Allow me a few words about the Crew of the USS Indianapolis

[BOSSHOG]

62 years ago today the Cruiser was sunk by a Japanese submarine, sinking in 12 minutes. The ship was in the Pacific between Guam and the Phillipines when sunk. It had delivered the components of the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war was just about over. 1,196 men were aboard the cruiser, 316 survived. Many were eaten by sharks as they waited to be rescued which didn't come until about a week later and only by accident.

Rest In Peace Shipmates.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq30-1.htm

[MissB]

1. I watched the shark week story on that last night on the Discovery Channel.

An amazing story - that they were there so long, and so many of them were able to survive using flotation devices that were designed to remain afloat for only 72 hours.

The Discovery Channel special was claiming that for the most part, the sharks were picking off the dead sailors as their fellow sailors removed flotation devices from the bodies and allowed the bodies to sink.

The ones that survived had some amazing fortitude.

[BOSSHOG]

3. A very good book about the ordeal

is "Fatal Voyage" by Dan Kurzman. Its 17 years old and does an outstanding job of chronicling the crew before, during and after the sinking.

[mr_hat]

6. Great book. As horrific as the shark attacks

was the dementia that beset the survivors.

[elehhhhna]

33. you know, the survivors (2 were close friends of my FIL) only started

really talking in detail about all this in the last 10 or 15 years. The dementia and salt-water poisoning hasn't been mentioned much 'til recently.

Mr. Kuryla was on that special last night and a nicer guy you've never met. You'd never ever guess what hell he went through at the tender age of 18.

God bless the Indie crew, and their poor, railroaded Captain...who Bill Clinton pardoned, btw, posthumously, after much lobbying by the survivors.

[MissB]

8. Thanks.

My library doesn't seem to carry it! I'm shocked. There are several other books to choose from, but my big-city library doesn't even stock one copy of that at any branch. :(

[Sequoia]

20. Mine does so I'm putting on hold.

Thanks.

[madokie]

2. Rest in peace

[yardwork]

4. Thank you for this thread.

I was glad to read in the doctor's statement that he didn't see any sharks kill people. He thought that maybe the sharks only ate the dead men. But so many of them died. Why wasn't their a rescue mission? I guess because their mission was secret, so nobody knew they were missing?

I saw only one shark. I remember reaching out trying to grab hold of him. I thought maybe it would be food. However, when night came, things would bump against you in the dark or brush against your leg and you would wonder what it was. But honestly, in the entire 110 hours I was in the water I did not see a man attacked by a shark. However, the destroyers that picked up the bodies afterwards found a large number of those bodies. In the report I read 56 bodies were mutilated, Maybe the sharks were satisfied with the dead; they didn't have to bite the living.

[A HERETIC I AM]

13. Your guess about the rescue mission is apparently correct....

The mission was top secret so after they delivered, they werent "overdue" for arrival at any port after Tinian.

Tinian was the island the B-29's "Enola Gay" and "Bocks Car" took off from. You can see the abandonded airfield using Wikimapia;

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=15.079764&lon=145.633041&z=15&l=0&m=a&v=2

[BOSSHOG]

16. Per the Kurzman Book, A Fatal Voyage

One Admiral may have known where the Cruiser was supposed to be but didn't know when it was supposed to be there. Another Admiral may have known when the Cruiser was supposed to be somewhere, but he didn't know where. Cluster mania at the end of the war.

[Mike Daniels]

18. Since the Indianapolis could have been redirected at any time after dropping off the bomb

the ports knew that it could be stopping in but not that it necessarily would.

In Harm's Way is a pretty good book about the incident and if I remember correctly, the Indianapolis did radio in a message to the next port on its route with an ETA. However, apparently there was a transcription error on the receiving end that led to incorrect information being relayed to the staff in charge of monitoring the fleet traffic. Therefore, the port station wasn't aware that the Indianapolis was overdue until several days has already gone by.

[Crabby Appleton]

5. Rest In Peace Sailors

slow hand salute

[Parche]

7. Hey Boss CA-35

I have a 'model' of the great USS Indianapolis 700 scale proudly on the shelf.

