Russell H. Knapp US Navy USS Ward |
"WE HAVE ATTACKED, FIRED UPON AND DROPPED DEPTH CHARGES UPON SUBMARINE OPERATING IN DEFENSIVE AREA." That shocking message was relayed from the captain of the USS Ward (DD-139), an aged destroyer charged with the responsibility of patrolling the entrance to Pearl Harbor, on an overcast morning just 30 years ago today. But although the message was received by Pearl Harbor Naval Headquarters at about 6:51 a.m., a full hour before the infamous Japanese surprise attack, no significant defensive preparations were made. The same sense of disbelief was experienced by the Ward's crew members, such as Russell H. Knapp, a 22-year-old boatswain's mate 2.C. whose gun crew had unknowingly struck America's first blow against Japan in World War II. Knapp recalls his first sensation was the fear his gun crew number three had sunk a friendly submarine. The sensation was a natural one for a young sailor whose nation was not at war and whose gun crew had never fired a shot in anger. The Ward's captain, Lt. William W. Outerbridge, later admitted experiencing the same awful moment when it occurred to him the sub might be American. But whatever his thoughts, they caused the skipper, who was commanding a ship for the first time, no delay in acting upon his orders. Those orders specified instant attack on any alien submarine operating in the Oahu area. With another "suspicious object, believed to be a submarine" spotted two hours earlier, Outerbridge, peering through the dim dawn, determined the silhouette of the sub's conning tower was unlike anything with which he was familiar and ordered his crew to combat readiness. Knapp, then in the midst of standing what was to be "the longest watch of my life," was among the first to see the two-man Japanese submarine. He was already hustling to his starboard gun station when the captain ordered general quarters and headed his ship full speed toward the enemy reconnaissance craft. Knapp recalls this sudden action was pretty heady for a destroyer crew whose sole patrolling duties for the past 10 months had been cutting lazy, half-speed figure-eights at the mouth of Pearl Harbor. It was also heady action for the USS Ward, a ship described as "slightly on the decrepit side" by a Navy commissioned book titled "Battle Report." In further description, the book reports: "The Ward was a product of the 1918 construction frenzy, an obsolescent four-piper which had been launched in the world's record time of seventeen and a half days after her keel was laid in the Mare Island Navy Yard...She had been catalogued as over-age since July 24, 1934." The crew was willing, however, though Knapp remembers having to rouse the key aimer of his crew, who somehow managed to remain sleeping beneath the four-inch 50 caliber gun despite the ship's mobilizing din. At about 6:45 a.m., with a murky dawn rising behind the old destroyer, the Ward's course was plotted to just barely miss collision with the submarine. About a hundred yards from the submarine, the number one gun in the bow of the destroyer got the order to "commence firing" and loosed the first shot in the war of the Pacific. The Ward's range finders didn't operate under 600 yards and the shot missed, Knapp recalls, but his number three gun, firing a split second later, did not. The gun notching America's first kill in the Pacific war, was aimed by pointer fire, like a squirrel rifle, from a point blank range of about seventy-five yards. As gun captain, Knapp said, "It looked to me as if our shot hit at the base of the moving object, but I am not sure the shell exploded, although there was a loud report at the time." Though the Ward passed beyond the submarine and dropped nearly 20 depth charges to finish the job, most observers of the incident seem to agree that Knapp's gun fired the mortal shot. As related in "Battle Report": "The depositions independently taken from every officer and man in a position to view the engagement agreed that the first shot was a near miss, that the second penetrated the conning tower at the water line. From captured specimens, it was later learned that the two-man subs had no hatch between the conning tower and hull. It meant a kill." For "being ready" (as Knapp puts it), the Ward's captain was awarded a Navy Cross and the nine-man crew of gun number three all received Navy Commendation Medals. A Life Magazine article in the May 11, 1942, issue carried a full-page picture of Knapp's gun crew with a caption saying: "Gun crew on the USS "Ward" stand by 5-incher that fired war's first shot." Knowing the four-inch shell launched by his crew on Dec. 7, 1941, was the second shot fired had given Knapp a healthy skepticism about the accuracy of news reports. Also pictured in the Life article was a plaque placed on the "honor gun," which lists the names of Knapp's fire team and says: "By sinking Japanese submarine on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, off Pearl Harbor, this gun has the distinction of being the first naval gun to speak America's reply in World War II. As such, the Pearl Harbor