Blog 36 | The Libertarian Institute

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Rust-Bucket Life Extension for the Win

by Bill Buppert | Nov 8, 2024 | Blog

Ticonderoga Class

Arleigh Burke Class

It seems counterintuitive but keeping old ships commissioned is expensive. Expertise on the hulls ages out and retires, technology moves on and maintenance demands increase and don’t decrease. These life extensions are random and sometimes informed by rational calculations but these are large and cumbersome bureaucracies for which pencil whipping is key. The B52 fleet, the last one rolled off the factory floor in 1962 is destined to be in service until 2060 due to its potential replacements in the B1B, F117 and the B2 bombers are being (or have been) retired well before that time.

Shipbuilding capacity in America and the west has been in the hazard for half a century and nothing will make it better without a herculean effect. Nuclear shipbuilding is in even worse shape.

The US Navy surface fleet is certainly at the bottom tier of first world navies now.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced on October 31 that the Department of the Navy plans to operate 12 Arleigh Burke class (DDG 51) Flight I Destroyers beyond their 35-year expected service life.

The decision, based upon a hull-by-hull evaluation of ship material condition, combat capability, technical feasibility and lifecycle maintenance requirements, will result in an additional 48 ship-years of cumulative ship service life in the 2028 to 2035 time-frame. The Navy has proposed DDG service life extension funding in the FY26 budget request, and will update the shipbuilding plan accordingly.

…

The Department of the Navy plans to operate three Ticonderoga-class (CG 47) cruisers beyond their expected service life: USS Gettysburg (CG 64), USS Chosin (CG 65), and USS Cape St. George (CG 71). This decision adds 10 years of cumulative ship service life from fiscal year 2026 to 2029

https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/3952231/secnav-announces-service-life-extensions-for-12-destroyers-to-keep-more-ready-p/

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My esteemed colleague Kim sent me a great video on how poor discipline and training can lead to multi-million dollar accidents and injury:

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Censorship Down Under

by Kym Robinson | Nov 7, 2024 | Blog

The Australian parliament pushes through a bill that will now control access to social media. Like most censorship and prohibition acts it is done under the guise of child protection, the fear mongering used has been constant. Children can be groomed, manipulated and infected with information and contacted by predators if only not for these measures. We are told, again.

What does it likely mean?

Given that social media will now be banned by anyone under the age of sixteen, it will require a proof of ID to access. The digital ID that has been avoided and rejected by most people is now a closer reality. Soon digital ID will be needed not just to access and use social media and online platforms and services but could be made a requirement across for banking, entitlement services, medical treatment, registration, licensing and employment. The State has control with its regulation and monopoly powers to lean into the service providers with its power to ensure that they comply.

It means that people will be unable to use anon accounts, and have to be themselves which has repercussions for employment. Those working government or corporate jobs can’t say or share things online for fear of punishment. This is why a lot of people divorce their online avatar from their real self. Not all are trolls hiding behind a digital mask to shitpost. This can include non-traditional social media platforms such as fetish, gaming and political outlets where anonymity is preferred. Digital ID also makes finding personal information such as place of employment and address easier to access for stalkers, given the States track record with the retention of such information in the past.

What is Social Media?

We think of Facebook, X(Twitter) and Snapchat along with the much hated by governments TikTok as social media platforms but this can include online forums, YouTube or any platform where there is a comment section, that has an interaction interface. Not to mention messaging apps that allows for the creation of groups such as encrypted ones like Signal, Telegram and Whatsapp.

TikTok has constantly come under attack because of it’s association with Andrew Tates rise to fame among young males, to the allegations that it is controlled by the Chinese government but the reality is that it’s used to get information out from conflict zones like Palestine without fear censorship. It also does not allow for the US government or its allies to access user data. While other social media platforms have to comply with the US and other governments to give up their information and privacy, TikTok is not controlled by such, just yet.

