The great Fletcher experiment

October 15, 2020: And so, it begins
After watching “Greyhound”, an incredibly good movie about antisubmarine warfare in WWII, I fell in love with the actual hero of the story. Not Tom Hanks, but the USS ¨Keeling¨ (call name ¨Greyhound¨), the Fletcher-class destroyer under Ernest Krause´s command, a delightful performance from Tom Hanks, who is becoming the Spencer Tracy of the XXI century.
Given my current fascination with scale modeling, I got a set of Polish made papercraft templates that will enable anybody with enough patience to build a 1:200 scale model of a Fletcher. More precisely, the US ¨Leutze¨ DD-481.

I hope I’m not trying to grab more than I can handle, but the challenge is interesting.
Here are some photos of a finished example made by a professional papercraft modelist. I hope mine could look half as good as this one. That would make me happy.

A professional made USS Leuze, its price is several hundred USD

October 17, 2020: The first report
Started the Fletcher build. So far so good. A lot of people complained about the template’s precision, but mine’s keel matches the ship’s deck to the millimeter.

The keel is complete

October 18, 2020: Trying to think in Polish
I spent the weekend working on the Fletcher’s hull and started working in the superstructure.
I think I’ve had enough glue on my hands for a few days of rest and my fingers are tired of cutting with a modeler’s knife.
But even with these complaints, I’m so far happy with the results. The hull bottom was tricky, and the ship will need to be painted. Here are some photos of the current state of the build.
This is a big model: 54 cm (20 inches) long. So, I’ll need to find the right place for it once it’s done.
I’m still having some issues with the instructions since they are in Polish, although both Google and MS translation services work quite well.

The ship’s hull is ready

October 19, 2020: Some historical background
Not yet in the mood to sleep, I spent some time working on the Fletcher. I’m trying to decide whether it is better to paint it or to print a colored version of the template and cover the build with it.
I’ve been also doing research work for some background information on the Fletcher class destroyers; the class was designed in 1939 and the first unit was commissioned in 1942. It then went into serial production and eventually, a total of 175 units were built between 1942 and 1944.
It was a long-range destroyer, with a quite large 2050 tons of displacement. Similar ships from other Navys were typically at the 1500 tons of displacement mark.
The ships were heavily armed, they had five 5″-inch guns mounted in individual turrets and two quintuple torpedo launchers.
The Fletchers accumulated a total of twenty-nine sunk Japanese submarines and achieved a truly legendary status in the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. This large air-naval encounter is, for practical reasons, usually divided into four smaller battles. One of them was the Battle of Samar, which marks one of the highest points of bravery ever shown by any Navy.
It’s a hell of a relevant story for this build, but since it is midnight, I think I’ll save it for another day. The updated photos of my Fletcher are here.
Good night, everybody.

Just started with the superstructure

October 20, 2020: A side story: The Battle of Samar
A side story from The Great Fletcher experiment.
Even though we are currently going through challenging times, things could always be worse. Like, for example, if you were a US Navy member deployed in the Pacific theatre of operations 76 years ago, you were about to get involved in one of the largest naval battles accounted in history.
The US Navy’s Pacific fleet was sailing in the direction of the Philippines, its goal to liberate them from the Japanese occupation that started in 1942. For this purpose, the US had arranged the largest fleet ever to seek a fight: nearly three hundred ships.
Just look at this list:
• 8 fleet carriers
• 8 light carriers
• 18 escort carriers
• 12 battleships
• 24 cruisers
• 166 destroyers and destroyer escorts
• Many PT boats, submarines, and fleet auxiliaries
• About 1,500 planes.
Yes, the US went to battle with a fleet formed around thirty-four aircraft carriers, which represented an air wing of 1500 planes. Talk about showing superiority to the enemy.
The Japanese Empire just managed to arrange a fleet of around seventy ships, all of them would be employed to test the theory of the Kantai Kessen ((艦隊決戦) or decisive naval battle. This theory suggested that, by winning such a battle, a country may win a war. Sounds like a typical Japanese a bit too extreme idea, but surprisingly, it was not a concept originated in Japan, but it was conceived in the second half of the XIX century by a US Navy officer, strategist, theorist, and writer called Alfred Thayer Mahan.
The Japanese fleet consisted of:
• 1 fleet carrier
• 3 light carriers
• 2 hybrid-carriers/battleships
• 7 battleships
• 14 heavy cruisers
• 6 light cruisers
• 35+ destroyers
• 300+ planes
Those numbers look pale in comparison with the enormous US Navy fleet. But the Japanese Imperial Fleet had kept some aces under its sleeves: the “Yamato” and the “Musashi”, the two largest battleships ever built, each one featuring 9 18”-inch guns mounted in three triple turrets. These massive cannons could fire shells that had a weight of one and-a-half tons up to 42 km away. The US battleships’ cannons topped at 16-inch guns. The Japanese also were preparing to unleash, for the first time, the Kamikaze (divine wind) concept: the use of suicide pilots willing to crash their planes fully loaded with fuel and bombs into actual enemy ships.

