From Congressional Investigation into the Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 36 (Exhibits of the Joint Committee)
Testimony of: Captain Willlam W. Outerbridge, Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Ward Before the Hewitt Inquiry
Adm. Hewitt: State your name and rank.
Outerbridge: William W. Outerbridge, Captain, U. S. Navy.
Hewitt: You were the Commanding Officer of the Ward on the morning of 7 December 1941?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir.
Hewitt: And during the early hours of that morning, you had several actual contacts with submarines? Is that so?
Outerbridge: Several actual contacts?
Hewitt: Well, reported contacts.
Outerbridge: Yes, sir. We had one alert and one actual contact and then later, after the attack, we had several outside.
Hewitt: There has been reported and logged the conversation which you had with the Condor along about 0520 Honolulu time and later there is in evidence and report of your actual attack on the submarine. Will you give me your story of the events of the morning, beginning with the report from the Condor about 0400?
Outerbridge: That doesn’t appear on this record, but she signaled us by flashing light that she believed she had seen an object that looked like a submarine proceeding to the westward, and I believe she had just come out and was sweeping, magnetic sweep out in the channel, but she said, “The submarine is standing to the westward.”
Hewitt: What was her location?
Outerbridge: She was in the channel, sweeping with her magnetic sweeps.
Hewitt: The approach channel to Pearl Harbor?
Outerbridge: Outside of the actual channel, between the reefs, but on the approach channel to Pearl Harbor.
Hewitt: Swept channel?
Outerbridge: Swept channel, yes, and we went to General Quarters and proceeded to her position, as close as we could get to her without fouling her sweeping gear, and then we stood to the westward, slowed to ten knots, and searched. It was a sonar search. We couldn’t see anything.
Hewitt: About what time did you get that signal?
Outerbridge: We got that signal about 0358, visual signal about 0358, and we searched for about an hour and didn’t find anything; so I got in contact with her again and asked her for a verification. Then she said this is in the record here. We asked her first, “What was the approximate distance and course of the submarine that you sighted?” and she said, “the course was about what we were steering at the time 020 magnetic and about 1000 yards from the entrance apparently heading for the entrance.” Well, I knew then that we had been searching in the wrong direction. We went to westward, and, of course, there was still doubt as to whether she had actually seen a submarine because there hadn’t been any other conversation, except by flashing light with us, and I wondered whether they were sure or not; so I did ask them, “Do you have any additional information on the sub?” and they said, “No additional information,” and I then asked them, “When was the last time approximately that you saw the submarine?” and they said, “Approximate time 0350 and he was apparently heading for the entrance.” Then we thanked them for their information and asked them to notify us if they had any more information and then we just kept on searching in our area, in the restricted area outside of the buoys. That was the end of this incident for the first search.
Hewitt: You made no report of that to higher authority?
Outerbridge: No, sir, I didn’t make any report of it.
Hewitt: What was your evaluation of that?
Outerbridge: Well, at the time I thought perhaps it wasn’t a submarine, because they didn’t report it. This conversation was taken over another circuit entirely. This is not in either his log or mine. They didn’t report it and I thought if he didn’t report it, he must not think it is a submarine. It was his initial report and I thought it may not be. It may have been anything; it may have been a buoy. Since then, I don’t believe it was a buoy. I believe the Commanding Officer of the Condor saw a submarine. I don’t know where he is. I think he was killed, killed in action. But at that time I didn’t know whether or not it was a submarine.
Hewitt: You say you think the Commanding Officer of the Condor was killed?
Outerbridge: I believe he was killed.
Hewitt: Do you remember his name?
Outerbridge: No, sir, I don’t know, but I met some people who told me about him.
Hewitt: Well, now about the later contact.
Outerbridge: The later contact I turned in again and was sleeping in the emergency cabin, as usual, and Lieutenant Goepner had the deck. He was a j. g. He called me and said, “Captain, come on the bridge.” The helmsman was the first one to sight this object and he saw this thing moving. It looked like a buoy to him, but they watched it and after they had watched it for a while, they decided probably it was a conning tower of a submarine, although we didn’t have anything that looked like it in our Navy, and they had never seen anything like it. I came on the bridge as fast as I could and took a look at it. I don’t know where it appeared to them at first, but at that time it appeared to me to be following the Antares in. The Antares had been reported to me and at that time I thought the Antares had been heading into the harbor. She also had a tow, towing a lighter, and it appeared to me the submarine was following astern of the tow.