The same goes for encrypted messaging services. Which is why the owner and founder of Telegram has been a man of interest, foreign governments have threatened and imprisoned him in an attempt to force him to give them access to the platform. Why would they want to do that?

Naturally the naive think of criminal networks or even terrorists would be the main focus of such government surveillance but consistently the focus is on journalists, whistle blowers and human rights activists. And foreign users. Telegram for example has been used by those reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war giving raw and uncensored access in dedicated channels, both combatant nations want to stop this. Telegram has also been used by dissident groups inside of repressive regimes to keep information and news flowing in and out. While also used by journalists for information dumps.

The same goes for the other encrypted chats. Not to mention the fact that individuals may like to have intimate and private conversations between themselves without pervert spying. Spying which has been used to blackmail and abuse those messaging in the past for no other reason other than they were having a conversation with a lover or lovers that did not need to be public knowledge.

What is misinformation?

There is a lot of bunk online, always has been and always will be. Heck there is a lot of junk in magazines, books, on television and coming from peoples mouths. That’s something we have learned to navigate. The concern is that any information that is not APPROVED or controlled can no longer be shared or expressed. This information may be very factual and come from credible sources but it it is contrary to the State or a regimes ambitions then it is to be banned. Anything that challenges the control and influence of legacy mainstream media or the government has and is to be labelled as mis-dis information or harmful speech.

Both traditional forms of media are waning and have been avoided for some time. People have lost trust in them and look to alternatives whether they happen to be long form podcasts, journalists directly expressing information via social media or the many other independent news groups online. Many times those sources can be wrong and found to spread disinformation, they lose their reputation and need to work hard to regain trust. That is how a free market on information works. BUT legacy media outlets and the State have also been found to lie and spread nonfactual information that has been proven to be false. When they have the monopoly on authority there is no need for them to concern themselves with reputation or the notion of credible ethics because alternatives are banned.

The new Australian law makes it possible to go back and look at a person or organisations previous posts to punish them. This may include anything that challenges foreign policy, prosecutions against whistle blowers, handling of the COVID pandemic, or any conversations that may challenge the approved narrative in that time. This would include the sharing of Wikileaks and the many cables that exposes government and corporate evils which harm millions the world over.

Ultimately public servants in a government department will determine what a fact is. They will determine for you what information you are allowed to know and what you should be allowed to know. These public servants will also determine what opinion you are allowed to express and hear. The public servants will determine what information suits any given reigning political regime, meaning it has the potential to change at the whim of each and every election. It can also influence the public outcries of corruption that leads to Royal Commissions, or potentially what the findings are of such a Commission itself is.

It can punish academics, intellectuals, medical practitioners and scientists from having public debates and discussions which are crucial for the progress of each field. Limiting the conversation to echo chambers of elitism and removing the inclusion of such conversations from online platforms. Not to mention it will go after political and philosophical dissent, any one who does not have a homogenised world view. The believers of democracy boast that government is supposed to represent the people and be an extension of the mobs will, rather than determining what the public can think. This includes religion itself as that will suffer under such measures.

Many public servants especially those who aspire to such positions have a tendency of not understanding nuance, humour or the ability to see outside of their own self interested perspective. These are the experts who will be reviewing and disseminating what is allowed. The legacy and State media are exempt from punishment along with approved officials. This creates an information hierarchy determined by the State. The irony is that this Bill was pushed because legacy media outlets themselves spread misinformation themselves without fact checking.

Whose kids?

Even if this all remains specifically isolated to prohibiting anyone under the age of sixteen from using online services and platforms, why is it that the State can assume it has these parental powers? How is it that the State constantly can determine the rights of parents and what their kids can and can’t do. It is another example of the human ownership that government assumes over those who are born and live inside the borders of its taxation zone. There will be many who welcome this step with the belief that children are already drowning in screens and this will be a means of getting them outside and away from the digital predators or distracting influences of non-approved media.

Is that not for the parents and family to have this influence and to set those parameters?

