The evening of May 3, 1945 brought one of the campaign’s most intense kikusui attacks. The Aaron Ward was at radar picket station 10, accompanied by several smaller support craft. When Japanese aircraft approached, the Aaron Ward’s guns opened up and shot down a number of attacking planes before the ship was struck.
What followed was a sustained assault of unusual intensity. Six kamikazes struck or crashed near the Aaron Ward in rapid succession. A bomb from one attacker exploded in the after engine room, cutting the ship’s power. Oil fires broke out across her decks. Her steering was disabled. Her ammunition magazines were at risk. Men were fighting fires in spaces that were simultaneously flooding and burning. Forty-millimeter ammunition cooked off in the heat, adding to the chaos.
The Aaron Ward circled in the water — unable to steer, unable to make way — while her crew fought for the ship’s life. Firefighting crews moved through burning compartments, trying to contain blazes that were being fed by fuel oil from ruptured tanks. The support craft around her maneuvered to assist, providing additional firefighting resources and pulling survivors from the water.
Forty-five of the Aaron Ward’s crew were killed. Forty-nine more were wounded. Robert Nichols, nineteen years old, was among the wounded — struck by shrapnel in his back and hip while fighting fires on a ship that was on fire, flooding, and spinning in circles in hostile waters.
The ship was eventually taken under tow. She was patched sufficiently to be towed to Kerama Retto, a natural harbor that had been seized specifically to provide a repair and support facility for damaged vessels. The damage was too severe for field repair. She made her way back to the United States, where the assessment concluded that rebuilding her was not cost-effective. She was decommissioned on September 28, 1945. Her hulk was sold for scrap in July 1946.