One of our destroyers now cruising the Indian Ocean searching for that Malaysian jetliner is the USS Kidd.
Kidd, the third ship of that name, was named after Admiral Kidd, who died at his post on the bridge of the Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I had the privilege of serving with his son, Admiral Isaac C Kidd Jr, USN, on board USS Dewey in 1968.

Dewey was engaged in NATO fleet exercises in the North Atlantic, near the the Arctic Circle, just south of Iceland, and Kidd was aboard acting as Squadron Commander.

One night, while I had the midwatch, a flurry of radio signals came aboard and I was sent to wake the Admiral up–he had taken over the Captain’s Sea Cabin just aft of the bridge. It looked like the Red Force was maneuvering into attack position. I knocked on the door, and when beckoned in, handed him a clipboard with the radiograms. He turned on a lamp, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and started flipping through the messages.

He paused for a moment, then went to work. He knew where all the units in his Blue Force were deployed, scattered over an area of ocean the size of Texas. He reached behind him for the telephone, called Radio Central and started dictating orders. He moved his ships around like pieces on a chessboard, launched and recovered aircraft, and began issuing orders to his units, as well as notifying his Fleet Commander on a Royal Navy aircraft carrier of what was going on and what he was doing about it. It all took less than ten minutes.

He handed the clipboard back to me, thanked me, turned off the light and went back to sleep.