Is it not enough that main stream television, print media and the radio are all heavily regulated by what can and can’t be expressed. Is it that those realms will now need to be more child friendly and inoffensive in their challenge of approved narratives or with the concern of triggering the most sensitive? Just as concerning is that the internet allows us to directly read Bills, studies, findings and reports without it being digested and ‘broken down’. Rather observe debates and challenges to dogma and doctrines that assume to influence and control us all?

Let’s not forget that the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on lies, all since admitted. This has been the cast with other past wars such as the US-Vietnam war. The legacy media and State outlets went along with the narrative and snuffed alternatives out through the control of the informationspace. Now we have the opposite where the common person can witness through their screens an ongoing genocide in visceral clarity and can challenge the narratives, to the point that legacy and State media react by switching on how they report as a response to the widespread disdain for what is occurring. The awareness of what was occurring coming about because of access to many forms of media which granted an accurate depiction of events. Rather than a one sided version.

Censorship has been an obsession to curtail free expression using all forms of slurs ranging from hate speech, to dis-misinformation. We all should have the right to chose what we wish to hear or see and not hear and see. Even if the most obscene extent of potential for these laws are attained, government mercenaries will enforce them regardless, the market and those with a dissident spirit will find a way to defy. But for the mob who don’t challenge or seek alternatives they will be drunk in the miasma of lies that the government feeds them. The sad truth is in the many who wish to trample the flower of speech that pushes through the pavement of the dreary, rather than to appreciate it for what it is. But the spirit of truth will push through, shame on those who continue to poison it with the pesticide of lies and oppression.

Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 7, 2024 | Blog, Economics

The populist Sanders-left (which is actually broader because it includes Tucker Carlson and others called rightists) is partly correct and partly incorrect about what happened to the Democrats last Tuesday.

They say correctly that the Democrats failed because they have taken non-elites for granted, patronizing and subsidizing some (minorities, for example) and disparaging and penalizing others (regular bourgeois working Americans of both sexes and all skin tones and ethnicities). This is usually stated as “The Democrats have betrayed the working class.”

This is good as far as it goes, but it goes not far enough. The elites have taken some Americans for granted. Meanwhile, a large swath of Americans, especially those between the coasts, have been treated like outhouse-using country bumpkins if not outright racists and patriarchists. Remember Obama’s sneering reference to people who in troubled times seek refuge in their guns and bibles?

It was only a matter of time before an officer-seeker would voice the concerns of the disparaged. It happened in 2016 and again this week. Enough of those people struck back on Tuesday, benefitting Trump and humiliating Harris. People will take only so much abuse or condescension before shouting, “Cut it out!”

Where the Sandersnistas go wrong is in prescribing a warmed-up Marxism. Not full-out nationalization of the means of production, mind you, but heavy government interference with everyone’s market relations: a minimum wage, rent control, price ceilings, usury laws, tariffs, product regulation, immigration barriers, etc. They think this is what the “working class” needs. (Ironically, government control of nominally private enterprise is an essential feature of fascism.)

But no, intervention is not the answer, though class bigotry blinds the Sandersnistas to that fact. The same could be said for the MAGA architects. These measures have long harmed people, especially the intended beneficiaries, and they will do so in the future. But you have to know something about economics to understand that. They don’t.

The first thing the “working class” needs to do is reject the Marxian notion of an inherent class conflict between business and employees. The market economy—the profit-and-loss system void of government regulation and subsidy—is good for all because, as Ludwig Mises spent his life teaching, we all have a deep harmony of interest in freedom, social cooperation, and rising living standards. Surface disputes are insignificant compared to that deeper compatibility.

The industrious “class”—all contributors to the creation of wealth (which excludes politicians and bureaucrats)—should reject the “left” and the “right.”

Bang for your Buck: Fraud, Waste and Abuse as a Lifestyle Choice

by Bill Buppert | Nov 7, 2024 | Blog

I don’t agree with everything he says and he gets technical details wrong like “…these destroyer class ships, probably doing the same thing the submarine does.” No, but that’s OK.

