BERNARD DeGrave said his station was at a 4-inch gun, useless for anti-aircraft fire. "They needed people to supply the .50 caliber machine guns, so I volunteered to pass ammunition." He was standing in the ship's magazine when he thought what might happen to him if a bomb hit.
The USS Montgomery headed out at 10:17 to six days of anti-submarine duty. They were shocked when they returned. "We had so much faith in those big battleships. And then to see them as scrap metal. We had nothing bigger to stop the Japanese Navy than that little destroyer we were on. We wouldn't have been much opposition."
USS MONTGOMERY
From Wikipedia, the USS Montgomery was a World War I destroyer, DD-121, commissioned July 26, 1918, and used for anti-submarine duty. It was decommissioned in 1922, converted to a light minelayer and recommissioned in 1931 as DM-17and again decommissioned in 1937.
With war on the horizon, the Montgomery again was commissioned in 1939 and based in Pearl Harbor from 1940.
It mounted 4X4 inch guns as well as torpedoes.
A Day That Still Lives in Infamy. --Cooter
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