When she minced into Pearl Harbor, just in time to see war break over Hawaii, the destroyer Patterson was only four years old and one of the best. A survivor of Dec. 7's disaster, she became one of the thin line of U.S. warships left to stop the Jap fleet in the Pacific. Lean as an alley cat, "Pat" stalked off to westward.
It was a bad time. On the blackest night in U.S. naval history, off Savo Island, the Japs destroyed the Allied cruisers Astoria, Quincy, Vincennes and Canberra. Pat, hit and hurt, stood by and picked up 400 survivors....
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