One thing that is always missed here is the tax cascade of these purchases where the developers and buyers are paying taxes at every level making this a self-licking ice cream cone.

It’s much worse than you think.

Is national bankruptcy the sole solution to stop the malpractice and fiscal bleeding.

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The Winner Is…

by Kym Robinson | Nov 6, 2024 | Blog

Donald Trump did it, he is the most famous person in the world. His ambitions have been realised. He won and to him that is all that matters. He also just happens to be the next US president, again. Harris was never going to win, she was terrible. She had been the VP under another terrible person, Biden. The election was more about them not winning and the Neocons being denied direct power again than it was about Trump, himself. He just happened to not be another politician. But Donald Trump, the celebrity tycoon who has been famous for over forty years.

Remember how last time he became presidential by firing Tomahawk cruise missiles into foreign lands, a US tradition. As American as apple pie, drone strikes and trillions in debt. The partisan bobble heads applauded him for it, they love the wars.

Trump won with a coalition of alternatives to the status quo, an armour that protected him from various criticism. RFK,jr steels him for his COVID policies, Tulsi Gabbard gives him a partially anti-war and capable women who already defeated Kamala Harris, Elon Musk brings him DOGE bros and an army of memers, Dana White supplies the UFC muscle, Joe Rogan a media that the legacy outlets struggle to compete with and then with the endorsement of Dave Smith, Tom Woods and the many other social media famous libertarians he has elements from the liberty crowd to clamour about him. He even mentioned he would have Ron Paul on board to advise him on cutting back federal spending.

Now that he is elected, will any federal government get cut? Will he free Ross Ulbrycht like he promised he would do on day one? Given how ruthless his regime was on Assange last time, it is not likely. But we shall see. This is a different Trump we are told, one who doesn’t need to drain a swamp. He’s bringing with him scissors to cut taxes and what’s that…talking of ending the Fed? The very inflationary central bank structure that his billions are inflated by? The government that enabled him and his father to become successful real estate tycoons? We shall see.

The US government is a deviously persistent survivor. It has survived many presidents who said words against its growth and has thrived despite them, because of them even. It only seems to grow and so too does its debt. As for Trump being a conservatives wet dream, his life seems rather libertine and progressive. He was more of a liberal democrat, until he seized the moment and wore the red hat of nationalist. He loves America, sure, what it’s given and allowed him to be. The America of most others, I doubt he has ever really known. But that goes for his opponents too. Harris only met the real America when she threw them in jail and Biden when the fragrance of its children wafted by. The rulers are uncommon people who exist above the common person, that always seems to be their godlike appeal. The promissory notes of political speeches, providing hope for those who feel the hunger pangs only politicians words satiate.

And speaking of a hungry world, Dear Americans, those of us on the other parts of the planet, in the frontiers of empire, near the outposts and in the imperial colonies, we want peace and liberty too. To be allowed to trade and exchange via voluntary means, to have a currency that is not debased by debt and inflation, to not see another burned baby on our screens or in the arms or to know that the young men, not far from childhood themselves don’t need to go again go abroad to kill and die. The great exceptionalism is that in this monopolar world, the US is often the harbinger of such misery and realities. And the elections, the promises of lying politicians are the hair trigger by which many live and die.

As for the liberty movement, the self proclaimed champions of peace and individual rights, limited or preferably no government and where voluntary interaction is paramount, we have hard work ahead of us. Because the term liberty, freedom, libertarian, Ancap and so on all have and will go on the be slurs or misconstrued. The attachment to US party politics alienates and denounces the universal ambitions and rights of billions of others. It shackles those terms and trademarks them in the minds of many to contemporary personalities and politics. Liberty belongs to the world, to everyone and not to those who have the most podcast listeners or gets the best ratio on X.

