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USS Ward’s First Commander I enjoyed reading James Bruns’s “Rediscovering USS Ward’s Namesake: James Harmon Ward, USN” in the last issue, but there is more to the story of USS Ward and Lt. William Outerbridge that your readers may enjoy. While on patrol around 6:00am on 7 December 1941, USS Ward’s helmsman, as well as the duty officer, spotted a small conning tower following USS Antares into Pearl Harbor. Once on the bridge, Lt. Outerbridge concluded that it was an unescorted submarine operating in the restricted area and called for General Quarters. A patrolling PBY Catalina aircraft had also seen the conning tower and dropped smoke markers to mark its location. Lt. Outerbridge ordered the destroyer’s guns to commence firing as the ship charged toward the submarine. Gun No. 1 fired and overshot its mark. Gun No. 3 fired and its 4-inch shell hit the midget submarine on the starboard side right at the waterline, at the base of the conning tower. The sub began to founder. USS Ward cruised over the site where the submarine had been and dropped depth charges for good measure. The PBY patrol plane then dropped its depth charges as well. The submarine fired upon and sunk by the Ward was one of five mini-subs used by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The day after the attack, one of these submarines was found damaged and washed ashore. Designated HA-19, this 78-foot two-man midget submarine, designed to carry two torpedoes, is on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. On 28 August 2002, a research team from the University of Hawaii discovered a midget submarine on the seafloor in the area off the entrance to Pearl Harbor where USS Ward reported its encounter on 7 December 1941. Its two torpedoes were still in place. A hole was discovered at the base of the conning tower, exactly as reported by the Ward’s crew. The researchers’ report states that it is most likely that “the projectile went through the base of the conning tower and pressure hull and into the command compartment at the position of the periscope station.” Being a WWI-era vessel, the Ward’s weapons and electronics were outdated by
Japanese mini sub on the seafloor with a hole at the base of the conning tower. this time, so in 1942 the vessel was sent to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Seattle, Washington, for refitting and conversion to a troop transport and supply ship. She was then returned to duty in the South Pacific. During the refitting process, gun No. 3 was removed and stored. On 10 May 1958, the Navy presented the gun to the State of Minnesota as part of the state’s centennial celebration to recognize those persons from the state who served in the defense of their country. Most of the crew of USS Ward on 7 December 1941 were Navy reservists from Minnesota. The No. 3 gun currently sits on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. Ward’s first commander, William Woodward Outerbridge, followed in the footsteps of his father, Arthur William Outerbridge, another man of the sea. Born and raised in Bermuda, Arthur Outerbridge grew up and left the island, venturing to Hong Kong, where he became a merchant captain with the China Navigation Company (a company that still exists—its headquarters is now in Singapore). Arthur ultimately met and married Jessie Halliday Woodward, a US Army nurse stationed on Corregidor, in the Philippines. He was killed in a typhoon in 1912 and is buried in Iloilo, on the island of Panay in the Philippines. His widow, left back in Hong Kong with three small children, subsequently traveled with the children overland from China and across Europe to England, where she embarked on a ship that would get them back to the US, back to her hometown of Middleport, Ohio, a small town on the banks of the Ohio River. She raised her children in Middleport; son William left for the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Following graduation in 1927, he served in a variety of positions on ships and ashore, working his way up the chain of command. USS Ward was his first SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018