The First Photos of a Pearl Harbor Warship’s Watery Grave<br />They had found the Ward, the destroyer that fired on<br />and sank a Japanese midget submarine outside Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 — the first American shot "in anger" in World War II, naval historians say.<br />Supported by The destroyer, the first to fire a shot "in anger" in Pearl Harbor at the start of the American involvement<br />in World War II, was photographed this month at the bottom of the waters off the Philippines, where it sank in 1944.<br />By Christine Hauser Nearly 73 years after the Ward, an American navy destroyer, was attacked by Japanese kamikaze planes<br />and sank in waters off the Philippines, a team aboard the research and exploration vessel Petrel gathered anxiously, all eyes fixed on screens in front of them.<br />Paul Mayer said that These ships are war graves,<br />After its crew had abandoned ship, it was scuttled by another American destroyer in the area, the O’Brien,<br />on Dec. 7, 1944 — exactly three years to the day after it fired on the Japanese submarine at Pearl Harbor.<br />In November, the Petrel, which has equipment that can explore and retrieve data 20,000 feet underwater, captured footage of five Japanese battle ships<br />that were lost during the Battle of Surigao Strait in the Philippines on Oct. 25, 1944, one of the largest naval battles in history, with more than 4,000 men killed.
