The Ship That Went Down Fighting — USS Samuel B Roberts Found at Record Depth

[00:00:00]Over 22,600 ft, nearly 4.3 m or  6,900 m beneath the Philippine Sea A submersible pilot was  descending into complete darkness He was looking for a ship that  had been missing for 78 years A ship whose commander, before she went down,  told his crew that survival was not expected And the way they found her  wasn't by finding the ship at all It was by finding three torpedo tubes  standing upright all alone on the ocean floor And what those torpedo tubes told  the search team changed everything The reason that ship was findable at all in one  of the most remote stretches of ocean on Earth comes down almost entirely to one thing... Someone had to do the detective work before  a single submersible ever entered the water Over the last few years, I've had multiple  opportunities to talk with Park Stephenson... the historian who led the archival research that made both the Johnston and the  Roberts discoveries possible And what he described is not what most people  picture when they think about deep sea exploration You see, it doesn't start with technology and it doesn't start with submersibles or sonar It starts with paper, survivor  accounts written decades ago Japanese fleet logs position reports from a battle so chaotic that no two sources placed the  same ship in the same location I'm talking about the battle of Leyte Gulf and it definitely was not a clean engagement It was hours of smoke screens high-speed maneuvering contradictory orders and ships going down across  dozens of miles of open ocean Reconstructing where the  Samuel B. Roberts actually sank precisely enough that a  submersible could search for her meant working backwards through all of that chaos So to try to find these wrecks, I'm kind  of like a detective at a crime scene I'm pulling on every little  piece of evidence I can This can be historical documents, official reports We even can build upon the work of  previous explorations in the area In the end though, as with  almost every other wreck... it all comes down to a certain amount of luck Now, what the Caladan Oceanic team  found first before they found the ship was not what they were looking for at all Because here's the thing... the primary target of that expedition  wasn't the Samuel B. Roberts It was the aircraft carrier Gambier Bay The Gambier Bay was an escort carrier one of the larger American ships  lost during the Battle of Leyte Gulf a bigger ship, a more visible target on sonar A vessel that by most measures  should have been easier to find That's what the team had come for Leyte Gulf there are two wrecks we're looking for The first is the Samuel B. Roberts, which  was a very small ship, a destroyer escort I think it unlikely that we will find  the wreck because it is so small, but we're going to give it a shot The prize though is probably the Gambier  Bay, which is the aircraft carrier behind me which was sunk during the Battle of Leyte Gulf The only aircraft carrier in World  War II sunk by direct gunfire The Japanese were able to get it  in close range and they sank her It's possible that she is in even  deeper water than the USS Johnston That would make her the deepest wreck in the world That's why we're going to be spending the majority  of our time off of Leyte trying to find her But instead, what the submersible  found on the ocean floor was this... Three torpedo tubes sitting upright  on the ocean floor, totally intact No ship around them, just the tubes standing there in the dark at the bottom of the Philippine Sea like someone had  placed them there deliberately And Parks knew immediately what he was looking at Because this wasn't from the Gambier Bay Every destroyer and destroyer escort in the Battle of Leyte Gulf carried torpedo  tubes. That part wasn't unusual But the configuration we see here, a single  three tube mount. Now that was different I mean, let's look at that The US destroyers in the battle  carried two 5-tube torpedo mounts It was the standard configuration  for the Fletcher-class destroyer But the USS Samuel B. Roberts... because she was a destroyer escort built smaller, built lighter, built  for a different primary mission carried a single 3-tube mount Three tubes Of every ship that went down to the  bottom during the battle of Leyte Gulf American and Japanese only one carried a 3-tube torpedo  configuration, and that was the Sammy B They had come looking for one of  the largest ships in the battle However, the ocean gave them  the smallest one instead And she had been waiting there the whole time announcing herself through three torpedo tubes on the seafloor for anyone who  knew what they were looking at The ship was close. They just had to find her But to understand why finding her mattered why Parks Stephenson spent  years refining that search area why Victor Vescovo dove personally to reach her you need to understand what  happened 78 years earlier 22,600 ft or 6,900 m above where  those torpedo tubes were resting Because what that ship did in the last two hours  of her life is the reason she deserves to be found October 25th, 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf the largest naval battle in history The Japanese had sent their most powerful surface  fleet Center Force, on a final desperate mission Break through to the American  landing beaches in the Philippines Destroy the invasion before it could take hold Center Force included the Yamato,  the largest battleship ever built nine 18-in guns, shells that  weighed as much as a small car and standing between them  and those landing beaches The only American force in their  path at the moment was Taffy 3 I mean, let's look at that for a moment Taffy 3 was not a combat fleet It was a small collection of escort  carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts all assigned to provide air  support for the landing operations They were not designed or even  equipped to fight battleships The Sammy B, that's what her crew called her was a destroyer escort built to hunt submarines Less than half the guns of a real  destroyer. One third the torpedoes Not enough speed to outrun what  was coming over the horizon Commander Robert Copeland gathered his crew on  the ship's intercom and he told them the truth This will be a fight against overwhelming  odds from which survival cannot be expected We will do what damage we can That was the speech. No promises, no pep talk just the plain truth delivered to 224 men And then they charged The ship laid smoke screens to  protect the carriers behind her She fired every torpedo she had.

