December 7th began quietly, as had many Sundays before. Captain Lt Cdr. Wilbur Glenn Jones was off the ship along with about a third of the crew, enjoying a day of liberty. At first most sailors paid no attention to the grey airplanes that buzzed overhead, but when the first bombs started going off at Hickam Airfield and Ford Island it became apparent that the long wait for war was over.

Shaw was in a tenuous position. She was trapped in drydock, and due to the recoil her five-inch guns had she could not use them for fear of knocking herself off the blocks that held her upright in the drydock. All she had to defend herself were four water-cooled .50 caliber guns, but thankfully the Japanese pilots had been ordered to focus on battleships and aircraft carriers and she was one of many targets in the area.

Wayne Lawson's normally served as a pointer for one of the after five-inch guns, but without ammunition his position at battle station was of little use, so he moved to the nearby machine gun platform and assisted the gunners there with Shaw's return fire. Other sailors gathered in the mess hall to begin belting ammo together for the machine gunners.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a large one, with many aircraft overhead attacking many separate targets simultaniously. Events began to happen that would have disasterous consequences for the trapped destroyer. When the attack began, the Battleship USS Nevada was in the process of switching boilers and had enough power to get underway make an attempt to get out of the harbor and search for the Japanese fleet. As Nevada steamed down the channel, Japanese pilots realized they had an opportunity to sink Nevada in the channel and block entry to Pearl Harbor for a very long time and began to concentrate on her. By this time Nevada was nearing Hospital Point and the Shaw.

An hour after the attack started, Shaw continued to fire back. Overhead, Japanese aircraft swarmed about, lining up for their attack runs. One flight of three Aichi Type 99 Vals from the carrier Soryu manuevered into position and began to dive on the battleship Pennsylvania in drydock 1 from the Southeast. While the flight leader aimed for the battlship, his other wingmen aimed for other ships nearby. PO1c Takashi Yamada and gunner PO1c Takashi Fujita salvoed their 250Kg (about 550 lbs.) bomb at 450 meteres (just under 1,500 feet) and pulled out of their dive. The bomb continued downward and plunged into the thin steel of a destroyer -- the Shaw.

Talk about damage from first bomb here.

Then three Vals from the Akagi circled overhead before diving down. One bomb missed Shaw and plunged into the drydock, igniting fuel oil that was pouring from Shaw's ruptured hull. Another hit the superstructure deck and passed through the ship without exploding. The third bomb hit on the port bridge wing and shot through two decks before exploding in the wardroom pantry, rupturing several fuel-oil tanks and starting fires.

Back | Home | Forward to Salvage and WWII