On the 30th of July, 1945, the American Navy cruiser the USS Indianapolis was hit by two
torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine.
The ship, with over 1,000 crewmen on board, sank into the ocean in little more than ten
minutes, leaving around 900 sailors adrift and awaiting rescue.
For those 900 or so men, the wait would be one of the longest and most challenging of
their lives… an ordeal which only a fraction of those who lived through the sinking would
survive.
The USS Indianapolis was launched in 1931, and started active service with the Navy the
very next year.
Though constructed during peacetime, she was nonetheless put to good use.
As well as taking part in numerous manoeuvres and training exercises, she also welcomed
on board President Franklin D Roosevelt on three separate occasions, carrying him to
state visits and diplomatic functions.
During the war, the Indianapolis saw plenty of action.
When the Japanese carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in December of 1941, she
spent the immediate aftermath scouring the seas in search of the perpetrators.
She later took part in numerous battles in the Pacific Theater over the course of the
war, narrowly survived a direct hit from a Japanese kamikaze bomber, and participated
in the bombardment of Iwo Jima in 1945.
Just a few weeks before her sinking, the Indianapolis carried out a top secret mission, delivering
parts of the bomb that would eventually be dropped on Hiroshima – brutally ending Japan’s
involvement in the war.
It is safe to say that the Indianapolis was a ship of great importance throughout World
War II… and it remained so right up until the 30th of July, 1945.
On this date, the ship was on its way from Guam to Leyte, for a training exercise.
There were about 1,200 people on board.
Visibility was limited, and the Indianapolis was proceeding with caution when, at a quarter
past midnight, two torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine smashed into her starboard side.
The ship listed sharply, and chaos erupted on board.
Communications broke down – some sailors were told to abandon ship, while others worked
frantically so save the vessel.
Their efforts were in vain, though – in just under 12 minutes the Indianapolis rolled
over onto her side and sank beneath the waves.
Around 300 sailors lost their lives during the sinking, leaving approximately 900 cast
adrift in the waters of the Pacific.
All they had with them were the clothes and lifejackets on their backs and whatever wreckage
had been ejected from the ship as it sank.
There were very few life rafts and floatation nets for the men in the water, meaning that
many simply had to cling on to whatever debris they could find… or link arms with one another
and rely solely on their lifejackets to keep them afloat.
Any hopes of a swift rescue faded gradually away over the hours which followed.
Night gave way to day, which gave way to night again.
The survivors floated amidst the wreckage of their ship, with nothing on the horizon
in any direction except for mile upon mile of open ocean.
There was no shelter from the blazing sun during the day, and no respite from the freezing
cold at night.
The immersion in saltwater caused their skin to peel, and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm
them at any moment.
Their only sustenance was whatever they could find in the floating debris – tinned meat
and sodden crackers.
Drinkable water was simply not available.
As the days passed and the situation grew more desperate, many men succumbed to delirium.
They hallucinated wildly, believing that they could see islands on the horizon.
Some set out to swim towards these hallucinatory islands, and were never seen again.
Others, dehydrated and confused, tried to dive down to the wreck of their ship to fetch
food and water, only to drown in the attempt.
Sailors, driven mad by thirst and heatstroke, turned on their fellow survivors, or took
their own lives.
Worse still, during this long wait for salvation, they were not alone in the water.
Sharks were drawn to the area by the presence of dead bodies and injured men.
They fed on the dead at first… and then on the injured, picking off exhausted sailors
one by one as the hours wore on.
Loel Dean Cox, a survivor of the disaster, gave this account of seeing sharks in the
water: "We were losing three or four each night and
day.
You were constantly in fear because you'd see them all the time.
Every few minutes you'd see their fins - a dozen to two dozen fins in the water.
They would come up and bump you.
I was bumped a few times - you never know when they are going to attack you.
In that clear water you could see the sharks circling.
Then every now and then, like lightning, one would come straight up and take a sailor and
take him straight down.
One came up and took the sailor next to me."
The situation was getting worse and worse with every hour.
And yet it seemed that no rescue operation was underway.
Two days passed, then three.
The men were certain that they had been forgotten, that they were lost and beyond saving.
It was only halfway through the fourth day spent in unimaginable conditions that their
fortunes changed.
A routine patrol flight passing over the area spotted men in the water.
After dropping off the few life rafts and supplies it had available, it returned to
base and despatched every vessel that was available to the scene to rescue the now-exhausted
survivors of the Indianapolis.
First to arrive on the scene was another aircraft, with Lieutenant Commander Robert Adrian Marks
behind the controls.
Despite hazardous conditions, he risked a water landing, and took on board 56 of the
injured and exhausted men, even loading them onto the wings to get them out of the water.
With so many men on board he could not take off again, but he remained there to provide
a much-needed refuge for many survivors while they awaited the arrival of boats.
The rescue began in earnest when ships arrived on the scene after dark on the fourth day.
The searchlights of the USS Cecil J Doyle and six other ships cutting through the night
marked the beginning of the end of the 80-hour ordeal the survivors had lived through.
They were taken on board, transported back to land, and delivered urgently to hospitals.
Of the 900 or so who had gone into the water, only 316 survived until help finally arrived.
Why had the survivors in the water had to wait so long to be rescued?
Distress calls were made using the radio on board the Indianapolis in the frantic few
minutes between it being hit and sinking.
Wherever these distress calls were received, however, they were not acted upon.
In one case it is believed that the commander who might have authorised a response was drunk
when he received the news, and so did nothing.
In another case the SOS was written off as a Japanese trick, and in a third instance
it was not properly reported as the senior commander on duty was involved in a game of
cards, and had asked not to be disturbed.
The fact that the Indianapolis did not arrive at its intended destination of Leyte might
have rung some alarm bells, but here again an opportunity for a swifter rescue operation
was missed.
The Indianapolis was such a large ship that its movements were not tracked as closely
as some smaller vessels – with officers instead assuming that it was where it was
supposed to be unless they received reports to the contrary.
It was believed that, so huge was the Indianapolis, that were it not to show up on time its absence
would be instantly reported up the chain of command.
This practise of relying on reports of a no-show rather than actively verifying a ship’s
position was scrapped following the sinking, and replaced with the Movement Report System,
which remains in place to this day.
In the aftermath of the sinking, blame for the disaster was pinned on the Captain of
the Indianapolis, Charles McVay, who – it was alleged – had failed to steer the ship
in a zig-zag pattern.
Doing so was standard practise when there was a risk of submarine attack, as it would
make the ship a more difficult target.
He was court-martialled, and lived out the rest of his days in shame, eventually taking
his own life in 1968.
This was distressing news for some survivors of the Indianapolis.
They did not blame Captain McVay.
After all he had not been warned of submarine activity along the route, and had been denied
his request for a destroyer to accompany the ship as an escort.
He had not been responsible for the ignored SOS calls, nor the failure to notice when
the Indianapolis did not arrive at its destination.
He was, as far as many survivors were concerned, a scapegoat for the failings of others.
Despite an ongoing campaign to exonerate him, the record would not be set straight until
1996.
It was then that a sixth-grade student named Hunter Scott brought national media attention
to the story after corresponding with hundreds of survivors as part of a school project.
With renewed attention on the events of more than 50 years ago, survivors, legal professionals
and ex-military personnel were able to work together to have McVay posthumously cleared
of any wrongdoing.
While adrift at sea, the survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis might well
have thought themselves forgotten or abandoned.
None could know then that, even decades after the events they endured, there would be people
who cared enough to remember those who died, to record the history of their passing, and
to set right the injustice that their Captain was subject to.