Congratulations the Democrats, some pretentious celebrities and arrogant pundits cried. Sucks to be them. The lying class lost, but it also won. The US government did not lose the election, it just shape shifted a little bit. Let’s hope that Trump does even half of the positive things he said and half of the bad things he boasted he would do. Which is which, is all rather subjective really, but liberty and peace should be objectives. In politics they sadly are not.

Lest we not forget, “Democrats are shrieking so loud today because they know they’re wrong. They know their party ran a dogshit candidate. They know it was crazy to expect the left support the party that’s committing a live-streamed genocide. It’s not anger. It’s not fear. It’s cognitive dissonance. “ – Caitlin Johnstone

The screams of the smug losers can be heard the world over. Being a sore loser is a bad thing, we saw that when Trump first won and lost. Some did not take it well. We shall see it again. But being a bad winner is also bad. Spite is not a good trait. It could be a time for those who claim to have principles to rise above spite and to not collectivise millions of people into slurs because of a caricature or what a pundit does. It’s an opportunity to communicate principles and set an example, to lead by such distinctions rather than to denigrate oneself into Blue and Red factions just because one is so much more deplorable right now than the other. Hating Democrats should not make everyone a Republican. Transcending that simplified rivalry is where those inside the liberty realm can rise above.

Despite Trump winning, Peanut remains dead and it’s unlikely that the killers and bureaucrats who made it possible will all lose their job or that such people will stop doing such inhuman, “just my job” acts of statist immorality. The wars will go on, perhaps a little less here but a bit more there. The troops will be over there, they do have several hundred bases on foreign soil to fill. The trouble isn’t Trump or Harris or Clinton or Reagan or even Woodrow Wilson. It’s these powerful central governments, they only ever grow so that the killers of Peanut and thousands of children in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc alike have jobs, and can live in comfort. Most people want to be left alone, to live in peace. Those over there, just like you. The trouble is we have developed a society in our minds where careers and entitlements are based on imperial intrusions and regulations that constrain, punish and ruin lives. “Just doing my job,” really means, “I value money over your rights.” That is the fight that needs to be fought.

As the riots go on in Tel Aviv, it may not be a US president that ends the genocide, despite so much US support. Instead the people there themselves. Disorder and disobedience. The genocide to save Netanyahu’s career may after all come to an end. Trump, Harris or not. But the thousands remain dead and in time thousands more shall die. When he loses his mantle of power, maybe faces some justice the thousands of killers of the innocent will remain ready to serve the next leader of government. Election or not.

Liberty and individual rights need voices and champions, its rebellion we need and not a revolution that only ends leading to another form of power. Donald Trump is most certainly not Hitler, but neither was Hitler. Transforming human beings into demonic entities that are unreal is the propaganda of myth making. This goes for all enemies, they are very much human beings. To depict them as slurs misses the points that makes them appealing to real people. The alliance that should be found is in the commonality between real people and to expose the hypocrisy, corruption and very evils of such people and actions. To express and articulate with principles and the philosophy of peace, we have world history to use as examples. Not to yell and meme over one another, to act like drunk children celebrating a win on Mario Kart. Let’s be better. Let’s hold them all accountable and set the example, beat the fuck out of them with righteous indignation fuelled by words and principles that their Raytheon millions and inflationary billions can never buy. Libertas dignity.

Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé Predicts the Death of Zionism

by Jeremy R. Hammond | Nov 6, 2024 | Blog

in a recent episode of The Big Picture Podcast hosted by Mohamed Hassan, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé explains why he believes that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the beginning of the end of the Jewish supremacist state enforcing an apartheid regime in Palestine from the river to the sea.

Here are some of the points that Pappé made during the discussion:

How Zionism was a settler-colonial project and remains so.
Why the US and Great Britain supported the Zionist project to reconstitute Arab Palestine into a demographically Jewish state.
How Christian Zionism predated modern political Zionism and negatively influences US government policy toward the Israel-Palestine conflict.
How the Zionist movement got President Truman to lend his support to the Zionist project against the advice of his own State Department.
How the Israeli lobby group AIPAC destroys the political careers of Israel’s critics in Washington or bends them to its will.
Why it is not at its core a religious conflict.
Why the question is not whether there should be a one-state or two-state solution but how to bring the existing apartheid regime to an end.
How it is not a question of if Palestine will be decolonized but when.
Why a permanent two-state solution would not be just and equitable.
Why Israel’s genocide in Gaza marks “the beginning of the disintegration of Israel”.

