"Covers the battle off Samar, the Philippines, in October 1944, in which a force of American escort carriers and destroyers fought off a Japanese force many times its strength, and the larger battle of Leyte Gulf, the opening of the American liberation of the Philippines,"

Wow, oh wow. Totally blown away by the retelling of this history. Way beyond reciting a history of events, but including the stories of the sailors involved especially the crew of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts. Such an amazing story and one that really brings modern naval wartime to you intellectually. There have been several movies showing the horror of war on land, but this book reminds me that there is nothing similar in regard to WWII naval warfare in regards to any kind of realism. The description of the damage and injuries brings the story to you as if you were watching live footage of some disaster. The heroism of these sailors when faced with multiple escalating dangers is a wonder to behold. Thank God for such men.

A very readable account of the Battle off Samar. If you enjoy reading narrative accounts of military history, the late James D. Hornfischer delivers a page-turner here. Admiral Halsey takes a bit of posthumous beating even under the most generous-in-hindsight assumptions about the apparent threat posed by Ozawa's decoy force in the fog of war. Things might have gone more smoothly if, say, Vice Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee had been given free reign to put his battleships where he thought best, namely guarding the San Bernardino Strait. Instead it fell to the sacrificial lambs of "Taffy 3" to hold the line against Kurita's still-powerful center force.

I only noticed one error, if we read Hornfischer's "order of magnitude" quantifier literally as a factor of ten rather than hyperbolically as something rather less:

"The biggest howitzer that MacArthur’s troops used fired a 155-millimeter shell, about the same size as the six-inch rounds of light cruisers. Battleship shells were several orders of magnitude heavier."

A check of Wikipedia shows that the 155 mm gun M1 "could fire a 100 lb (45 kg) shell to a maximum range of 14 mi (23 km)". One of the larger US battleship shells was the "AP Mark 5: 2,240 lb (1,020 kg) AP (Mark 5 and 8 guns)".

Thus for example a large battleship gun fired a projectile that was 22 times heavier than the 155mm Army field gun. 22 is much less than "several orders of magnitude". "Several" means: "Being of a number more than two or three but not many." If we take "several" to mean "at least three" then "several" orders of magnitude would be at least 1,000 times greater. If "several" means "more than three" then several orders of magnitude would be at least 10,000 times greater.

This is a story of Taffy 3 in Battle off Samar, which is part of the greater Battle of Leyte Gulf.

This book doesn't goes into any details of Strategic situation which led to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It simply told the stories of men and ships who were forced into an unequal and desperate fight off Samar. It describe the courages, determinations of the men and also sickeningly vivid carnages.

Only downside I see is there were almost no accounts of Japanese side of the battle.

I've written before that I am easily annoyed by Tom Brokaw's assertion of the GI Generation as "The Greatest Generation" especially when applied selectively to only Americans. I in no way mean to demean WWII vets (quite the opposite), but I feel like today's young men and women would make the same sacrafices if called upon.

Usually.

The story of Taffy Three is the first time in a WWII history that I have found myself this amazed at the courage under fire of American servicemen. The courage of Army Rangers at Cabanatuan isn't to be questioned. Neither are the sacrifices of Polish patisans in Warsaw or British paratroops at Arnhem. But either this is what they trained for, or they really had no choice but to fight.

For the pilots from Taffy 3's escort carriers and the sailors on the destroyers and escort carriers, it was a bit different. Yes, they trained to fight, but no one trained them to go after the the main battle line of the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were supposed to be support, ground support, sub chasing, nothing glamorous. Yes, it was their duty to attack...the first time. But once your bombs or torpedos are gone, most folks would turn around and high-tail it for safety. This was clearly an option for the pilots and probably an option for the DDs and DEs too.

It wasn't an option for the escort carriers (or jeep carriers as Hornfischer refers to them). Nobody would blame those pilots or sailors for getting out of Dodge. WWII Army Air Corps pilots used to say they were flying for Uncle Sam until they dropped their bombs; then they were flying for themselves. Not these men. They went back, again and again, flying dry runs at Japanese battleships in the hopes that the big ships would swerve and give the carriers another few minutes. One pilot figured he made more than 19 torpedo runs in a plane that only carries one torpedo. The destroyers did the same, running in against heavy cruisers with their 5-inch guns blazing away.
It never should have made a bit of difference.

But it did. The Japanese commander, already spooked by having one ship shot out from under him the day before, became convinced he was casing fast carriers he could never hope to catch, and facing elite pilots in great numbers, and reciving fire from enemy cruisers instead of tin cans with pop-guns. Kurita retreated.

On one of the carriers, a 19-year-old look-out saw the largest a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese... ever afloat turn away and said "They're getting away!"

This book is an excellent account of the events of the Battle of Samar in October, 1944. Hornfischer has written a dramatic account, liberally spreading quotes, images, and first-person accounts gathered from survivors, reports, and secondary sources about the battle. He does a broad overview of the strategic situation leading up to the invasion of the Philippines by the US and the Battle of the Surigao Strait. It is clear that, like most contemporary authors, he views Halsey's chase to the north after the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet which left the situation open for Admiral Kurita's Central Force to approach and engage the US Seventh Fleets escort carriers to have been a glaring mistake. The historical analysis meets the standards of good history while the drama of the storytelling raises the excitement of the book to cinema.

