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| USS Ward Underway |
The USS Ward (DD-139) was a U.S. Navy Wickes-class 4-stack, flush-deck destroyer built at Mare Island shipyard in California. Ward was named in honor of Commander James Harmon Ward, USN, (1806–1861), the first U.S. Navy officer to be killed in action during the American Civil War.
1 June 1918 — Record-Setting Launch Day
The Ward was laid down at Mare Island on 15 May 1918 and built in a record of 17½ days. (Some sources claim 15 days.) Under the pressure of urgent World War I needs for destroyers, her construction was pushed rapidly from keel laying on 15 May 1918 to launching on 1 June. Ward transferred to the Atlantic late in the year and helped support the trans-Atlantic flight of the Curtiss NC flying boats in May 1919. She came back to the Pacific a few months later, and remained there until she was decommissioned in July 1921. The outbreak of World War II in Europe brought Ward back into active service. She was recommissioned in January 1941 and sent to Pearl Harbor shortly after. Throughout 1941, Ward conducted routine antisubmarine patrols in the Hawaiian area.
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| Launching Day at Mare Island |
7 December 1941 — WWII Firsts
At 0408 on 7 December, while on weekend submarine patrol the old destroyer went to general quarters to search for a suspected submarine detected by the minesweeper Condor , but came up with nothing. Ward continued her early morning vigil until lookouts on the destroyer’s bridge noticed a small feather wake astern of the auxiliary tow-ship Antares and a target raft. Within moments, Ward went to general quarters. The first shot of the Pacific war was fired by a Ward’s gun at 0645 and splashed harmlessly beyond the submarine's small conning tower. As Ward pounded past at 25 knots, number three gun atop the galley deckhouse amidships commenced fire—its round passed squarely through the submersible’s conning tower. As the Japanese midget wallowed lower in the water and started to sink, the destroyer swiftly dropped four depth charges—signaled by four blasts on the ship’s whistle. Black water gushed upwards in the ship’s boiling wake as the bombs went off—sealing the submarine’s doom. On that Sunday morning, Ward had the distinction of firing the first American gun in anger during the Pacific war. Shaw continued her patrolling duties until ordered to Bremerton, Washington, for conversion into a high-speed transport. In February 1943 she was detailed to the South Pacific in support of the island-hopping campaign of Douglas MacArthur.
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| Depiction of the Midget Submarine Under Fire (From Tora, Tora, Tora) |
For decades after the incident there was some doubt, about whether this sinking had actually occurred. In 2002, however, a team from the University of Hawaii’s Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) discovered the submarine sunk by the USS Ward on the morning of December 7, 1941. Intact, the sub lies in 1100 feet of water just a few miles from where Ward’s captain reported their brief encounter had taken place. A single four-inch diameter hole in the hull, just below the conning tower, marks the first shot fired in the Pacific War.
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| USS Ward (APD-16) Afire on Its Final Day |
7 December 1944
Ward would earn 8 Battle Stars for its service in the South Pacific. The last for the Battle of Ormoc Bay, Leyte Island, during which the transport Ward and destroyer USS Mahan were both disabled by Japanese kamikazes and had to be destroyed by U.S. gunfire. One bomber hit the Ward's hull amidships, bringing her to a dead stop. When the resulting fires could not be controlled, Ward's crew was ordered to abandon ship, and she was sunk by gunfire from the USS O'Brien, whose commanding officer, William W. Outerbridge, had been in command of Ward during her action in Hawaii three years before.
A Postscript: The Ward's wreckage was discovered on 1 December 2017, in Ormoc Bay by the research vessel Petrel.
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