Hewitt: Astern of the tow?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir. It may or may not have been. I think other people can testify it was standing in to Honolulu. To me it appeared to be following the Antares in and I thought, “She is going to follow the Antares in, whatever it is.” It was going fairly fast. I thought she was making about twelve knots. It seemed to be a little fast to me. I was convinced it was a submarine. I was convinced it couldn’t be anything else. It must be a submarine and it wasn’t anything that we had and we also had a message that any submarine operating in the restricted area not operating in the submarine areas and not escorted should be attacked. We had that message; so there was no doubt at all in my mind what to do. So, we went to General Quarters again and attacked. That was 0740-0640.
Hewitt: And you attacked and you reported, I believe that…
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, we reported.
Hewitt: Will you identify those exchanges of messages? Will you identify the messages on the radio log?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir. The Executive Officer was on the bridge at the time. We made the attack and we dropped depth charges in front of the submarine. The first report was, “We have dropped depth charges upon sub operating in defensive sea area.” I thought, “Well, now, maybe I had better be more definite,” because we did fire and if we said we fired, people would know it was on the surface, because saying it was a sub and dropping depth charges, they may have said it might have been a blackfish or a whale. So I said, “We have attacked fired upon and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area,” so they would feel, well, he shot at something. We sent the message at 0653, the second one.
(The radio log of the Naval Radio Station, Bishop’s Point, Oahu, containing the conversation between the Ward and Condor and the Ward’s report of attack upon a submarine, was received and marked “Exhibit 18.”)
Hewitt: What do you feel was the effect of your attack?
Outerbridge: I think we sank the submarine.
Hewitt: What do you base that on?
Outerbridge: On the gun hit, only on the gun hit.
Hewitt: There was a gun hit on it?
Outerbridge: There was a gun hit on it, and I looked these submarines over and there is no hatch between the conning tower and the tube of the submarine, where I believe it was hit, right at the waterline, the base of the conning tower.
Hewitt: And the submarine disappeared after that?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, it disappeared.
Hewitt: That was before you made the depth charge attack?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, we fired at the submarine before we made the depth charge attack, and as she was going under the stern, we dropped over the depth charges.
Hewitt: Your depth charges were close to her?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir.
Hewitt: Definitely?
Outerbridge: Definitely, they were there. I didn’t claim a kill.
Hewitt: Whom were those reports addressed to?
Outerbridge: I believe it was Commander Inshore Patrol. We were working for inshore patrol, but the interpretation is here.
Hewitt: You got the calls?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, we got the calls.
Hewitt: Do you remember what they mean?
Outerbridge: No, sir.
Hewitt: Those were the only reports of that attack you made?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, two messages on that.
Hewitt: What was your action after the completion of that attack?
Outerbridge: Well, I saw one of these large white sampans lying to out there in the defensive area.
Hewitt: Was that against regulations?
Outerbridge: That was against standing rules. They weren’t supposed to be in the defensive area, but he was in there. So, I turned around and went after him and we chased him out towards Barber’s Point. He was going pretty fast.
Hewitt: He tried to get away from you?
Outerbridge: It appeared that way to me. He could have stopped much sooner, but he appeared to be going around Barber’s Point. When we did catch up to him, he came up waving a white flag. I thought that was funny. I thought, “We will just send for the Coast Guard.” That was what we always did when we caught a sampan in the defensive area. We sent for the Coast Guard and they were very prompt. They sent a cutter out to take him in.
Hewitt: Will you identify for the record those two messages you sent about the sampan, which are on the Bishop’s Point record?
Outerbridge: “We have intercepted a sampan into Honolulu. Please have Coast Guard send cutter to relieve us of sampan.” And, “We have intercepted sampan and escorting sampan into Honolulu. Please have cutter relieve us of sampan.” We sent that. That is a little garbled, but that looks like it.
Hewitt: What was the time of it?
Outerbridge: That was 0833 and 0835.
Hewitt: Well, then, I understand that several days later you saw a midget submarine which was recovered off Bellow’s Field. Is that correct?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, that is correct.
Hewitt: Was the appearance of the conning tower similar to the one that you saw?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir.
Hewitt: What was the condition of that submarine off Bellow’s Field? Did it have its torpedoes?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, it was in good condition and I went inside and there was a torpedoman I believe he was a chief torpedoman working on the torpedoes, trying to get them out without exploding them, and I saw the torpedoes inside.
Hewitt: Well, I think, that is all I had planned to ask you. I am naturally interested in any information you can provide on this Pearl Harbor attack. Is there anything that you might think would be pertinent to this investigation that you can volunteer?
