Two color 20 x 16 posters of an Alan Chesley painting depicting the USS Ward (DD-139), a Wickes-class destroyer in the United States Navy that fired the first American shots of World War II, both signed in the lower border in ink or felt tip by eight of her crew-members: Donald R. Pepin, Richard J. Thill, Kenneth Swedberg, Eugene Heiberger, Gordon Hultman, Maurice Gatewood, John Entenmann, and Walter Campion. One poster is also signed by Theodore 'Dutch' Van Kirk, the navigator for Enola Gay, and by Jack Widowsky, the navigator for Top Secret, the aircraft assigned as the strike spare for the Hiroshima bombing mission. In overall fine condition. The USS Ward (DD-139) caused the first American-caused casualties in World War II, when she engaged a Japanese midget submarine before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and successfully sank her, killing the two-man crew on board.
