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

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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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Fascinating...do you have any links about these mini subs? I didn’t even realize they had that sort of technology back then.

And that’s a really cool story

I can’t confirm 100% true but I’ve heard that Ole Man Coleman from Coleman’s Toyota in Baton Rouge was a survivor of the Indianapolis. I don’t want to speak I’ll of him, but I also heard he was quite an ornery man. If true, I’d say this would explain why.

By late July, I'm almost certain the Japanese could not mount any type of effective air attack in the Marianas and certainly no amphibious assault. Tinian, at the time, had the world's largest airfield in North Field. Four parallel runways that were 8000' or 10000' and all the associated infrastructure. I'm sure it was adequately protected.

Curtis LeMay's B-29s had been bombing the frick out of the Japanese home islands at least since March, probably longer. Japan was finished. It just took a couple of A-bombs to make them realize it.

I'll try and find it this weekend.

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Best scene in cinematic history.

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Just a brilliant bit of acting by Shaw. You can see Dreyfus as Hooper watching him and imagine him thinking "holy shite, this guy is totally nailing this scene".

And yet it contains a major historical error, right at the end - he misstates that it was June when the ship went down, not July.

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And yet it contains a major historical error, right at the end - he misstates that it was June when the ship went down, not July.

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I think I’ll give him a pass.

Last Podcast on the Left just dropped an episode on the USS Indianapolis.

If you like their style, it was pretty good. Got some info I hadn’t heard before. Gruesome stuff. Worse than I had read.

Worth a listen

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Quint’s Tale of the Indianapolis from Jaws

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On the best scenes in cinema history. Why can't movies like that not be made today?

One interesting thing I learned from the LPOTL podcast I hadn’t come across before was that in addition to the kamikaze zeroes they also had kamikaze torpedo subs. A literal torpedo with a pilot.

But where the planes could turn back if they failed to find a target, or the pilot got cold feet, once the pilot was in the torpedo sub and it launched, that was it.

There was no way for it to redock with the larger sub. So if they failed to find a target, there were only two choices.

Detonate. Or sink to the bottom and suffocate.
Chilling