Azur lane: A history through their eyes...

Ward's Warning

December 7, 1941

Defensive Sea Zone outside Pearl Harbor.

The sea was calm as the aging destroyer USS Ward patrolled the perimeter outside the Harbor entrance. 

"A job's a job." The blonde-haired girl with red bangs muttered to herself as she still enjoyed having her long hair flowing in the ocean breeze. Her "139" tattooed on her arm shined brightly in the sun as she touched it lightly.

She was the Wickes-class destroyer commissioned just before the end of World War One.

She, like most of the fleet of the time, never faced real combat. Ward looked around and saw U.S.S. Condor, a minesweeper she was good friends with sailing by. 

"Ward! You Old Barnacle!" The brunette minesweeper waved to the destroyer as Ward smiled and went to wave a friendly hello back when suddenly the brunette-haired girl yelled frantically to Ward. 

"Ward! I've spotted a periscope!"

Ward gritted her teeth as she sped over in general quarters mode. 

"THERE!"

Sure enough there it was, a small conning tower and periscope, snaking through the water. Ward let loose three shots from her small 4" gun, scoring a single hit on the conning tower before the sub slipped below the surface. 

"You little shit! You're not getting away from me that easily! ROLL DEPTH CHARGES!!!" The destroyer let a couple of metal drums roll off from her racks before a series of underwater explosions, creating towers of water.

"I got to warn everyone!" 

Ward immediately sent a message to Pearl harbor, confident in that the enemy sub had been neutralized. 

"Depth charged sub operating in defensive sea area.” Suddenly Ward hear a loud crunch below the water as she went pale

"Oh shit, that wasn't a friendly was it Condor?! Please tell me that wasn't one of our right?! That was definitely an enemy submarine!" Ward needed to emphasize that this was different from false alarms that headquarters was accustomed to ignoring as Ward sent a second message reading...

“Attacking enemy sub, depth charges released, possibly sunk! Enemy submarine operating in defensive sea area, Requesting immediate response!” 

Ward prayed her message would reach the higher ups in time as she had a feeling in her stomach something horrible was about to happen. 

"Somethings wrong here, very wrong…."

Her gut was correct. 

A little over an hour later Pearl Harbor would be caught completely by surprise as the Imperial Japanese Navy had sent an armada of over 400 planes to Pearl Harbor for a date with infamy. 

By noon the main battleline and the backbone of the Pacific Fleet was broken and crippled. 

West Virginia and California were sitting on the bottom, Oklahoma and Utah were capsized, Nevada was beached, and Arizona was blown apart from a magazine detonation and a complete lost. 

All told 18 ships were sunk or damaged. 2,402 sailors, marines and soldiers were killed and another 1,247 wounded. 1,177 on Arizona alone. 

The next day, America was at war with Japan.

But what about Ward's message? 

Turns out that delays in seeking more confirmation and reluctances to believe the report even occurred at all, resulted in Ward's message not being rapidly transmitted up the chain of command. 

And thus Pearl was never warned... until after the attack had already started.

"No one even…."

Ward never knew for certain if she really had fired the opening shots of the Pacific War or did she? 

An elder destroyer firing the first shots and scoring the first naval kill before all hell broke loose? 

No one would believe it at the time, but she had...

Officially Enterprise was given credit for sinking the first "official" naval kill of the war for sinking a sub of her own.

The submarine I-70 was sunk while she was on the surface recharging her batteries on December 10th. 

Enterprise would go on to become the most famous American warship of the war, winning numerous awards and achievements and would become a legendary warrior of the seas.

As for Ward? 

While she transported U.S. Army personnel during landings at Ormoc Bay in Leyte, she became the target of a G4M "Betty" bomber turned kamikaze which hit her amidship. 

Ward's fires were too much too contain and she was scuttled by gunfire by the Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer O'Brien. 

The irony? 

Ward sank on December 7th, 1944, exactly 3 years after making her historic encounter with that midget submarine. 

It would be decades before Ward, while sitting peacefully on the ocean floor, would finally have her story verified and vindicated when a small sub with a shell hole in it's conning tower was located outside of Pearl…

"I tried to warn everyone…" 

"I really did…."