Turret door open . . . did it pop or was it as someone was trying to get out.
Anyone who wants to know about this particular battle--that of Taffy 3 versus the Goliath--should go out directly and procure James D. Hornfischer's
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (Bantam Books, 2004).
As far as the door on that aft ("52") turret: it was opened, partially because an earlier hit from a heavy cruiser (widely reputed to be
Chōkai, as MLO4H noted earlier) had cut much of the ship's power. Amongst myriad other things, that meant the gas ejection system for the turret's 5" gun failed, leading to a build-up of gases that normally would have been vented. Eventually, that build-up led to a breech-explosion (after seven or eight more rounds after the event) which killed nearly everyone in the turret--crewed by the best team on the ship, and amongst the best in the fleet according to the ship's captain, LCDR Copeland, and led by a certain Paul Carr. They had gotten 324 rounds of the 325 available to them, in 35 minutes (the forward turret, 51, got off something like 278 [
note, that is a vaguely remembered guess on my part].
Now, standing half in that door was an enlisted rating, Sam Blue, who was blown off the ship along with another man (named Stovall, who got to inhale a cloud of superheated gas and flame), when the round detonated in the breech. He landed in the water unconscious, but the impact triggered his vest's inflation device. Some time later, as the ship was on its way out, the turret was checked. The last round was in gun-captain Carr's hands, he himself having been ripped open from neck to groin. He pleaded to have his would-be rescuer help him load the round, only to have it taken away from him and being forced to lay down. When his rescuer helped another man (named Gregory) and returned, he found Carr was back up, holding the round and trying to load it again.
He died on the deck of his ship, outside that turret. The ship went down shortly thereafter, stern first. Carr was awarded a Silver Star and a FFG eventually bore his name. But inside that turret are the remains of several men who were amongst the best in their field, and who died doing the only thing they knew how and what to do--what had to be done.
Sources:
Last Stand..., Hornfischer (pp. 295-6, 332) and
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/uss-samuel-b-roberts-destroyer.html?edg-c=1I write this because, especially for Americans on this day, it is well to remember that worn, sometimes trite, often overused, truism that freedom is never free.