At 6:45 a.m. on December 7, 1941 — more than an hour before the first Japanese aircraft reached Pearl Harbor — USS Ward (DD-139) fired the first American shot of World War II. On patrol outside the harbor entrance, Ward’s crew spotted a conning tower cutting the surface and opened fire with her 4-inch deck gun, then followed up with depth charges. The Japanese Type A midget submarine, attempting to enter the harbor to attack ships at anchor, was sunk. Ward’s commanding officer, Lieutenant William W. Outerbridge, sent a contact report that set the alarm in motion — but it did not reach high enough in the chain of command in time to alert the fleet before the aerial attack began. Ward herself was lost later in the war, sunk off Ormoc Bay in the Philippines on December 7, 1944 — exactly three years to the day after she fired the war’s first shot. The February 1945 All Hands published this three-page account of the destroyer and the men who were there at the beginning.
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