USS Indianapolis is sunk

[franksolich]

The USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 15 November 1932. The ship served with honor from Pearl Harbor through the last campaign of World War II, sinking in action two weeks before the end of the war. On 30 July 1945, while sailing from Guam to Leyte, Indianapolis was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58. The ship capsized and sank in twelve minutes. Survivors were spotted by a patrol aircraft on 2 August. All air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to the scene at once, and the surrounding waters were thoroughly searched for survivors. Upon completion of the day and night search on 8 August, 316 men were rescued out of the crew of 1,199.

read more at http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq30-1.htm
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It's a very large web-site, with lots and lots and lots of really good stuff there.

Anyway, I didn't feel compelled to find some sort of really long, really detailed, really comprehensive, story about USS Indianapolis, because I'm sure most here already know the story, including the fact that USS Indianapolis had been carrying material for the two atomic bombs later dropped on Japan in August 1945.....and because of the super-secrecy concerning its mission, rescue of the crew was considerably delayed.

As a professional civilian, and I've said this many times before, over at the other place, I'm not fond of this really stupid "compartmentalization of information" policy, this giving information on the basis of "need to know."

That happened with Pearl Harbor, and later with Watergate, where everybody was running around, having some information, but no one had all information, and everybody from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon being lousy fillers-in-of-blank-spaces, came to all sorts of conclusions at variance with the facts.

With utterly catastropic consequences.

That's just really stupid.

It wasn't necessary to broadcast to the entire US Navy in the Pacific that USS Indianapolis was carrying materials for atomic bombs, but it would have been nice if all the secrecy geeks had at least informed the lower ranks that USS Indianapolis was in the neighborhood.

Probably then the lower ranks would have reasonably assumed, "Oh, it's here to join us," and no harm done.

[Ptarmigan]

Captain Charles Butler McVay III got court martialed for this. The only one during World War II. The USS Indianapolis could like in the Mariana Trench, which is up to 7 miles deep!

[djones520]

Frank, I'd suggest you take a look at some Great Lakes shipwrecks.  My mother runs the S.S. City of Milwaukee, which was built back in the 20's to replace the S.S. Milwaukee after it sank in Lake Michigan.  Over the past few years she worked on that ship, I've learned a lot about Great Lakes ship wrecks, and I bet people would be amazed to learn the full depth of just how dangerous sailing on the Great Lakes can be.

[franksolich]

Frank, I'd suggest you take a look at some Great Lakes shipwrecks.  My mother runs the S.S. City of Milwaukee, which was built back in the 20's to replace the S.S. Milwaukee after it sank in Lake Michigan.  Over the past few years she worked on that ship, I've learned a lot about Great Lakes ship wrecks, and I bet people would be amazed to learn the full depth of just how dangerous sailing on the Great Lakes can be.

Actually, I have found a great deal about maritime disasters on the Great Lakes, specifically Norwegian maritime disasters on the Great Lakes--how that happened, I'm not sure.

Once when I googled to find the distance between a residential address in Elgin, Illinois, and the Illinois State Penitentiary (the old one, that looks like a castle) in Joliet, I ended up reading about land law in Scotland during the 1600s; googling takes me some interesting places.

I have found an interesting maritime disaster on Lake Michigan, during the 1920s, but I'll have to (and will) copy it from a real-life book, as I doubt it's on the internet.

There was a popular television half-hour situation comedy during the late 1970s, WRKP in Cincinnati, one of its most-famous episodes being something about turkeys being dropped on a boat on Lake Michigan (I'm not sure the exact details, never having seen the show).....and I suspect the "idea" for the situation came from this actual event; I'm sure that when looking around for material, television comedy writers read a lot of old, now-forgotten, books, as such books are a wealth of ideas.

[djones520]

I don't think the turkey's were being dropped onto a boat.  If I remember right, they were being dropped into a parking lot for people for thanks giving.  They thought domesticated turkeys could fly.  They thought wrong.

Here's the transcript.

It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!" Afterwards, the shaken Carlson explains, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

I've got a awesome book at home about Great Lake shipwrecks.  I'll get you the name of it when I get home.

[TheSarge]

Probably in most people's minds the most famous of the Great Lakes shipping disasters:

[TheSarge]

USS Indianapolis:




From the movie Jaws...first night on The Orca:

Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named "The Battle of Waterloo" and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[Chris_]

Probably in most people's minds the most famous of the Great Lakes shipping disasters:

I just suggested to Frank in another thread that he take a look at this one, as it is fairly recent, and the cause of the disaster has been fairly well concluded.

I spent some time living around the lakes, and have heard tales from the lake boat sailors about storms on Superior being worse than anything in the N. Atlantic......

doc

[Servonaut]

A very good book on the Indianapolis disaster
is Doug Stantons "In Harm's Way".

http://www.amazon.com/Harms-Way-Indianapolis-Extraordinary-Survivors/dp/B000A6U2HK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202934453&sr=8-2