[00:09:20]She closed to point blank range  with Japanese heavy cruisers and opened fire with guns that had no  business reaching ships that size Another factor was the confusion she created The Japanese commander could not get a  clear picture of what he was fighting All of that smoke, all that  aggression from ships this small Center Force actually believed it  was engaging a much larger fleet cruisers, maybe carriers And that hesitation bought the men behind  Taffy 3 just enough time to survive The Sammy B bought that time She took a direct hit from a salvo of heavy shells She flooded. She lost propulsion At 10:05 in the morning, less than 2 hours  after the battle began, she went under 89 of her 224 crew never came home The 120 survivors spent 50 hours in  open water before rescue reached them And then for 78 years, she was simply gone In June of 2022, Victor Vescovo and the Caladan  Oceanic team returned to the Philippine Sea with Parks Stephenson and his search coordinates  and six dives planned across 8 days The torpedo tubes came first.

[00:15:08]Four days later, on June 22nd... Vescovo dove personally into the  search area the tubes had defined At 6,895 meters, the lights of his submersible  swept across the shape in the darkness She was in two pieces. The keel had  broken on impact, but she was there upright, still carrying the  geometry of a warship. Unmistakable The deepest warship ever  discovered anywhere in the world 426 m deeper than the USS Johnston which had itself just set  the record the year before Two ships, same battle, same morning found by the same team a year apart Each one deeper than the world thought possible.

[00:16:10]And then Parks described  something I hadn't expected something that changed how I understood  what happened to her in those final moments He pointed to the bow of the ship,  the forward section of the hull and what he described, it's not damage.  In fact, it's the opposite of damage Now, here's what that tells you Those forward compartments  were still sealed when she sank still watertight, still intact,  still holding air from the surface from that October morning in 1944  all the way down to 6,895 meters The absence of damage to the  bow isn't just interesting to me It's the most precise record of  how she died that exists anywhere More precise than the battle reports and  definitely more precise than the survivor accounts And Park Stephenson was the first  person to figure all of this out She's in two pieces about 10 m apart  on the slope where she came to rest but the gun mounts are still there The whole structure is still recognizable.

[00:18:36]At a depth where most people assumed  no intact wreck could survive the Sammy B is one of the most  complete physical records of a WWII surface engagement that  exists anywhere on Earth And the only reason any of this is visible the torpedo tubes, the compressed  bow, the guns, the hull sections... It's all because Parks Stephenson  spent years in archives making a search area small enough that a  submersible could actually cover it Now, if you want more stories like this one the ones that don't make it into the history books then I hope you'll consider  subscribing to History X because look, there are more ships down there And someone like these guys,  they're always looking for them