Free Republic

A team manning a deep sea research vessel says it has found and captured the first underwater images of a sunken U.S. Navy ship credited with firing America’s opening shots of World War II. The USS Ward was located in the waters near Ponson Island in the Philippines, an expedition crew led by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen announced, just before the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The US navy started WW-II with leftover destroyers. The destroyers we were building towards the end of WW-II were vastly more powerful. Two or three of them in groups would amount to something like the secondary (5") battery of an Iowa class battleship. This was with radar, radar fire control, and significant AA capabilities, along with torpedoes and depth charges. In the middle of the campaign to retake the Phillipines, there occurred one of the more astonishing stories I've ever read or heard, in which three such ships basically sailed into Ormoc Bay, and essentially fired off their entire ammo...