ordnancemen consider it deserving of special respect and care throughout its life." That life was foreshortened by Japanese torpedoes which took their revenge by sinking the Ward later in the war. Knapp was not aboard at the time. After sending his report of the kill, which Knapp says "The brass didn't believe," Lt. Outerbridge ordered a methodical search of the harbor mouth, dropping depth charges at every suspicious sonar echo. Two other Japanese submarines the Ward must have missed were later sunk in Pearl Harbor during the ensuing bombing raid, according to naval reports. After sinking the submarine, the Ward had just captured a motor driven sampan with several Japanese aboard, and turned it over to a Coast Guard cutter when the ship's lookouts reported an extraordinary number of airplanes over Pearl Harbor. Some of the Japanese planes passed over the Ward en route to bomb Hickam Field, Knapp recalls, but the ship didn't have the firepower to engage them. The antique 4-inch, 50-caliber guns couldn't be elevated sufficiently to serve as anti-aircraft weapons and one of the only two 50-caliber machine guns aboard jammed while attempting to return strafing fire. Knapp had no estimate of the number of Japanese planes which passed over the Ward. As he says now: "We were too busy to count the number of planes. Too busy praying. We expected the whole Jap fleet and all we had was an old four-stacker with a jammed machine gun." The attack which began shortly before 8 a.m., a hour after the sub sinking, appeared to the Ward's crewmen, who were four miles distant, like a gigantic fireworks display over Pearl Harbor. The Japanese raid lasted only about two hours, but Knapp relates the time "seemed like an eternity" to the helpless destroyer crew which could only watch and continue steaming endless figure eights. When the Ward finally returned to the devastated inner bay of Pearl Harbor at about 2:30 p.m. that day to get more depth charges, Knapp says: "It looked like a flaming hell. Our crew was terrified being alone guarding the mouth of the harbor, but when we saw the wreckage we felt fortunate to be outside." Knapp remembers the next week as one of sleepless vigilance and more patrolling in anticipation of a second attack which never came. His wife, Rene, remembers the waiting without knowing if her husband had survived as the most painful personal part of the attack experience. "I just accepted on faith that he was okay," she says now. Living in dependent's quarters near Hickam Field, Mrs. Knapp recalls it was the engines of the Japanese planes, which sounded different from the American types to which she had become so accustomed, that alerted her of the attack. "I knew something was different from the minute I heard that first plane sometime before 8 o'clock," she says. "I sat up in bed and asked myself 'What kind of practice plane is that?' " Stepping outside her door, she saw the dust flying from machine gun strafing and the "red dots" on the planes, but full realization of what was happening didn't hit her until a sailor in dress whites came running toward the housing area shouting, "All men to ships and stations. This is the real McCoy!" Things settled down somewhat after about a month, she now recalls, but five months later she received such immediate orders to return stateside that she had to notify her husband by leaving a note on their kitchen table. It was to be a year before the couple was reunited. "The years have passed, but you still re-live that experience," Rene Knapp says now. Still particularly vivid is her memory of seeing some of the 2,600 American casualties evacuated by the truckload from the Pearl Harbor disaster scene. Russell Knapp, who retired here in 1957 after his last duty tour with the harbor tugboats of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, retains scant nostalgia of his heroic days at Pearl Harbor. "I would never have been there if I hadn't had orders," says the man who has steadfastly refused to join any of the Pearl Harbor survivors groups active in the area. "So what if I was there?" he adds. "Twenty years from now, nobody will know or care." Admiration for his captain's decisive reaction is the strongest feeling Knapp now expresses about the events of that deadly day 30 years ago. It is in respectful tones that Knapp says of Lt. William W. Outerbridge: "Wild Willie was something else. He was gung-ho!" Though the question of "Why they didn't do anything when we alerted them an hour beforehand" still troubles Knapp, he had to ponder a bit to think of any lesson he learned at Pearl Harbor. Finally, seeming to relate the problems of America's recent past to his own experience of 30 years ago, the man who struck his country's first blow in the last great war said with a smile: "My advice is to shoot first and ask questions later. That's what the old man did. If we always followed that policy, this country wouldn't be in the trouble we're in today." Russell Knapp passed away at a Naval Hospital in Bremerton in 1972. |
Information provided by Information provided by Renee Knapp-Jones. |