Outerbridge: Well, I suppose it would be a matter of opinion, which probably wouldn’t do you much good, but I was even a little surprised at the attack which followed. I mean I had no idea that the air attack was going to follow. We brought the sampan in and we got another submarine attack. We dropped four depth charges on another submarine in the area. We got depth charges that morning and at 11 o’clock we ran out. When the attack started, we were still at General Quarters. We hadn’t secured from the attack. We were still at General Quarters and we saw the planes coming in, but not until after the bombs began to fall, because the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor, and the Exec and I were standing on the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Dowdy was the Exec and he said, “They are making a lot of noise over there this morning, Captain.” I said, “Yes, I guess they are blasting the new road from Pearl to Honolulu.” He said, “Look at those planes. They are coming straight down.” I looked at them, and he said, “Gosh, they are having an attack over there.” I said, “They certainly are,” and that was the time the attack actually began.
Hewitt: That was about 0750?
Outerbridge: 0750, yes, sir.
Hewitt: That must have been about the time, judging from this report here, that you were engaged in bringing the sampan in.
Outerbridge: Yes, sir, we were still standing in with the sampan.
Hewitt: You mentioned just then several other submarine attacks that you had the same morning.
Outerbridge: Yes, sir.
Hewitt: That was after the ones you have already discussed. What were they?
Outerbridge: They were good metallic contacts, although I was a little surprised at them at first, before things began to pop. I didn’t think we would get so many, but we did get a lot of them. We got good metallic contacts and the only thing to do was to bomb them. They gave us a good sharp echo. We bombed them until we ran out of depth charges and went in and got some more.
Hewitt: That was in the same general area?
Outerbridge: Right in that defensive area.
Hewitt: Off the entrance to the swept channel?
Outerbridge: Yes, sir. There was another thing we saw. That was a lot of explosions along the reefs. I thought that they were explosions of torpedoes fired into the reefs. I didn’t see any other submarines the whole morning. We didn’t actually see any, but we did see a lot of explosions that looked like shallow water explosions of torpedoes.
Hewitt: What would make you think they were torpedoes rather than bombs?
Outerbridge: They were right along the coast, along the reef, and I didn’t see any planes overhead. They were inside the coast in Pearl Harbor, bombing Pearl Harbor, and I didn’t think they would all miss that far. I thought they would do better than that. They did do better than that in general.
Hewitt: Do you recall approximately how many different contacts you bombed?
Outerbridge: I think we had three or four that morning, sir.
Hewitt: After the one…
Outerbridge: In the first ten days we had eighteen contacts, day and night, but we didn’t actually see any more submarines. I heard that they were there, but we didn’t actually see any more. We don’t know what the effect of the attacks were on the submarines. There was one other one, on the 2nd of January. We were with our division, making the attack, and the ship astern of us, after I got in port, told us that she saw a submarine come up under our starboard depth charge. I hadn’t, up until then, claimed any hit for it. We had a pretty good contact. It was our turn to make the run. We made the run and kept on going, and that is what the Commanding Officer of the Allen said. That was the 2nd of January. But we didn’t actually see that from the ship.
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| Destroyer USS Ward opening fire at 6:45 A.M. on a two-man Japanese submarine spotted just outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The four-inch shell, the first shot fired in the Pacific War, just misses the conning tower of the midget sub, one of five launched by the Japanese that morning as part of their surprise attack. At 6:54 A.M., the Ward succeeded in sinking the intruder. |
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| A Shot for Posterity, the USS Ward's number three gun and its crew—cited for firing the first shot the day of Japan's raid on Hawaii. Operating as part of the inshore patrol early in the morning of December 7, 1941, this destroyer group spotted a submarine outside Pearl Harbor, opened fire and sank her. Crew members are R.H. Knapp - BM2c - Gun Captain, C.W. Fenton - Sea1c - Pointer, R.B. Nolde - Sea1c - Trainer, A.A. Domagall - Sea1c - No. 1 Loader, D.W. Gruening - Sea1c - No. 2 Loader, J.A. Paick - Sea1c - No. 3 Loader, H.P. Flanagan - Sea1c - No. 4 Loader, E.J. Bakret - GM3c - Gunners Mate, K.C.J. Lasch - Cox - Sightsetter. The gun is a 4"/50 type, mounted atop the ship's midships deckhouse, starboard side. |
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| 4"/50 Mount No. 3 from the Ward that is now a monument on the Capitol grounds in St. Paul, MN. This is the Mount that sank the Japanese midget sub attempting to enter Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. |
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| USS Chew (DD-106) and USS Ward (DD-139) at Hilo Sugar Docks, Territory of Hawaii, 22 July 1941. |
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| Lieutenant Commander William W. Outerbridge, USN, who commanded USS Ward (DD-139) on morning of 7 December 1941. View taken circa early 1942. |
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