The Manhattan Project was the code name given to the top secret development
of atomic weapons during World War II
Following these successful tests at Alamogordo, New Mexico
under the direction of Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer plans were set to change history and end the war.
After six years of fighting and 60 million people killed globally the dropping of the
two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan ended the last chapter of World War II.
But how did the first bomb get delivered? What horrific event occurred as a result? How did the
USS Indianapolis play such an important role and become infamous in history? And how did
this event become a legal first in U.S. naval history and a major travesty of justice? Hello
i'm Colin Heaton former soldier Marine Corps scout sniper, history professor, historian and book author
and we'll answer these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History.
The bomb was to be delivered to the island of Tinian in the Marianas Islands
by the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis. Lieutenant General Curtis iLeMay was awaiting the delivery.
His best and most trusted pilot Colonel Paul Tibbetts would be the man to drop the first
atomic bomb in the B-29 Enola Gay. The Indianapolis was damaged by a kamikaze fighter which impacted
off the island of Okinawa but it was soon repaired and returned to active service. On
July 15th Vice Admiral William Purnell summoned the indie skipper Captain Charles B McVay III
and informed him of his mission. However neither McVay nor anyone aboard were informed as to
the contents of the shipment. The cargo would be accompanied by two army officers and kept under
armed guard at all times. Before sailing McVay inquired about the tactical situation. He was assured
that there was no enemy surface or submarine activity in the area along his route. McVay
was briefed. "things are very quiet," Commodore James Carter, Commander of the Pacific Fleet's advanced
headquarters told him. "The Japanese are on their last legs and there's nothing to worry about."
The Indianapolis didn't have sonar and was denied destroyer escorts.
the orders were explicit the indianapolis was to maintain strict radio silence no communication
The iIdianapolis traveled from San Francisco to Tinian in only 10 days. The Indy arrived at
Tinian on July 26th. Once they offloaded the top secret shipment Captain McVay stopped at Guam.
Then on July 28th McVay and his crew continued on from Guam to Leyte in the Philippines following
another briefing. The Indianapolis departed Guam for Leyete with McVay confident that he was not
sailing through an active war zone. He had been assured of this. However there had been a submarine
detected several days prior by an american ship but it lost contact. This information was not given
to McVay. Meanwhile Japanese Imperial Navy Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto
commanding the submarine I-58 had been the submarine detective. He was carrying a full load
of torpedoes and two kaitens. These were manned human torpedoes which were driven into enemy ships
basically underwater kamikazes. McVay was given total discretion on his scheme of maneuver. This
meant that he could sail straight ahead or run a zigzag pattern to disrupt any submarine torpedo
attacks, but they were still under strict radio silence orders. On July 30th 1945 McVay and
Hashimoto both had a fateful encounter when I-58 spotted the ship. The following is from Hashimoto's
statement as to the event: "We had the full moon behind us and the enemy ship was not clearly
visible she had two turrets aft in the large tower mast I took her to be an Idaho-class battleship.
The crew were all agog awaiting the order to fire the torpedoes...there was dead silence, quiet.
The favorable moment for firing was approaching. At last in a loud voice i gave the order to stand by,
fire! The torpedo release switch pressed at intervals of two seconds
and then the report came from the torpedo room all tubes fired and correct. Six torpedoes were
speeding fan wise toward the ship. Bringing the boat on to a course parallel with the enemy
we waited anxiously...every minute seemed an age. Then on the starboard side of the enemy by the
forward turret and then the turret afterward there rose columns of water to be followed immediately
by flashes of bright red flame. Then another column of water rose from alongside the number two turret
and seemed to envelop the whole ship. 'A hit! A hit!' I shouted as each torpedo struck home and
the crew danced for joy." The ship had traveled about halfway to Leyte when it was hit by two of
the six torpedoes. The Indianapolis sank in about 12 minutes killing several men outright.
