USS Indianapolis (CA-35)
USS Indianapolis (CA-35)
Photo was captured on July 10, 1945 off Mare Island.
On this day in 1945, the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sinks within minutes in shark-infested waters. Only 317 of the 1,196 men on board survived. However, the Indianapolis had already completed its major mission: the delivery of key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped a week later at Hiroshima to Tinian Island in the South Pacific.
Shortly after midnight on July 30, halfway between Guam and Leyte Gulf, a Japanese sub blasted the Indianapolis, sparking an explosion that split the ship and caused it to sink in approximately 12 minutes, with about 300 men trapped inside. Another 900 went into the water, where many died from drowning, shark attacks, dehydration or injuries from the explosion. Help did not arrive until four days later, on August 2, when an anti-submarine plane on routine patrol happened upon the men and radioed for assistance.
In the aftermath of the events involving the Indianapolis, the ship’s commander, Captain Charles McVay, was court-martialed in November 1945 for failing to sail a zigzag course that would have helped the ship to evade enemy submarines in the area. McVay, the only Navy captain court-martialed for losing a ship during the war, committed suicide in 1968. Many of his surviving crewmen believed the military had made him a scapegoat.
In October 2000, Captain McVay was exonerated for the loss of Indianapolis and in July 2001, the United States Secretary of the Navy ordered McVay’s official Navy record cleared of all wrongdoing. The wreck was located on 19 August 2017, at a depth of 18,000 feet (5,500 m).
Category: Historical
Yeah, sad day, due to secrecy, no-one even knew the ship was missing / overdue. The Captain was scapegoated to cover the incompetence of those who allowed the loss to go unnoticed.. Hell, even the Jap sub commander that sank the Indy testified that had the Captain been zig-zagging, it would have made no difference….
Hashimoto even called bullshit on the whole thing in court, demanding to know how they could justify sending the Indy unescorted into an area where Japanese subs were known to be operating, then try to pin all blame on McVay.
There’s also the fact that Admiral Ernest King had a decades-old beef with McVay’s father, and was legendary for being a petty, vindictive prick. Even if it weren’t for that, King always preferred to have somebody go down when something went wrong; for example, Captain Howard Bode was relieved of command of USS Chicago following the Battle of Savo Island and wrongly blamed for the disaster (the Captain and crew of HMAS Canberra were also falsely blamed in official records). King wanted a fall guy, and the government didn’t want to risk offending the British by revealing the multiple failures of Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley RN, who had commanded the Allied cruiser force (including Chicago and Canberra), that directly contributed to the loss of HMAS Canberra, USS Astoria, USS Quincy, USS Vincennes, and heavy damage to USS Chicago (Chicago and Canberra barely got a shot off, and Bode disengaged to save his ship). Bode suck-started his sidearm in 1943 and has since faded into obscurity, with barely any effort made to exonerate him.
They were making so slow a speed (around 12 knots, I think) is the reason zig-zagging would not have helped?
The range was close enough that I-58 could have fires a spread that couldn’t have missed under any circumstance. Even if not, I-58 also carried four Kaiten manned suicide torpedoes. Hashimoto made it clear that there was absolutely nothing McVay could have done to save his ship that night. She never should have crossed those waters unescorted.
The story of McVay is a helluva one, and it ended when he put a bullet in his head in 1970. I don’t think about McVay when I think about the Indianapolis. I think only about the poor bastards who were on board her and the merciful end of those who were taken when she was hit. Their crew mates? It is beyond my ability to imagine the hell they suffered.
^^^This^^^
It has got to be unimaginable torture to be floating there with the other survivors being picked off one by one by the sharks and exposure never knowing if rescue will ever come.
Correction: McVay made his exit in 1968, at the age of 70.
One of the key lessons to be learned from the tragedy of INDIANAPOLIS was that the ship was sunk on the operational/jurisdictional boundaries between the Pacific Ocean Area (POA) under ADM Nimitz and the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) under GEN MacArthur, the two major operational theater commands in the Pacific during the WWII Pacific War.
Because the ship was sunk along the boundary between these two major theater commands, neither command was fully aware of the location of the ship or its dire situation until a few days had gone by, thus delaying the SAR efforts and creating a higher death toll among the survivors than should have been.
INDIANAPOLIS was a case of two high operational commands not coordinating fully with each other, and allowing loose things to slip through that resulted in a major operational tragedy.
Unfortunately, coordination and situational awareness across unit boundaries of whatever size and scope (bn, bde, div, corps, squadron, fleet, theater, etc.) remains a serious problem right up to today; something commanders and their staffs have to pay serious and extra attention to…
Does anyone know how many survivors of this tragedy are still with us? I would hope they have a memorial to these men somewhere? They even made a movie regarding this terrible loss. They are truly the Greatest Generation! May God Bless all who served!
Two movies, actually. “Mission of the Shark” in 1991, with Stacy Keach as Captain McVay, and “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage” last year with Nicolas Cage in the same role. The latter is excessively preachy about nukes and racial discrimination, but generally not too bad. Cage even does an unusually good job for most of it (cage *can* make a good movie; why he usually chooses not to is a mystery), and some of the cast are grandsons of Indy survivors.
I didn’t know that about the grandsons of survivors, or the Stacy Keach movie, I guess I’ll have to check that out.. Maybe my bias against Cage is showing, but I agree the movie was a bit preachy as well.. it just
kinda seemed anti-climactic…
Mario Van Pebbles directed the Cage movie. His son was the black Sailor in the raft with the Captain if i remember correctly.
Since I can’t offer much originality in way of eulogy, I actually came into this thread to warn people NOT to see Men of Courage. Easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
Want a movie about the USS Indianapolis? Watch Jaws. Robert Shaw talking about it for two minutes or so is infinitely better, more poignant, and more memorable than that festering shitpile of a movie.
I don’t know how many are left, but I did have the privilege of meeting / talking to one a bit a few years back while in Indy at a fire conference. He was raising funds for the memorial. As to the movie, I was very excited when I first saw it at Redbox, but sadly, it turned out kinda typical for Nicholas Cage, poorly / over acted…
I do love oral histories. There are some really moving ones out there from the sinking.
https://ehistory.osu.edu/oral-histories/LewisLHaynes
https://will.illinois.edu/WWII/story/uss-indianapolis-survivors
https://www.iup.edu/magazine/feature.aspx?id=157493
https://www.catholictranscript.org/columns/175-news/4010-statue-of-last-catholic-chaplain-to-die-in-combat-unveiled-in-waterbury.html
I always liked Robert Shaw’s soliloquy as Quint in “Jaws”. It was something that almost put you there on deck, the way he delivered that short speech.
Duplicate comment removed, no charge.
*grin*
Shaw was a hell of an actor, and an RAF vet.
OK, this is a duplicate, if anyone wants to remove it.
Just read a great article about this but now can’t find it. Thought it was the current VFW mag, but that isn’t it either.
Don’t remember specifics but a horrendously low percentage of those who survived the sinking were rescued. Seems like quite a bit over half the crew made it out alive but considerable less than half of those survived long enough to be rescued. Not enough lifeboats being one of the major significant issues.
Per Wikipedia, 1,195 were onboard the USS Indianapolis when she was sunk.
Approximately 300 are believed to have gone down with the ship. Of the remainder, 316 survived long enough to be rescued. Two of the survivors died not long afterwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)