Charles Rollins Ware was born March 11, 1911, in Knoxville, Tennessee, joined the Navy in 1929 from Athens, Tennessee, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1934, served at sea until entering flight training in 1940, and after earning his wings as a naval aviator served aboard USS Enterprise before transfers in January 1941 to Scouting Squadron 5 aboard USS Yorktown and in early 1942 to Scouting Squadron 6 aboard Enterprise. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Ware flew from Enterprise as part of a section of six Douglas SBD-2/3 Dauntless dive bombers that joined aircraft from Enterprise and Yorktown in attacking three Japanese carriers while fighting Japanese Zero fighters protecting the fleet. When a second wave of Japanese planes appeared from a fourth carrier, he attacked despite low fuel and ammunition and continued until the last moment; only two members of his group survived, while Ware and his air-gunner, ARM 1/C William H. Stambaugh of Paintsville, Johnson County, Kentucky, were lost in the Pacific Ocean. For extraordinary heroism and courageous devotion to duty in the action of June 4-6, 1942, he was awarded the Navy Cross. In his honor, the Gearing-class destroyer USS Charles R. Ware (DD-865) was launched at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, Staten Island, New York, on April 12, 1945, by his mother, Arva Zena Ware, commissioned on July 21, served worldwide for the next 29 years, including off Vietnam in 1967, was later used as a Naval Reserve training ship, decommissioned in Galveston, Texas, on November 30, 1974, and sunk as a target in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Puerto Rico on November 15, 1981.