The flagship of Admiral Spruance, a sad end to a great ship.
I still wonder why they didnt include at least 1 destroy escort for the voyage
from Tinian/Guam to Leyte.
The ship was to meet up Vice Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf's task force of Battleships and Heavy
cruiser support ships.
A sad event in Navy history, as they had a court martial for the Captain, who was exonerated
and later took his own life in the 60's.

:hi:



:cry:

[Bake]

9. Many people didn't know about the Indianapolis until "Jaws"

In "Jaws," Richard Dreyfuss asked Capt. Quint about his USS Indianapolis tattoo. Quint recounted the story, "a thousand men went into the water ... 300 came out of the water ... sharks got the rest. I'll never wear a life jacket again."

That prompted me to dig up the story about the Indianapolis. I highly recommend the program currently on the Discovery Channel, saw it last night.

Bake

[90-percent]

10. tragedy

I think many many more could have been saved, but some key communications types just weren't paying attention?

War is still Hell!

-85% Jimmy

[Stinky The Clown]

11. The most thorough, factual account of this tragendy is by Samual Elliott Morrison .....

..... who wrote "History of United States Naval Operations in World War II".

I read the entire thing in the summer between my junior and senior years in HS. The Indianapolis story is nothing short of remarkable.

It got much more widely known when the movie Jaws mentioned it in the night of drinking, reminiscing, and dick wagging between Richard Dreyfus' and Robert Shaw's characters. Shaw's tone in describing it was chilling in its brevity.

[BOSSHOG]

15. Several Years Ago

I found a 1963 edition of Admiral Morison's "The Two Ocean War" - a short history of the United States Navy in the Second World War in a used bookstore in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is a treasured keepsake complete with the original dust jacket. It has a brief chapter on the Indy.

[fishnfla]

12. Those sailors got screwed over by the Navy

Why were they sailing without escort?
Why did it take so long before they were noticed missing?

The Navy adjusted there protocol to solve the above 2 problems AFTER the tragedy BUT still court martialed the captain for their SNAFU.

Blame the sharks, whatever.

It made me sick listening to R. Dreyfuss whore for the sharks and ignore the real story

[BOSSHOG]

17. There was a notion in July 1945

that there was no way a Japanese Submarine would be in that part of the ocean since the War was winding down and Japan was obviously beat. Why did it take so long? The Indianapolis was a big ship able to take care of itself, a day or two late, no big deal. The use of the Atomic Bomb was the news above the fold at the time.

[Mike Daniels]

19. From reading "In Harm's Way"

it appears that the military was aware of recent submarine activity in the area just before the Indianapolis was due to travel through that area.

However, because the military had just recently cracked the new Japanese code in use at that time they didn't want to tip the Japanese off that the code had been compromised. It seems that was partly why no escort was sent out to watch over the Indianapolis.

Furthermore, because of restrictions that were being placed on who could be privy to certain pieces of information the Navy didn't even inform the captain of the ship that submarine activity had been detected along his route.

In any case, Navy policies definitely had more to do with sending the Indianapolis and her crew to their fates than many other factors.

[fishnfla]

39. No notion of any submarines? Bullshit

They hung the Captain for not practicing evasive sub maneuvers in known hostile waters.
The Indy was able to take care of herself? Prove it. Obviously not, given what happened
A day or two late no big deal? Would've saved hundreds of lives. Why did they alter the protocol for overdue ships after this incident?

The A-bomb above the fold: kept the truth of this story buried at sea while the Navy brass covered their asses and blamed the Capt., and the sharks.

[BOSSHOG]

40. My post

was not my opinion it was a regurgitation of what I had read about the incident. And yes the brass did cover themselves at the expense of the Ship's Captain.

[Misskittycat]

14. There's a good movie (maybe a made-for-TV one) from some years

back, starring Stacy Keach as the Captain. Very well done and moving story.

[GumboYaYa]

21. Remember Jaws.....

that was the first time I heard this story. It is bone-chilling.