Pentagon Waste: The Legend Continues Part Infinity

by Bill Buppert | Nov 6, 2024 | Blog

Of course they did.

Boeing is the gift that keeps on giving

A Pentagon audit revealed that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by nearly $1 million for spare parts on C-17 cargo planes, with some items marked up by as much as 8,000%.

The audit reviewed prices paid for 46 spare parts, finding that 12 were overpriced and nine seemed reasonably priced, while fairness of prices on the other 25 items could not be determined.

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Boeing has been awarded over $30 billion in contracts by the U.S. government for purchasing spare parts for the C-17 and being reimbursed by the Air Force.

Eight thousand percent.

$149,072 for an undisclosed number of lavatory soap dispensers from the plane-maker and defense contractor.

For simple lavatory soap dispensers for the C-17. About 30 dollars on Amazon but your betters at the Pentagon paid approximately 2500 debt-bucks each. This is the tip of the contracting fiasco iceberg.

And they discover this years later. There are adults at the company and the contracting officers and receiving commands responsible for approving all of this.

Is national bankruptcy the sole solution to stop the malpractice and fiscal bleeding.

Pentagon audit finds Boeing overcharged Air Force

More here: https://nypost.com/2024/10/29/business/boeing-charged-air-force-150k-for-soap-dispensers-watchdog/

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Two Tales, Two Navies

by Bill Buppert | Nov 5, 2024 | Blog

I find some of my correspondents gently berate me for being overwhelmingly negative so I am going to offer insights on occasion into tales of the human spirit that will cause you pause. So dear reader, first, the negativity the modern navy deserves.

The floating dumpster fire known as the Littoral Combat Ship continues to cost billions for no maritime combat return whatsoever. I can’t imagine receiving orders to command one of these buckets.

The real littoral combat vessel should have been an American renaissance in creating a whole new fleet of diesel electric submarines leaning heavily on the successful German boats that are proven and reliable.

The Littoral Combat Ship program has not gone well. Costing billions and billions of dollars, the return on the investment has been limited. Underscoring the failure of the program, several Littoral Combat Ships have already been decommissioned. I write “already” because the Littoral Combat Ship was designed to have a shelf life of twenty-five years.

But the USS Freedom lasted just thirteen years. The USS Independence lasted just eleven. The USS Detroit served for just seven years before being decommissioned last September. The USS Sioux City five years. The USS Sioux City cost taxpayers $362 million. Five years for $362 million is a bad investment.

Five years.

The program has just been a mess, especially concerning the propulsion system. “High speed required a complex propulsion system that, two decades on, breaks so often…the type struggles to complete a deployment,” Forbes reported.

Another problem: the ship’s maintenance is highly contractor-dependent, meaning the Navy itself is often incapable of performing the oft-required maintenance.

And while the Littoral Combat Ship was designed to be a jack-of-all-trades, capable of serving in a variety of different roles, swapping role configurations has proven so troublesome that the Navy just sticks to one configuration per vessel.

“Perhaps worst of all, to keep down the roughly $500-million-per-ship cost of the hulls, the Navy chose to arm them only with light weaponry, guns, and short-range self-defense missiles,” Forbes reported. The light weaponry configuration would likely be a problem in a direct conflict with China. Indeed, as one 2010 Pentagon report found: the Littoral Combat Ship would not be able to survive in a hostile combat environment, yet is too large, and too expensive, to perform a scouting role.

