The 'Sammy B'

USS Samuel B. Roberts, world's deepest shipwreck, discovered off Philippines
Actually....It was an ESCORT destroyer! (or roughly half a destroyer....)

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There have been 7 USS Enterprises in the USN, and there will "soon" be an eighth.
Enterprise is among the oldest (1775) and proudest names for USN ships.
Still.... "Big E" did not have an auspicious beginning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise

The first 5 'Enterprises' did not exactly cover themselves in glory.
However (comma!) this all changed when a Yorktown-class carrier built for the United States Navy during the 1930s was christened.....USS_Enterprise (CV-6) and this ship would go on to have such a spectacular career during WW-II that an obscure Army Air Corps pilot named Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. would write a TV series named Star Trek, featuring a uniquely formed spaceship that was originally going to be named Yorktown.
Roddenberry however was fascinated by the aircraft carrier Enterprise and had always been proud of that ship and her history, and "Gene" told the production company working on the pilot that he wanted to use that name instead.
The rest was.....MORE history.
As a result some ten years later, NASA would even go on to REname America's first shuttle (OV-101) from Constitution to Enterprise following an intense letter writing campaign by "Enterprising" fans.

Ship names can evoke powerful, long lasting memories.

SO....
WHY would no fewer than 5 USN ships (counting Carr, and Copeland) be named for or because of Samuel B Roberts?
Like the USS Enterprise, the original SAMMY B did not have an great beginning.
One of 83 Butler class Escort Destroyers built in just a few short years, she was among the smallest and least significant class of ships that were built during WW-II.
Roberts struck a whale shortly after commissioning had had to return to the yards for drydocking and repairs. Her skipper (a lawyer) had copious 'evidence' of this incident preserved to protect him from being accused of running his ship aground, and falsifying the cause of the resulting damage.
JUST a few months into her career, the Sammy B found herself "in the rear with the gear" - a backwater area off Samar acting as part of an aircraft and submarine screen for a small group of ships providing ground support for the liberation of the Philippines.

Again....
Why would explorers hire a ship and RISK tossing lavishly expensive deep water exploration gear overboard in 4-miles of seawater just to snap a few pictures and explore a nearly 80-year-old wreck?

Easy.
The unit that the the Sammy B was attached to wasn't even large enough to be called a Task Force.
It was Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. "Ziggy" Sprague’s Task Group 77.4.3

—call sign “Taffy 3”

This name was made famous during The Battle off Samar, in October 1944, noted by historians as one of the greatest “last stands” in naval warfare.
Sometimes even the littlest ships can do BIG things.

SAMUEL B ROBERT's skipper (Copeland) ordered the steam plant's safeties bypassed, raising the pressure well past the 440# limit and increasing her speed by more than 5kts and then, without orders, charged into a gunfight pitting one of the very smallest surface combatant ships (1300 tons) against a gaggle of Japanese ships including the largest surface combatant ever built (65,000 tons.)
The Sammy B was credited with at least one heavy cruiser (10 times her size) sunk and another heavily damaged while maneuvering so close to enemy ships that they could not depress their main guns low enough to engage her.
The picture of the empty triple torpedo mount shown in the article is significant because this was thought to be the only weapon carried by a DE that was capable of inflicting significant damage on a large ship (even PT boats carried FOUR torpedoes!)


Strange things happen in gun fights though.
Destroyer escorts also carried two 5-inch dual purpose guns, intended for shore bombardment, and anti-aircraft use.
Full size destroyers carried four.
After blowing the stern off of a cruiser with her torpedoes, Sammy B began a 45-minute running gun fight expending virtually all of her 5-inch gun ammo, 40 and 20mm AA rounds, and probably even some small arms fire against the topsides of the IJN heavies.
A 5" naval rifle couldn't hope to penetrate a cruiser's armoured sides even at contact range, but they could (and did!) cause significant damage and many casualties topside.
She even used illumination and smoke rounds, and these are thought to have started major fires on at least two large cruisers.
Ultimately, Sammy B's luck ran out and she is thought to have been sunk by a salvo of 14" gunfire from the the IJN battleship, Kongo.
Samuel B. Roberts went down with warm guns and empty magazines, and nearly half of her crew were lost with the ship.

Sammy B was lionized as: "The Destroyer Escort that fought like a Battleship!"


One last STAR TREK mench:
The TOS episode, "Balance of Terror" (S1.E14) is is a redux of the war film "The Enemy Below" from the fifties, featuring a Butler class destroyer-escort tangling with a German Type VII submarine something more in keeping with an escort destroyer's intended mission.
They used a for-real Butler DE in the movie USS Whitehurst (DE-634) in the film.

One Last Fun Fact:
The latest Sammy B was the USS_Samuel_B._Roberts_(FFG-58) which ironically, was ANOTHER "budget built, limited capacity" class of ships designed to be "just good enough" to serve as a different kind of escort ship in the 80's.

THIS "Sammy B" would also go on to survive against unlikely odds after striking a sea mine in the Persian Gulf, blowing open a 15-foot hole, breaking her keel and knocking out her main propulsion.
This type of damage in nearly always fatal to a surface ship, but within 15 minutes...the latest Sammy B was maneuvering under her own (very limited!) power, she had re-powered her combat systems, and the crew would go on to save the ship AND ensure that in a fair and just world, there WILL be another USS Samuel B Roberts in the future.

Ship names can evoke powerful, long lasting memories.