One ace more: the Japanese Imperial Navy was the master of naval night combat. While most Navys considered that night operations were a dangerous and extremely difficult if not impossible to win affair, Japanese crews trained for this kind of engagement continuously in real life, and both Japanese and US commanders knew that the Imperial Navy could be lethal in a nocturnal encounter, as the Battle of Savo Island of the Guadalcanal campaign had demonstrated in 1942.

The Battle of the Leyte Gulf started on October 25th of 1944.
The purpose of the following series of posts will be to tell the story of three Fletcher class destroyers and their crews that demonstrated unusual bravery and courage in this engagement.
The next post will set the scenario where these three ships would prove to be legendary.
Jeffrey Beaty posted a link in my previous post featuring a book on the same subject. So, if this intro caught your interest there is plenty of stuff out there.

The US Navy Pacific Fleet at Leyte, as you can see, it had lots of carriers

October 21, 2020: Layout
Following my last post, let me lay out the scenario for the story: After a two year’s long force buildup, the US is back in the Pacific in not exactly the most pleasant mood. The US Navy wants to avenge Pearl Harbor and wants it bad.
To that date, four of the six carriers that made the attack on Hawaii had been sunk in Midway, the Soryu, the Hiryu, the Kaga. and the Akagi.
The Shokaku had been sunk a few months ago in the Battle of the Philippines Sea, also known as the Great Marianas’ Turkey shot. In that engagement, the Japanese air-naval power had been eliminated in practice, since almost no trained pilots remained in the force.
That left the Zuikaku as the only survivor of the Peral Harbor raid.
US Navy fleet commander Admiral Halsey, known as “Bull”, for his volatile character and emotional approach to combat, wanted the Zuikaku in his sunk list more than anything.
The Japanese battle plan was as complex as they typically used to be in WWII, their forces were separated into several groups, setting traps for the enemy to fall, and using some of the ships as bait to lure the US Navy main forces where they wanted.
The plan was to use the firepower of the battleship line of the Imperial Navy to destroy the landing fleet at Leyte. To do that, they needed to attract and separate the US main carriers’ group from the landing fleet. The bait was the remains of the once dreadful Rengo Kantai (Combined Fleet) carriers’ force, which was now a toothless tiger, without enough planes or pilots to remain a threat.
Unbelievably, Halsey took the bait and, after a successful initial attack on the Japanese Central Fleet battleship line, where their carriers had managed to sink the “Musashi”, he received info about the Japanese carrier fleet approaching Leyte from the north.
With his mind focused on revenge and thinking that the Japanese battleships were no longer a threat, he gave the order to go for it and, by doing so, left the landing fleet protected by the secondary US battleship line, composed by old WWI dreadnoughts that had been updated to 1944 standards.
The Japanese plan also had another bait for this force: a couple of old battleships and some minor vessels approached the landing fleet by night sailing through the Surigao strait but were caught by the radar-equipped and revamped secondary US battleship group, which was able to demolish all the attacking ships in one of the most uneven battles ever fought: 7 Japanese ships against 42 US Navy units.
Then the main drama started. The next morning, the Japanese Central Fleet reappeared, attacking the landing fleet, which was no longer under the protection of the main carrier group. These group of ships had been sent to the north to catch the Japanese carrier fleet. And the secondary battleship group left as a reserve had spent most of their ammunition on the bait fleet sunk at the Battle of the Surigao strait the day before.
That left the landing fleet under the cover of just the escort carriers and their escort destroyers’ group. The most exposed unit was Task Force 3 (call sign Taffy 3), formed by 6 escort carriers (small ships, former merchant vessels hastily converter into carriers, with no armor and a single 5”-inch gun, they carried 25 planes prepared for land troops combat support) and 7 destroyers, which was to face combat against four Japanese battleships (among them “Yamato” with her nine 18”-inch main guns), six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 11 destroyers.
The next post will tell the story of the fight of this brave group of ships against all odds. That event is known as the Battle of Samar.
BTW, my Fletcher project is alive and well, it’s starting to look like a ship.