[BOSSHOG]

22. Yes, Robert Shaw was quite the stem winder

Ironic that a survivor of the Indianapolis sinking would be later by eaten by a Shark (even if a fictitious account.)

[rasputin1952]

23. When I was a teen in NYC, I knew one of the survivors, he ran a ...

small hot dog/pizza stand a few blocks from my house. Nice guy, but a little weird, (I would expect he would be), and he rarely spoke of the event. When Capt McVeigh was in the news after committing suicide, he closed up for about a week, and when he came back, he told me some things that made my hair stand up on end.

[BOSSHOG]

25. We lose some incredible stories

everytime a WWII vet passes on. My FIL hit Omaha Beach on D-Day and had some godawful tales to tell of warfare and incredible ways the Soldiers had to live and how supposedly friendly civilians would just as soon stab you in the back as smile at you, or in some cases castrate you. I got alot of it down on paper and am arranging it for his Grandkids.

[rasputin1952]

26. Excellent.....my dad, stepdad and uncles didn't talk about it much...

but after I was in the Army, the stories came forth, I had joined the brotherhood.


I can't recall the vet's name, it ended w/"opolos" he was of Greek origin somewhere down the line. He told me that a couple of the sailors thought they had found a "river of fresh water in the seawater", and they dove down about 10 feet and gulped it up. Shortly afterwards, they were going insane, screaming and hallucinating.

One sailor next to him was talking to him, then just went silent, suddenly, he "rolled over, and he had been cut in half at the waist, nothing there but blood and intestines." It happened so fast, the guy didn't even scream.

Under a blazing sun, the men were tortured during the day by it's heat and glare, and had to deal w/sharks at night, some of them well over 20 feet in length.

Jeez....what a nightmare.

[shanti]

28. you're lucky to get that info

many survivors of wars refuse to speak about their experiences. my dad was a marine in the korean conflict and won't discuss it at all.

[BOSSHOG]

29. Yes I was

I talked to my wife and my mother in law about the possibility of sitting down with him and just chatting and whether he would mind if I took notes. My goal was to have a story of grandpa's life for the grandkids from the time he was born, joined the Army, got injured, got the purple heart, went home and raised a family. He was, for the most part, cooperative. I was very lucky, he died seven months later. I'm very happy I did it but it was a very tough project.

[mnhtnbb]

24. Last night--actually about 1-3 a.m.--Discovery Channel ran a documentary

during their Shark Week about the USS Indianapolis. It was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss (JAWS!)

The rafts these poor guys had were rubber tubes with a latticework bottom
attached by 2-3 foot lengths of ropes. Basically, they were standing
thigh deep in water! Sheesh. Talk about ineffective.

[elehhhhna]

34. thse kapok-stuffed life jackets were also pretty sucky.

[shanti]

27. i watched the show

and actually, a very small number were actually eaten while alive. the ones eaten were already dead, and they died mainly from exposure and lack of fresh water.

[Bake]

30. Kickin' it for the Indianapolis!

:kick:

Bake

[tom_paine]

31. I've read a very detailed and well-researched version of that story

In the American Heritage History Magazine (nor relation to the Heritage Foundation nor any other Bushevik tentacle, I believe).

It is a tragic story in a war nearly over.

Thanks for this post, Chief. Thanks for the reminder.

:patriot:

[lies and propaganda]

32. and just like today...

We screwed over the captain, we had to have a fallguy, had to blame someone.. The Navy reversed the court martials findings in the 90s i believe...

[elehhhhna]

35. Sorta. See my post 33 up top.

[Thothmes]

36. screwed over

The captain of the Japanese Submarine that sank the Indinapolis was call as a defense witness at Capt McVay's court marshal. Captain Hashimoto stated in his testimony, that even if The Indianpolis had been zig-zagging, that he was still in a position to torpeado the ship.

[Jax]

37. Thank you for this very IMPORTANT story and reminder

We must NEVER forget these sacrifices, all of them.

Alyce

[MrSlayer]

38. Such an unimaginable horror.

War is truly hell. Even worse in this case. R.I.P. and many thanks to the crew of the Indianapolis.