triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Salamanders

This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.

It reads like a quote from one of David Weber's science fiction novels. The whole book does. A squadron on patrol finds itself within firing range of a fleet of much larger enemy craft, but achieves a costly victory thru courage, luck and technical superiority. The only difference is that The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, by James D. Hornfischer, is about the U.S. Navy in Leyte Gulf during World War Two, and not the Manticoran Space Navy taking on the Peeps.

It was Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland who made that bold statement to the crew of the Destroyer Escort USS Samuel B. Roberts. They did indeed do damage. They got so close to the Japanese heavy cruiser Chikuma it could not bring its big guns to bear, and poured everything they had into it. The Roberts was eventually sunk, along with other ships from the task force, but they took Japanese cruisers down with them, and disrupted and turned away what proved to be the major thrust of the Japanese effort to stop the retaking of the Phillipines. Over 850 US sailors and airmen died in the Battle of Samar, the main action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Among them were two brothers who would have been uncles to my wee wifey's foster sister. We remember them, and all the war dead, this Memorial Day.