The ship’s shape is starting to appear

October 24, 2020: The Battle off Samar, part 1
October 25th, 1944, early morning. It was a cloudy day, with some sporadic rain squalls that limited visibility.
Task Unit 77.4.3 (call sign “Taffy 3”), commanded by Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague, was sailing to the south at 110 km East of the island of Samar. Its duty was to support the troops and the transport ships fleet that had landed them in Leyte during the past week.
Taffy 3 was formed by the six escort carriers from Carrier Division 25: “Fanshaw Bay”, “St. Lo”, “White Plains”, “Kalinin Bay”, and Division 26: “Kitkun Bay” and “Gambier Bay “.
These were Casablanca class escort carriers, vastly different from the Essex class fleet carriers that formed the core of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet. They were one-third of the size of the Essex’s, could carry about twenty-five planes instead of the one hundred planes air groups of the Essex’s, and didn’t have any armor. They were designed to work as cheap air support platforms that could provide CAS (Close Air Support) to the landing troops, and its planes were equipped with air to ground rockets, anti-personnel bombs, and phosphorus-based incendiary ammunition. A single 5″-inch cannon was its only defensive weapon. The pilots that formed their air groups were trained to attack ground targets, having no naval battle experience.
Protection for Taffy 3 came from the Fletcher class destroyers “Hoel”, “Heermann”, and “Johnston”, and Butler class destroyer escorts “Dennis”, “John C. Butler”, “Raymond”, and “Samuel B. Roberts”.
The Fletchers were well-armed (for a destroyer) with 5 5”-inch guns in five single turrets and ten torpedoes.
The Butlers had 2 5”-inch guns and three torpedoes. Both classes were designed for antisubmarine and antiaircraft tasks.
That morning, the crews on the decks of Taffy 3’s ships were able to watch their darkest nightmare come true: approaching from the north at full speed, the whole core of the Japanese Central Force would be starting to cover them with every imaginable kind of shells in a manner of minutes, from the 5″-inch guns from the 11 destroyers, the 8″ -inch guns from 2 light cruisers and 6 heavy cruisers, the 14″-inch guns from 3 battleships and the 18″-inch cannons from the largest battleship ever built, the “Yamato”.
The crews were called to their battle stations, every available plane was launched with whatever kind of weapon was available, the damage control groups grabbed their equipment. Everybody’s training was about to be probed
Everybody in the US Navy landing support fleet had just one question in their minds: Where were the fleet carriers?
They were 700 km to the northwest, chasing the bait carrier fleet of the Japanese Navy. Admiral Halsey had fallen in the trap prepared by Admiral Kurita.

Even at full speed, they would not be able to help the ships at Leyte until 30 hours later. The only other force available was the secondary battleship group of Admiral Oldendorf, which had spent all their ammunition destroying another bait fleet, having performed the demolition of 7 Japanese ships with the full force of 42 US Navy ships. So focused was Oldendorf’s group in using all its disproportionate strength against the enemy that they even almost sunk the “Albert S. Grant” Fletcher-class destroyer, which received twenty-two hits, half from the Japanese ships and the other half from the US Navy itself, by mistake.
Therefore, Oldendorf’s ships were as toothless as the Japanese carriers.
Then Commander Ernest E. Evans, captain of the USS “Johnston” and leader of the destroyer group, took a somber decision and said to the intercom: “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and several destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.”
Evans was a descendant of Native Americans, having both Cherokee and Creek blood. Now he was going to face the supreme challenge: a fight that couldn’t be won.
Meanwhile, Admiral Halsey couldn’t believe the mess that he had gotten into. And 5600 km (3500 miles or 3000 nautical miles) away, in Pearl Harbor, the supreme commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Nimitz sent him a message that said “Where’s Task Force 38? The world wonders…”. Task Force 38 was the US Navy core fleet, under Halsey’s command. He started to curse after throwing his hat away.
To be continued…

From the top to the bottom, cw: Taffy 3 under attack, Japanese salvos falling near an escort carrier, the Central Fleet, a Casablanca class escort carrier, a Butler class escort destroyer, the heavy cruiser Chikuma, the St. Lo escort carrier being hit by kamikaze.