About 300 men went down with the ship including Chief Warrant Officer Leonard Woods
as the bow plunged and Indy listed the starboard 10 20 then 45 degrees. Woods ordered his men to
abandon the radio shack but Woods himself did not move. Instead he stood fast trying to send
an SOS even as Indie headed for the bottom. Of the nearly 1,195 men on board as many as 900 survived
the sinking. They were stranded in shark-infested waters with no supplies aside from life jackets
and a few life rafts. Captain Charles B. McVay III was among the survivors. What the surviving
crew did not know was that the SOS transmission the only reason to violate the radio silence order
never went through. The explosions had destroyed the radio relay system and power generator. The
men suffered from lack of water and dehydration delirium from salt water ingestion and then there
were the sharks. For four days and five nights the men endured the terror of hundreds of sharks
congregating in a feeding frenzy. Men were pulled under the water never to be seen again; others had
limbs bitten off and they bled out. Because of communications errors and other problems
the ship was not reported missing when it failed to arrive in Leyte Gulf as scheduled on July 31st.
Basically the Navy never knew the ship was missing. Four days later help unexpectedly arrived;
the survivors were discovered by accident on August 2nd when they were spotted by a
passing U.S. Naval aircraft. The pilot radioed the report of many men in the water which
alerted a Catalina PBY flying boat that in turn alerted a nearby destroyer the USS Cecil Doyle.
Both the PBY and destroyer worked rescuing sailors throughout the night.
By that time only 316 of the men remained alive to be rescued. The U.S. Government delayed reporting
the tragedy until August 15th 1945, the same day it announced that Japan had agreed to surrender.
But then another injustice was about to unfold. The situation was a major embarrassment for the Navy.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King ordered that McVay be court-martialed
and convicted to the dismay of Admiral Nimitz and others. No american officer in history had
been court-martialed for losing a ship in wartime. McVay's charges were primarily "hazarding his ship
and failing to zigzag or take evasive action to protect his ship and crew." The prosecution
never mentioned that McVay's orders gave him full discretion on how he maneuvered his ship
and the fact that he was not given an accurate threat assessment. In fact McVay had been lied
to. This was perhaps because the navy wanted to avoid revealing that the Japanese Navy's latest
secret code had been broken. The U.S. Government brought Hashimoto to the Washington Naval Yard
as a government witness for the prosecution on december 13th. It was the first time that an
officer of a nation at war with the United States had testified against an officer of the U.S. Navy.
In the court martial Hashimoto testified that the visibility was good on the night of the attack and
he had been able to easily spot the Indianapolis. Hashimoto gave 50 minutes of testimony focused on
whether or not Indianapolis was zig-zagging and he noted the ship did not deviate from its course.
In February 1946 McVay was found guilty of negligence for having failed to steer
the ship on a zigzag course to help evade enemy submarines. The military court recommended clemency
and the sentence of a decrease in seniority was set aside. Upon his retirement in 1949 McVay
was promoted to rear admiral. Many survivors of the tragedy believe that McVay had been scapegoated
by the U.S. Navy. They contended that the captain had been ordered to zigzag only at his discretion
and that poor visibility before the attack made that inadvisable. Hashimoto said quote: "i could
not believe that an American captain could be held responsible for losing his ship. Not even
in Japan would that have occurred, it was war. I felt very bad for him for he was a very nice man."
Charles McVay III lived on racked with guilt over the loss of so many of his men.
Finally in 1968 he took a rifle and sat under a tree and committed suicide. Following a campaign
to clear McVay's name in 2000 the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution exonerating him.
In 2001 the U.S. Navy placed in McVay's record a memorandum noting that the resolution had
absolved him from blame. On December 7 1990 Hashimoto met with a group of USS
Indianapolis survivors in a meeting at Pearl Harbor on the 49th anniversary of the attack.
Hashimoto told Giles McCoy one of the survivors, "I came here to pray with you for your shipmates
whose deaths I caused," to which McCoy apprehensive about the encountering the man who had caused
him so much pain and sorrow but touched by Hashimoto's comment replied, "I forgive you."
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