Ernest E. Evans and the USS Samuel B. Roberts' Last Stand

Dec 08 , 2025

Ernest E. Evans and the USS Samuel B. Roberts' Last Stand

Ernest E. Evans stood on the deck of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, knowing the nightmare crawling out of the mist was bigger, faster, and deadlier. But that didn’t stop him. He was ready—no backing down, no surrender. The cold Pacific air was thick with smoke, torque of engines, the roar of guns, and beyond all that: the certainty that this fight would be etched in blood.

This was not a man who counted odds. He counted lives. His own and his men’s.

The Making of a Warrior

Ernest Edwin Evans was born in Topeka, Kansas, 1908. Midwestern grit ran deep in his veins—steady, unyielding. The Navy claimed him by 1930, but he never shed that small-town code: honor, work, faith. Friends remembered a quiet man with an iron will and a steady hand under fire.

Faith was his backbone. His shipmates remembered him quoting scripture when the night was darkest. Like a beacon in the chaos, his belief in something greater grounded him.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9

A man molded for battle, but tempered for sacrifice.

The Battle That Defined Him

October 25, 1944. The Battle off Samar, Leyte Gulf’s fiercest salvo.

Evans commanded the USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), a destroyer escort—a ship built to defend convoys, not to take on giant enemy battleships. But on that morning, Evans faced a Japanese surface fleet eight times his force: the Kongo-class battleship Kongō, heavy cruisers, and multiple destroyers.

His orders? Hold the line. His choice? Fight like hell.

When the Japanese fleet advanced, Evans did the unthinkable. He ordered Samuel B. Roberts into battle against battleships, pressing the attack with reckless courage. Closing the range, he launched torpedoes and fired his 5-inch guns. The little ship raced alongside much larger enemies.

His ship took massive damage, hits rained down like death from the sky. One by one, other American ships fell back or were destroyed.

But Evans would not waver. With smoke choking the air from his damaged ship, he pressed on, distracting and confusing the enemy long enough for American carriers and reinforcements to escape.

Around noon, the Samuel B. Roberts exploded and sank, but not before doing the impossible. Evans died in the line of fire—his ship shattered, yet victorious in spirit.

“The Samuel B. Roberts’s fight was as gallant and heroic an action as has been recorded.” — Medal of Honor citation

Honors Born in Fire

Posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, Evans’ citation calls out his “extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.”

His deceptively small ship punched above its weight and delayed an enemy force that could have destroyed the entire American invasion fleet.

Comrades spoke of a leader who did not ask them to do what he wouldn’t do, who charged first into a firestorm and stood till the end.

Vice Admiral Clifton Sprague, whose task unit came under attack that day, called Evans’s ship “the gallant little ship that fought mighty battleships and died as she had lived—undaunted.”

Lessons Carved in Steel and Spirit

Evans’s story is not just about a ship or a battle. It’s about choosing valor when the world demands retreat. It’s about sacrifice—giving your last breath so others may live.

It’s about the raw truth of combat that no medal can fully capture: Pain, fear, loss, but an iron will buried beneath. A code etched deep in the soul—courage without calculation.

His legacy echoes for every veteran who’s stood in hell and carried forward. For every soul wresting with the scars of war and seeking redemption beyond the gunfire and the killing fields.

“Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” — John 12:24

Ernest E. Evans died that day beneath the searing sun, but his spirit—unyielding and fierce—still sails.

That’s the inheritance of those who dare to fight when all hope seems lost: hope forged in sacrifice, bravery born in hellfire, and a legacy that refuses to die.