The Unknown Hero Who Charged a Battleship With a Destroyer — and Saluted by the Enemy

The unknown captain who charged a Japanese battleship fleet with a single American destroyer. Ernest E. Evans, USS Johnston, Battle off Samar, October 25, 1944 — and the enemy salute that ended his fight.

Off the island of Samar. A half-Cherokee captain from Pawnee, Oklahoma stands on the bridge of a single Fletcher-class destroyer and sees twenty-three Japanese warships — including four battleships — coming straight at him. He has three minutes to decide. He turns toward them.

This is the story of Ernest Edwin Evans, the first Native American naval officer to receive the Medal of Honor, and the destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557) — found in 2021 four miles deep at the bottom of the Philippine Sea, with her guns still pointed toward where the Japanese fleet once was.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 — Cold Open: Off Samar, October 25, 1944

02:39 — Chapter 1: The Boy from Pawnee

04:35— Chapter 2: The Quiet Decade

06:59 — Chapter 3: "I Intend to Go in Harm's Way"

08:06 — Chapter 4: The Training Year

09:28 — Chapter 5: The Night the Door Was Left Open

11:31 — Chapter 6: Many Masts

14:02 — Chapter 7: Ten Torpedoes

16:14 — Chapter 8: Small Boys, Attack

17:37 — Chapter 9: Between the Battleship and the Carrier

18:48 — Chapter 10: The Destroyers That Turned Away

19:32 — Chapter 11: The Circle

21:29 — Chapter 12: The Salute

22:45 — Chapter 13: What Happened Next

24:27 — Chapter 14: San Pedro, 1945

26:03 — Chapter 15: Four Miles Down

28:06 — Chapter 16: Epilogue: Still on Station

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RESEARCH SOURCES

Primary:

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command — Johnston (DD-557) Official Page

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/ships/modern-ships/johnston.html

USS Johnston (DD-557) Action Report — 14 November 1944, Lt. Robert C. Hagen, Senior Surviving Officer

Robert C. Hagen — "We Asked for the Jap Fleet — and Got It" (The Saturday Evening Post, May 1945)

Medal of Honor Citation — Commander Ernest Edwin Evans (presented 28 September 1945)

Samuel Eliot Morison — History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol. XII: Leyte, June 1944–January 1945 (Little, Brown, 1958) https://amzn.to/4sXM5eu

NHHC Wreckage Confirmation — USS Johnston (DD-557) (April 2021)

https://www.history.navy.mil/news-and-events/news/2021/wreckage-confirmed-as-heroic-uss-johnston--dd-557-.html

Secondary:

James D. Hornfischer — The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (Bantam, 2004) https://amzn.to/3P1INZB

Thomas J. Cutler — The Battle of Leyte Gulf: 23–26 October 1944 (HarperCollins, 1994) https://amzn.to/3R0xqBD

The National WWII Museum — Eyewitness to the Battle off Samar and the Loss of the USS St. Lo

USNI News — Wreck of Famed WWII Destroyer USS Johnston May Have Been Found (October 2019)

Destroyer History Foundation — USS Johnston (DD-557), Fletcher-class destroyer in World War II

https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/ussjohnston/

NHHC The Sextant Blog — Surface Warrior: Remembering Ernest Evans

U.S. Naval Academy Virtual Memorial Hall — Ernest E. Evans, Cmdr., USN

Wikipedia — USS Johnston (DD-557), Battle off Samar, Ernest E. Evans, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Clifton Sprague, Taffy 3

National WWII Museum — nationalww2museum.org

Note: This documentary covers historical events of October 1944 and does not address current events.

MUSIC

Almost in F — Tranquillity by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/

No. 4 Piano Journey by Esther Abrami

Source: YouTube Audio Library

PRODUCTION TRANSPARENCY

Script & Research: Human-authored | Narration: AI-generated (ElevenLabs v3) |

Narrator: Charles Mercer | Images: U.S. National Archives, NHHC,

Wikimedia Commons — public domain

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