82 years ago today, at dawn, a voice on the radio said "a major portion" of the Japanese fleet was 15 miles behind them. The captain's answer was to turn and attack. October 25, 1944. Off the island of Samar in the Philippines. A small American group called "Taffy 3" (six slow escort carriers, a handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts) was guarding the troops MacArthur had just landed at Leyte. The big American battleships were far away, chasing a decoy. Then four Japanese battleships, eight cruisers and 11 destroyers came over the horizon. One of those battleships was Yamato, the largest ever built. Commander Ernest Evans of the destroyer USS Johnston didn't wait for orders. He made smoke to hide the carriers, ordered every boiler lit, and drove straight at the enemy. Johnston closed to under 10,000 yards and fired a spread of torpedoes that blew the bow off the heavy cruiser Kumano. Then the shells found Johnston. Evans was badly wounded. With power and steering knocked out, he moved to the stern and shouted rudder orders down an open hatch to sailors steering by hand. Out of torpedoes, he kept charging anyway, at one point ordering his crew to fire on a cruiser to "draw her fire on us and away from Gambier Bay." After more than two hours of fighting, Johnston lay dead in the water, surrounded. Of 327 men aboard, 141 survived. Evans was never seen again. But the Japanese force turned back, and the landing beaches were saved. Evans was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously. The Navy's own history notes his mother was full-blooded Cherokee and his father part Creek. He was a Native American kid from Pawnee, Oklahoma, who joined as an enlisted sailor and earned his way into the Naval Academy. Would you have turned toward the battleships? Disclaimer: Based on U.S. Navy (Naval History and Heritage Command) accounts and Evans's Medal of Honor citation; ship counts and times vary slightly between sources. Photos: U.S. Navy, Cmdr. Ernest E. Evans c. 1944 (NH 92320); U.S. Navy, USS Johnston underway, Oct 27 1943 (NH 63495); U.S. Navy, view from USS Kitkun Bay off Samar, Oct 25 1944; U.S. Navy, USS Gambier Bay under fire off Samar, Oct 25 1944; all public domain, via Wikimedia Commons