October 25, 2020: Her first gun
She’s got her first gun!!! And she has some color also. But she’ll definitively need a paint job.
I’m happy about how this build is going. It’s one of the most challenging models I’ve attempted. The Polish written instructions are too complex for either Google or MS translators, so most of the time the work is a matter of trial and error.
I expect to need an additional couple of weekends for her completion.
I’m working with extreme care, since the time and effort already invested in this ship are significative.

October 26, 2020: The Battle off Samar, part 2
The Japanese Central Force attack was a colorful spectacle, each battleship had their shells equipped with a unique color dye, which enabled their fire control crews to identify their shots for range finding. So, the water geysers surrounding the ships of Taffy 3 were colored either green, red, or yellow depending on which ship’s salvo was the cause.
The “Yamato” shots had no dye, the sheer size of the water geysers that her 9 18“-inch guns created was enough to identify them.
The group of destroyers from Taffy 3’s escort were maneuvering at full speed, zigzagging among the explosions while trying to generate a smokescreen to impair the visibility of the Central Force ships. The 3 Fletchers were equipped with radar-controlled artillery, a feature that enabled them to keep firing while changing direction and without visibility. They were trying to position themselves to launch a coordinated torpedo attack. Torpedoes were the only adequate weapon available for them against the enemy ships since their 5”-inch guns shells were too small to penetrate the armor of the Japanese cruisers they were trying to divert, but they were able to deliver a continuous rain of shots on them.
Admiral Kurita thought that he had caught the US Navy core carrier fleet, and mistakenly took the destroyers for cruisers, so he did not give the order to change the shells from armor-piercing to high explosive ones. That saved the destroyers for the moment since the armor-piercing shots went through their structures and fell on the other side of the ships without exploding.
Commander Evans launched his ten torpedoes at 8 km from the cruisers, three of them hit the heavy cruiser “Kumano”, which had to leave the combat. The Japanese ships had to maneuver to avoid the remaining torpedoes, while the “Johnston” tried to hide behind the smokescreen created and get away from the cruiser’s fire.
But then the luck ran out from Evans’ ship. Three shells from the Yamato hit the “Johnston’s” deck creating havoc among the crew and injuring Commander Evans, who lost all his left-hand fingers. The ship was covered with dead and injured sailors and could not maintain even half of its previous speed. She was starting to run out of fuel due to the continuous full speed run. A sudden rain squall covered her from fire and allowed the crew to restore power and get back to the fight.
The “Heermann” and the “Hoel” launched another torpedo attack, the “Johnston” joined them firing his guns since it had run out of torpedoes. Commander Evans continued to perform hit and run maneuvers against whatever ship was near his own for two full hours while being hit by numerous shots from everywhere. Finally, the ship had accumulated so much damage that it started to sink. Commander Evans was last seen while shouting orders as the surviving crew abandoned the ship.
Several sailors watched the captain of one of the Japanese destroyers saluting the sinking destroyer.
The “Hoel” was sinking too as the “Samuel B. Roberts” and the escort carrier “Gambier Bay”. The “Heermann” charged against the cruiser “Chikuma”, which was targeting the escort carriers. Afterward, several hits disabled her guns and engines and the destroyer started to flood, but the work of her damage control crew was barely enough to make her the only destroyer that survived the day.
Simultaneously, every plane available in Taffy 3 was launching anti-personnel bombs, depth charges, or simply strafing the Central Force ships with such intensity that Admiral Kurita was sure that he was facing the fleet carriers’ force.
Admiral Sprague changed direction to the south, with the intention of dragging the Japanese fleet away from the landing fleet (nearly three hundred unarmed troop transports, landing vessels, and support ships, which would be a turkey shoot for the Central Force’s battleships). Additionally, he ordered the carriers to fire their single 5”-inch guns against their pursuers, knowing that his ships could not run away from the faster enemy fleet. At this moment, the “St. Lo” was hit by a kamikaze Zero and started to sink.
All the remaining escort carriers started to receive hits from the Japanese guns and from further kamikaze attacks that came in succession.

