Iron Bottom Sound.(pic heavy}

[Dignan]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Cool story.

I read a book on the Aaron Ward, an amazing ship. She shot down many planes protecting the US landing force, which is also in the game. She even spotted the damaged JP BB near Savo at dawn and was hit by it. Jap planes were eventually her undoing, but an amazing story. She had about 100 men killed in battle during these engagements.

That's an amazing story about your grandfather on the Yorktown. Something to be proud of indeed.

It's pretty typical that they didn't talk about it much. As you pointed out, the Aaron Ward had many men killed in different battles so I can imagine it was an intimately personal experience when your ship mates got killed. The Ward was eventually sunk by a Japanese high altitude bomber as you alluded to. He was aboard her that day and somewhere I have a letter from him to a scuba diver who dove on the wreck in 1995 and wanted to talk to survivors. Maybe I'll scan it and put it up here. It is very short, which was typical of my grandpa, but he talks about watching the bomb fall and being thankful it didn't hit the bridge (he was the Communications Officer so was on the bridge a lot.)

The battle I described in my earlier post was the November night engagement. I may do what you say and head there for a patrol to time it with November 1942 to watch it unfold. SHould be interesting.