Quiz #139
HMS Campbeltown -- ex-USS Buchanan (DD-131) -- and USS Ward (DD-139) were both members of the Wickes class of US flush deck destroyers completed just after World War I. They played separate dramatic roles in World War II. Ward fired the first shots of the Pacific War when she sank a Japanese midget submarine off the entrance to Pearl Harbor early on 7 Dec 1941. Unfortunately this did not raise an alarm for the massive Japanese air attack that followed an hour later and catapulted the US into the war. Campbeltown was one of 50 American destroyers transferred to Britain in exchange for the lease of bases in the Western hemisphere in Sep 1940. Her appearance was radically altered for the commando raid on St. Nazaire of March 1942 which destroyed the gates of the Normandie dock, the only location in France that could act as a drydock for the German battleship Tirpitz.
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