If a hallmark of a good history is that the reader comes away with a greater understanding of events or with a knowledge greater than that they came with to the book, Hornfischer's book has been that standard for me. Although his look at the mind of Japanese Admiral Kurita at the time Kurita turned his forces away from the American Fleet, thereby letting the Americans survive and losing the battle for the Japanese, may come close to speculation, Hornfischer's thoughts on what led to that decision make a great deal of sense. I feel now that I understand much more how the Japanese fleet came to lose the battle and how very much the battle was lost both Kurita's mind at the critical moment. Rather than being an inexplicable seizure of defeat from the jaws of victory, I feel that I now understand that critical moment much more than I did before.

From the standpoint of high drama, though, this book should stand solidly with other WWII writers such as Cornelius Ryan or Edwin P. Hoyt.

This was not a "goodread" but a "goodlisten," which I got from the library in the absence of the book itself. The audio makes it difficult to assess the background information at the outset as the listener tries to get familiar with key ships, the geography and the sailors. Robert Jon Cox's excellent website on "The Battle Off Samar" helps get over that problem:
http://www.bosamar.com/pages/bosc01

Thankfully, as the audio book gets into individual accounts of battle action and post-action recoveries, narrator Barrett Whitener gives the audio of the Samar "last stand" more impact than print.

What was important about the battle? It was part of the last major naval surface action, which took place in more than a half-dozen locations over a huge area of the Phillipines. The battle off Samar was also the first kamikaze attack, the first time a surface ship sunk an aircraft carrier, the first time that the world's largest battleship fired on enemy ships.

It is an excellent account, comparable to books by Stephen Ambrose, Samuel Eliot Morison and other World War II historians.

As a former tin can sailor (USS Sellers, DDG-11), I found myself engaged from the very start. Some owing to nostalgia, but I think the main reason I was so enthralled was the effective way the author so deftly handled so much research and so many details. The men in this battle, that I had not heard of previously, were simply legend. Such uncommon valor, such devotion to duty and shipmates . . . I am simply awestruck.

I was standing in the bookstore contemplating buying when an older gent on a cane told me I should read it. Turned out he was on one of the ships at the time and his photo was in the book. I shook his hand, thanked him for his service and bought the book. An excellent read for anyone interested in Naval History.

Oh man what a book. Really did a great job of humanizing the terrible Pacific ship battles of world War Two.

Camerone, The Alamo, Rourke's Drift, classic stories of heavily outnumbered defenders doing the improbable. However, in this story the outnumbered, outgunned defenders use the theory of the best defense is a good offense. This is the story of Taffy-3 off the coast of Samar island in the Philippines.

I had heard how good a book this was, and despite my best efforts in the FB Military Books Marketplace I just could not get one. Finally I did and it moved to the front of the line. I was not disappointed. This story is phenominal. From the commissioning of the USS Johnston Capt. Ernest Evans stated "this is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harm's way, and anyone who doesn't want to go along had better get off right now". True to his word, and to protect the escort carriers under his care he charged his destroyer at the battleships and heavy cruisers of the Japanese fleet. Along with him came the destroyers USS Hoel, USS Heerman, and the destroyer escort Samuel B Roberts. None of these ships are equipped to fight anything they were now facing, especially the Roberts, more suited to convoy protection against subs, not a surface action against much of anything larger than itself.

While they helped save the day, along with the aircraft from the Taffy-3 escort carriers, and eventually aircraft from the Taffy-2 group, it was at a heavy cost. The Johnston, Hoel, and Roberts were sunk, with much of their crews dead. The was Heerman badly damaged. Sadly this action does not carry with it the same reverence that the battles I first noted. It should. Those men were/are the best of America, they should be known as such.

This book is very well written, with plenty of maps so it is pretty easy to follow the action. I just couldn't put it down. The writer conveyed the tension of the fight very well, and he kept a great pace going. I could feel the intensity of the fighting, and the despair of the men in the water afterwards. Whether you are in to naval history, or not, this is just a fantastic story that you should not miss.

I wasn't that big of a fan of Hornfischer's Guadalcanal, but now I do understand why this book is so liked, especially among westerners and Americans.

Battle of Leyte Gulf is probably one of my favorite battles of the World War 2. It is filled with "what ifs", stupid mistakes, unbelievable quotes and it's complexity and sheer size make it feel like it wouldn't be plausible if it were written as a fiction.

The focus in this book is on American the tin cans, destroyers and destroyer escorts of Taffy 3 during the Battle of Samar. The focus makes the book feel quite tight and one gets excellent coverage on the fighting in that smaller part of the large battle. Japanese get mostly just a passing mention, although I'm always surprised how much information we can gather from battles long gone, especially on the ships that were found some 17 years after this book was written.

Hornfischer could really write and builds a fascinating account on the minutes, hours, and eventually days for some, that the battle lasted.

The last stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D Hornfisher
The true story of the naval battle of San Bernardino Strait. Philippines during WWII. A last ditch battle of navy Destroys and Destroy escorts against Japanese heavy cruisers and battle ships. defending the USCarriers from destruction. The little against the giants. As a Korean War sailor I understand the heroic struggle they made it was in the last stand of the Alamo style of a battle.gave it 5 stars