The Charge of the Johnston

Taffy 3 was a group of six escort carriers and seven small escorts guarding the Leyte landings. At 6:45 on the morning of 25 October 1944 a lookout reported pagoda masts on the northern horizon: Admiral Kurita's Center Force, with the 18-inch guns of Yamato among them, had come through San Bernardino Strait unseen in the night.

USS Johnston, DD-557, was the closest destroyer. Her captain, Commander Ernest Evans, rang up flank speed and went straight at them, firing her five-inch guns as fast as they could be loaded and putting a spread of torpedoes into the cruiser line at 10,000 yards.

The other escorts followed her in. Kurita, convinced he was fighting a fleet, turned away. The carriers got out. Johnston did not.

The destroyer comes at the viewer at an angle, bow lifting on the swell, her hull number 557 plain on the gray plating. Two forward guns are firing and the flashes are the warmest spots on the picture. Behind her a Japanese cruiser fills the middle distance, smoking from a hit, with more masts stacked on the horizon beyond. Shell splashes tower on the left. The sea is painted in thick strokes of blue and white, and all of it is moving.