Victor Delano, a Pearl Harbor survivor, dies at 94

Victor Delano, a retired Navy captain who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and who helped rally his fellow sailors during the airborne onslaught, died Aug. 25 at a hospice in Rockville, Maryland. He was 94.

Soon after graduating in 1941 from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Delano was assigned as a newly commissioned gunnery officer to the USS West Virginia. The battleship was docked at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii when Japanese aircraft attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, which led to America's entry into World War II.

Delano helped get two machine guns working on the West Virginia, showing other sailors how to use them, according to news accounts. One of those sailors, mess attendant Doris "Dorie" Miller, was later awarded the Navy Cross.

As the West Virginia sank in the harbor, Delano swam to safety. He later served aboard ships in the Pacific and, after the war, he commanded a minesweeper in Japan.

During the Korean War, he was the commanding officer of a destroyer, the USS Eversole. He retired in 1969, having received two awards of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Delano received a master's degree in nuclear physics in 1949 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was assigned to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the early 1950s.