornfischer checks in on just about every American ship, which ultimately tends to bludgeon the reader into exhaustion with repetitious accounts of mangled, sinking ships. Second, Hornfischer occasionally forgets that the exploits of Taffy 3 speak louder than words. In so forgetting, his prose subsequently veers into purple melodrama that is frankly unnecessary to achieve the emotional impact he seeks.

To tell his story, Hornfischer interviewed approximately sixty participants or relatives of participants. These interviews appear to have taken place between 2001 and 2003 (this was published in 2004). Due to actuarial realities (enlisted men being younger than officers), most of the eyewitness accounts come from the lower ranks. While you might lose some of the command perspective, you definitely get a feel for what it was like to be on one of those small, often-doomed ships. (Some of the stories, however, stretch credulity. For instance, the recollection of the pilot who claimed to have emptied his .45 while flying inverted over a Japanese ship requires more corroboration).

The only true shortcoming of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is that it is not interested in why the Battle off Samar took place at all. The reality in October 1944 was that America had an overwhelming superiority in the air and on the sea. They had, in many ways, assembled the greatest maritime armada ever. On the other side, the Japanese were out of oil; the operation of their planes and ships was greatly curtailed; and they were resorting to suicide tactics to save on fuel and avoid training new pilots.

Yet somehow, despite American advantages and Japanese disadvantages, the Japanese managed to gain local superiority, showing up on Taffy 3’s figurative doorstep with almost no warning. They sank an aircraft carrier with gunfire, which was unprecedented. Even Hornfischer admits – though he underplays the admission – that the sacrifices of the American destroyers and destroyer escorts would not have mattered if Kurita had not lost his nerve. The Battle off Samar was kind of a disaster; only good luck for the Americans and bad decisions by the Japanese kept the disaster from being widespread.

Most students of the battle blame Admiral “Bull” Halsey, who despite numerous blunders ended his career with five stars (while the cerebral Spruance, who won Midway back when the Japanese and U.S. were at parity, gained only four). One is tempted to ponder whether Halsey’s reputation comes more from his drop-the-mic quotes than from his actual abilities. It is a question for which Hornfischer displays zero interest.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors wants you to think of selfless courage, of gutsy panache. It does not want you to think of the gaffes that made such courage and panache necessary. I found this an unfortunate authorial decision. Brave men died because of the poor judgment of others. They might have died because of one man’s penchant for chasing personal accolades. They deserve to be remembered, which Hornfischer has helped ensure.

They also deserve a reckoning, however paltry.

What do you do when you’re a relatively small group of light aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts and you’re suddenly faced with the biggest ships in the Japanese Navy? Japanese ships that are faster, sturdier, and have guns that can fire long before you’ll be in range to fire back?
t
You can:
t
A) Curse Admiral Halsey for chasing a decoy group of Japanese ships and leaving your flank exposed.
t
B) Accept the fact that you are probably going to die.
t
C) Charge the Japanese line anyway, even if all your plane has are depth charges (because you were on anti-submarine patrol) or if all your ship has are guns that will bounce off the larger ship’s armor.
t
D) Somehow pull off a miraculous victory through one of history’s most impressive shows of courage, determination, and sacrifice.
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E) All of the above.
t
As you can guess, the men of the group (Taffy 3) did all of the above. American planes swarmed the Japanese cruisers, destroyers, and battleships, sometimes even when they didn’t have any weapons, because it might make the ships swerve and slow them down. The destroyers and destroyer escorts attacked even though the Japanese ships were far more powerful, hoping to give the aircraft carriers (six of them) a chance to escape. And in the end, the Japanese turned around without annihilating Taffy 3 and without attacking recently landed US ground forces under MacArthur. If you want to know how they managed it, you’ll have to read the book.
t
I’ve read a few books dealing at least in part with the war in the Philippines, but this is the first one I’ve read about the naval action in October 1944 and I enjoyed reading about something new. Hornfischer did an excellent job showing the readers the horrors of naval combat without being gory. He also did a good job explaining things so that readers without a naval background (like me) could understand the events, but I never felt he was hitting me over the head with information I already knew.

The men of Taffy 3 were true heroes. The book starts off a teeny bit slow, but it quickly becomes absorbing. Highly recommended.

I first heard about the sea battle in the Leyte offensive in a book that I read in the mid-80s, but couldn't find more than a few references, and no details. Returning to school I decided to write a History paper on it, and found very little in the college library, so made a trek across the Bay to the Hoover Library at Stanford...that was the books on index cards days, but with the help of a good reference librarian I found 3 books, and set down two speed read them. The battle accounts were amazing, the American fleet against almost the entire might of the Japanese fleet. None of the books gave an in depth account of Ziggy Sprague and Taffy 1,2 or 3. they were centered on the triump that occurred against the Southern pincher of Japan's Sho-1 war plan. I was left with a strange feeling that the sea battles, one of the few times that warships faced each other at close range was probably a bigger story of tactics and courage than the Battle of Mid Way which was plastered across print pages, books and movies. There have been rumors that a Leyte Gulf film has been floated around for a decade, never finding the money men to bring it to life.
When I picked up James D. Hornfischer's book, I had all of my answers, and why the Navy downplayed the battle and gave very quiet appreciation of the sacrifices made by men who were so outnumbered and outgunned and virtually no reasonable chance to survive as they engaged battleships with their light carriers and small destroyers who had 5" guns with a range of 7 miles and a few torpedoes, set against the big guns of the Japanese fleet with a range of 21 miles.
Written with a combination of official logs and communications and the personal stories of the men who survived who were described in a manner that gave them enough life to make the reader worry about their survival and battle descriptions both naval and air that had me sitting on the edge of my seat as surely as if I was reading the best crime/mystery novel. I actually read through until 4:00 am because I couldn't put the book down, had to know what would happen to the men of Taffy 3.
Amazing story of heroism and the willing to sacrifice while abandoned the landing area,troop transport and supply ships. The story that stayed buried for so long made as big as life, finally honoring the men who died those three days in October 1944.

Remarkable.

My grandfather was in this battle, on the USS Hoel. He was a survivor. I've had the HONOR and OPPORTUNITY in meeting these brave men who fought along side him on these "Tin Cans" at Leyte Gulf and have heard the most amazing stories from them. Sam Lucas, Bill Mercer, Glenn Parkin, and others. This is a great book on their accounts. Also, my family and I attended the monument dedication in San Diego in 1996, and its an amazing site. If you're a history buff like myself, you wont be disappointed., pick it up.