Hats off to Harrison Kass for calling these dregs of the sea out.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/billions-dollars-wasted-navys-littoral-combat-ship-nightmare-213130

Triumph of the USS Samuel B. Roberts

The smaller destroyer escorts (now classified as frigates) designed and serving in WWII had more firepower and battle survivability than these LCS pigs. The Navy built nearly 600 of those ships in WWII. The LCS falls somewhere in length between the destroyers and destroyer escorts of WWII and delivers not a fraction of the combat power of those legends.

I know you may have seen this iconic photograph of some tin can sailors.

An unidentified ship rescues survivors of the Battle off Samar on 26 October 1944. Some 1,200 men of Gambier Bay (CVE-73), Hoel (DD-533), Johnston (DD-557) and Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) survived following the action of 25 October. (U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph 111-SC-278010, National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)

Legends indeed:

Nearly 78 years after her loss during the 25 October 1944 Battle off Samar, the wreck of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) was located in the Philippine Sea and identified in June. She lies at a depth of 22,621 feet—making her the deepest shipwreck ever found.

Some highlights of men who knew what they were about on that day:

After a failed torpedo attack run on [Japanese] heavy cruiser Chōkai, Cmdr. Copeland dodged incoming fire from the enemy cruiser’s 8-inch forward guns. Salvos from several Japanese vessels splashed near the lead American warships, including Samuel B. Roberts. Cmdr. Copeland turned his attention on the enemy cruiser Chikuma, ordering his gunners to open fire on her at 0805. The two 5-inch guns on board Samuel B. Roberts, Mt. 51 and Mt. 52, “beat a regular tattoo on the Jap cruiser’s upper works,” Cmdr. Copeland wrote. The gun captains fired 608 of 650 shells, the entire capacity of the destroyer escorts’ magazine. Firing star-shells and anti-aircraft rounds, the Japanese believed the attack came from a much larger force.

The battleship Kongō redirected her guns at Samuel B. Roberts, and using high-explosive shells fired three from her 14-inch guns at the hapless destroyer escort. Kongō’s salvo found their mark, with one Samuel B. Roberts crew-member comparing “the impact to that of two trains colliding head-on.” The first shell struck near Samuel B. Roberts’s waterline, in the communications and gyro room. Destroying the radar, the shell extinguished all lights on board (except for the battle lanterns), knocking out communications between the skipper and crew. The second shell tore through the lower handling room of Gun 51, knocking many of the gun crew down or up against the bulkhead. Flooding began almost immediately and the repair party quickly started moving ammunition topside. The third and final shell entered the main deck, crushing two sailors on its trajectory, before tearing a 4-foot-wide hole just aft of the hatch leading to Fire-room No. 1. The third projectile, failing to detonate until it cut through Samuel B. Roberts, also ruptured the main steam valve in several places. “All but two men…were instantly scalded to death in temperatures that soared to more than 800° or, half baked, begged for death as steam rose from their bodies.” Engine Room Number 2 was demolished while fuel and oil burned on the fantail and several smaller fires broke out below decks. Several other sailors on the 20-millimeter gun died, struck by flying shrapnel. Suddenly dead in the water, Samuel B. Roberts could not outrun her pursuers or mount a proper defense. The Japanese continued firing at her, and several destroyers rushed in for the kill.

The third shell also caused the escort vessel to dip in speed from 28.5 knots down to 17.5. Losing her two greatest assets, speed and maneuverability caused Cmdr. Copeland to realize, “we were then what you might call a ‘sitting duck in a shooting gallery.’” The aft 40-millimeter gun crew to no avail fired upon three torpedoes streaming towards Samuel B. Roberts. As several sailors braced for impact, they were relieved to discover the Type 93 torpedoes had passed harmlessly underneath. The Japanese, assuming the fighting would involve larger American warships, set the torpedoes to run too shallow. Just after breathing a sigh of relief, Cmdr. Copeland suddenly felt the bow of his ship lurch into the air.

Brave men and brave ships. Read the rest below.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/s/samuel-b-roberts-de-413-i.html

We had a Navy to be proud of at one time.

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