USS Worden (DD-352) - Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

On the morning of 7 December 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Worden lay in a nest alongside destroyer tender Dobbin (AD-3), receiving upkeep. She suffered no damage in the Japanese attack, but one of her gunners, Quartermaster 3d Class Raymond H. Brubaker, shot down a bomber with a .50-caliber Browning machine gun. Within two hours of the commencement of the attack, Worden had gotten underway and was proceeding to the open sea.

Although, in the operational plans for the attack, Japanese submarines were supposed to attack American ships as they emerged from Pearl Harbor, their attempts to carry out the mission failed. The danger of enemy submarines, however, did exist; and purported submarine sightings proliferated.

Worden picked up a submarine contact at 1240— well over three hours after the attack by the enemy aircraft had been completed—and dropped seven depth charges. That afternoon, the destroyer joined a task force built around the light cruiser Detroit (CL-8), the flagship of Rear Admiral Milo Draemel. Searching the seas southwest of Oahu, Worden rendezvoused with the fleet oiler Neosho (AO-23) and escorted her to a fueling rendezvous with Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch's Task Force (TF) 11 built around the aircraft carrier Lexington (CV-2).

While Neosho fueled the ships of TF 11 on the morning of 11 December, Worden assumed a screening station on Lexington's bow and the next night escorted Neosho away from danger when Dewey (DD-349) discovered what looked like a surfaced enemy submarine and went on the offensive. After having seen Neosho to a safe haven at Pearl Harbor, Worden returned to the open sea on 14 December as part of the covering force moving toward Wake Island. The Wake Island Relief Expedition was recalled on the morning of 22 December; and the island fell two days before Christmas.