re: Here’s the tale of the Ship Indianapolis, The torpedoes got some, the sharks got the rest

Anyway... we delivered the bomb

Little known fact. The sub that sank the Indianapolis launched 2-3 minisubs a few days before. One of the minisubs attacked my dad's ship. It was believed, but not confirmed, my dad's 50 caliber sank that mini-sub.

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What I don’t understand is why a distress signal wasn’t sent out. The Japanese sub had spotted and torpedoed them so their location was known to the enemy anyways. It seems that common sense should have overridden the orders for secrecy once the secret was out.

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Distress signal or not, the Navy was doing their best to figure out a way to ignore/disown it, and when that wasn't possible, criminally scapegoat the captain through his court martial.

From McVay's wiki:

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He repeatedly asked the Navy why it took four days to rescue his men but never received an answer. The Navy long claimed that SOS messages were never received because the ship was operating under a policy of radio silence; declassified records show that three SOS messages were received separately, but none were acted upon because one commander was drunk, another thought it was a Japanese ruse, and the third had given orders not to be disturbed

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After a Navy Court of Inquiry recommended that McVay be court-martialed for the loss of Indianapolis, Admiral Chester Nimitz disagreed and instead issued the captain a letter of reprimand. Admiral Ernest King overturned Nimitz's decision and recommended a court-martial, which Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal later convened. McVay was charged with failing to zigzag and failure to order abandon ship in a timely manner. He was convicted on the former. Prior knowledge of Japanese submarines being identified in the area was withheld from the court and from McVay, prior to sailing, as well. Following McVay's conviction for hazarding Indianapolis by failing to zigzag, Admiral King recommended setting aside the punishment.[6][7] Hashimoto, the Japanese submarine commander who had sunk Indianapolis, was on record as describing visibility at the time as fair (which is corroborated by the fact that he was able to target and sink Indianapolis in the first place). American submarine experts testified that "zigzagging" was a technique of negligible value in eluding enemy submarines. Hashimoto also testified to this effect.[1] Despite that testimony, the official ruling was that visibility was good, and the court held McVay responsible for failing to zigzag.

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Admiral King and Secretary Forrestal sound like the real criminals here.

Saddest part:

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On 6 November 1968, McVay took his own life by shooting himself with his service pistol at his home in Litchfield, Connecticut, holding in his hand a toy sailor he had received as a boy for a good luck charm

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Perspective is a slap in the face

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no kidding, huh, I went to a gathering of former POWs last week, some of the guys I've known for a while, and as a young man I read of some of their experiences surrounding their shoot down and time in captivity, I never ask about the specifics, but sometimes they share, when they all are together they speak freely about it because they are all(numbers are dwindling,) together and comfortable, being basically a very small and unique fraternity, there is definitely gallows humor, but they went through absolute hell, I just sat there like a little kid listening, this was a three day get together and I didn't want it to end, very humbling and awe inspiring, these men are some badass patriot warriors

IIRC things were getting pretty slack because the war was ending and nobody noticed she was overdue for several days.

Robert Shaw was an incredible actor...steals everything he is in...The Deep, Force 10, Battle of Britain

And of course, The Mighty Quint - I choose to believe it didnt end that way:



Edit: Dehydration and drinking seawater was the main cause of death for those pour souls - sharks just cleaned up the mess.

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Been a long time since I read up on that, I get the secrecy of her mission on the way to deliver, not so much afterwards. Plus the radio silence afterwards. As the other ships in the group saw her fatally torpedoed, don’t you think the Japs knew where they were? But radio silence was the order.

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They delivered the bomb to Tinian on July 26. The device wasn't used until August 9. Indianapolis was sunk on July 30. The crew couldn't do anything that would indicate her mission was anything but routine until the device was used. Otherwise, they'd risk the security of the mission and invite an attack on relatively poorly defended Tinian that would destroy the only ready nuclear device on the planet. So, when Indianapolis was attacked, she radioed for help the same way any other normal ship would. They went down so quickly and were so far from anywhere, though, that few people heard the SOS and nobody acted on it.

I'm pretty sure that she was alone, too. She split off from the rest of her battle group as soon as they left port, again to avoid sailing a large battle group to a tiny island in the Pacific and tipping off the Japanese that something was going on there. One ship heading out is a simple resupply; An armada is defending something important. After she dropped the device off, she made a stop in Guam and then was sailing to join up with another battle group when she was attacked and sunk.

ETA: August 6th was when the bomb was used. The 9th was Nagasaki. The survivors were out of the water by the time the first bomb was used.

that was the first thing I zeroed in on

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They delivered the bomb to Tinian on July 26. The device wasn't used until August 9. Indianapolis was sunk on July 30. The crew couldn't do anything that would indicate her mission was anything but routine until the device was used. Otherwise, they'd risk the security of the mission and invite an attack on relatively poorly defended Tinian that would destroy the only ready nuclear device on the planet.

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that makes sense, very tragic casualties of the mission, casualties on the good side