And then, suddenly, the Central Force turned away and abandoned the battle.

Admiral Kurita decided that his fleet had taken enough damage for the day, the accumulated effect of the attacks made by the destroyers and the planes from Taffy 3 had severely damaged three of his heavy cruisers, which were scuttled, the remaining ships needing repairs. The Japanese Fleet had seen its last battle, it would no longer have neither fuel nor enough resources to make another attack.
Commander Evans received a posthumous Medal of Honor, but the survivors of the courageous destroyer group from Taffy 3 had to wait two days before being rescued since their location was unknown. They suffered many losses due to injuries and shark attacks.
But their effort had saved the landing fleet and the lives of the 150000 men that were either onboard them or had been landed by them.
Admiral Halsey was able to sink the four bait carriers, but his decisions weighed heavily for him the rest of his life.
The last action from the Japanese fleet was a suicide run made by “Yamato” a few months later, she was intercepted by the full US Navy carrier force and sunk after being hit by more than eleven torpedoes and six bombs.
Even the strongest army cannot fight and win without proper command.

From top to bottom: the Gambier Bay sinking, Taffy 3 carrier under attack, the USS Johnston, Taffy 3 destroyers creating a smoke screen, the St. Lo after being hit by a kamikaze, Taffy 3 escort carrier creating a smoke screen

October 27, 2020: The Bofors
Jeffrey Beaty what do you think?
Please give me your thumbs up or down.
This is my version of the Bofors twin 40 mm gun antiaircraft mount. I need three for the Fletcher…

October 27, 2020: A movie? Why not?
Why the “Battle off Samar” movie has not been filmed…
After reading the real-life stories behind the events of the Battle off Samar, my thoughts were: why in the name of Neptune there’s no movie about this!!!
I mean, there’s loads of action, loads of material for spectacular CGI graphics, colorful greater than life characters, the good guys win at the end, the good guys are the underdog, fighting against impossible odds. There are battleships, aircraft carriers, explosions, kamikaze attacks…
But IMHO, the reason this event has never been made into a movie is that behind all the heroism and courage, the simple fact is that, in Leyte, the US Navy fell into all the traps the Japanese had planned.
In Midway and Pearl Harbor, the two latest WWII era naval battle movies, the US Navy plays as either the smart guy or as the victim.
In Leyte, the US Navy would have to be shown screwing things up all the time, committing blunder after blunder.
And the hero, Commander Evans, who gallantly saves the day at the cost of his life, well, he was a Native American…
Am I being too paranoid or does this idea makes sense to you?
BTW, the Great Fletcher Experiment is looking exactly right.

The build is going in the right way

October 29, 2020: A humbling recognition
It’s been fascinating following every one of you. Got to give a special shout out to Mirko for his hard work and posts pertaining to the USS Fletcher. Amazing skill, craftsmanship, and artistry. Thank you, Mirko, and thank you to all of you for your posts and being a part of the PORTALIEN family.

October 30, 2020: Playing with Photoshop
The Fletcher is still a work in progress, but I can play around with some Photoshop work.
Once again Ric RoweBot, thanks for your words.

November 10, 2020: It’s almost done
As I said in a previous post, I guess it will take another weekend more to finish her. But for anybody still interested, here is the latest update.

Almost there

November 14, 2020: Enough
It now comes the time of deciding when to stop. Since the number of parts of a papercraft project is limited to your own willingness to persist, you eventually will have to tell yourself “Enough”.
I’ll give the project an additional weekend more. It’s been a really rewarding endeavor, and I learned a lot about ship modeling, history, and craftsmanship.
This will be the last post on this project. I have a week to figure out the next one.
I hope you have liked this ongoing report.
The ship will find a safe harbor in my son’s room. Pedro will be happy, I suppose.

It is done