He was really no more than a boy grown tall when he left school to join the Navy, a broad-shouldered redheaded farm boy with a wide grin and the accent of one born and bred in the red clay knobs. Before he left he married his school sweetheart.
Now, on this day of joy for a world so long at war, his family had received one of the dreaded telegrams edged in black:
Regretfully we inform you. . .
He had been assigned to INDIANAPOLIS.
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INDIANAPOLIS was not reported as overdue to her destination following the disaster. The men who had abandoned ship were left adrift for eighty-four hours before Navy pilots on routine patrol spotted them from the air.
In those eighty-four hours some of them died of wounds and burns sustained when the ship exploded in mighty fireballs. Others succumbed to exhaustion, dehydration and sunburn. They were the lucky ones.
Blood in the water attracted predators more deadly than the Japanese: sharks.
Sharks took many.
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In his later years, the grownup nine-year-old could not recall whether the family ever knew the circumstances of their sailor’s death: if he died as the ship died, if he died of shock and wounds, if the merciless sun and lack of drinkable water dried his insides out beyond endurance, or if he was taken by a cold-eyed killer who spotted an easy meal in the water.
The tombstone bearing his name in the family plot is a cenotaph. It marks no actual grave.
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A disaster like INDIANAPOLIS, coming at the very end of the war, with more men lost in a single incident than in any other involving an American warship, requires explanation. She was no ordinary ship, having once been the flagship of one of the Pacific theater’s legendary naval commanders, Admiral Raymond Spruance. Not to mention the role she had played in ending the war, with that top secret dangerous dash for Tinian with the components of the Hiroshima bomb.
As it transpired, there was more than enough blame to go around. To begin with, there were the three SOS signals sent out in the two minutes before the “abandon ship” order was given. One was ignored by a drunken commander ashore; a second by an officer who had, for whatever reason, given orders that he was not to be disturbed, for any reason short of the Apocalypse, during the crucial period; the third was dismissed as a Japanese prank.
On August 2nd, a pair of Navy pilots spotted the survivors of INDIANAPOLIS below them while on routine patrol. Most were kept afloat by lifejackets (the so-called “Mae Wests” of the era), although some were aboard the few life rafts that had been able to launch in the precious seconds after the explosion. The Navy pilots immediately summoned help from surface craft and air units alike, and over the next five days three hundred sixteen men were located and rescued, some having floated quite a distance from the wreck site.
As it happened, among the survivors was the man who would bear the blame for failures all up and down the chain of command: Captain Charles Butler McVay III, Annapolis graduate (class of 1920) and decorated naval hero. Wounded himself, McVay nevertheless raised hell over why it took so many days for rescue operations to commence for his men.
His answer came in the form of a court-martial, in November 1945. The Navy command, quite simply, lied about many things. They found McVay guilty of what amounted to dereliction of duty: he had failed to move his ship in the zigzag pattern designed to confound attempts by submarines to launch torpedoes. That he had never been notified of Japanese submarine activity in the area and in fact had orders to take evasive action at his discretion based on observation was waved aside. Moreover, the survivors and other personnel testified that visibility on July 30 was not good, poor conditions for spotting subs; yet the Navy claimed the exact opposite. The ship itself, with no anti-sub equipment, was denied the customary destroyer escort. Even the commander of the sub whose torpedoes sank INDIANAPOLIS testified on McVay’s behalf, giving the lie to the Navy’s contentions.
For the sins of others, McVay was convicted and reprimanded. Although he would eventually be promoted to rear admiral, his career was effectively ruined.
And worse was to come.
to be continued
Okay this is getting really good. Let me know when part III arrives.
Thank you! And round about this same time tomorrow– 🙂 ~~Fair
I seem to come across this story periodically……it’s a good one and I always am glad to see it again……thanks, much….will be looking for the continuation…..
Thanks, Sturge–round about the same time tomorrow–glad you stopped by! 🙂 ~~Fair
Nice job Fair , a grim tale told well. And a beautiful look you have on the walls here.
Thanks, Cbob. This one’s always given me shivers, since it has a hometown connection (to be revealed). And thanks–this setting seems to suit my “style” such as it is– 🙂
i always figure that death by shark has got to be among the most gruesome of ways to go…….gives me a largesize shudder to think of it…
Me too, Sturge. There’s something in that glassy cold stare and the thought of those teeth–BRRRRR!
Not to mention that I’m the world’s biggest weinie about blood–
Good afternoon, Fair. I am, as so often happens these days, the victim of Internet gremlins this afternoon. But I got here, anyway, so it’s working in part, although mostly without graphics. Never fear, however, I finally figured out a way to prove whose problem it is, so things are looking up.
Anyway, I don’t know whether I’ve asked you this before, but WHY was the Indianapolis not reported missing after the disaster occurred? Didn’t a ship like that maintain regular radio contact with other ships or bases that it passed by?
And don’t you think the irony is pretty thick that it was the ship that delivered the bomb that was destroyed? Almost like fate, in some ways. A sort of a rough equalizer, maybe.
I’d compliment the walls here, too, but the graphics won’t load. LoL
Hopefully, the gremlins will resolve themselves in short order. If not, back to my iPhone for most purposes. And no photos today, which is a crying shame, as you shall see. 😉
Good for you! Always a good thing when you can catch the gremlins in the act–or something– 😉
To be perfectly honest, I have never run across anything that seems to pinpoint a specific reason why Indianapolis wasn’t reported missing until several days after she was due in the Philippine theater. It seems inadequate to say there was an epic fail from the bottom right up to the top of the chain of command, but it seems that was it–that nobody, for God knows what reason, noticed she was no longer in radio contact. There were other instances where ships or subs were lost under conditions where, for whatever reason, radio silence was imposed, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case here. The thing that’s always struck me as the most sinister is that thing about no destroyer escort–
WWII was, like all wars, full of ironies. That the ship that delivered the bomb was destroyed is just one of the sadder ones–
Hi Fair, such a great story…Lord willing, I’ll tune in tomorrow for part 3.
Hang in there–hope you’re feeling a bit better tonight? love ya– ~~Fair
Thank’s Fair. I do feel some better today, I’ve been baking and trying to clean the house a little. love you
Dang. Wish it was cool enough here to bake–I’d love to do some of my applesauce raisin bread, but that’s probably gonna be another six weeks or so off– 😦 🙂 ~~Fair
Well, Keith keeps the house pretty cool here, I cover up alot when I’m just sitting around and you guessed… with my wonderful ocean afghan you made me. It’s a little worn but still beautiful.
I wondered if you still have that! I’ve got some of that yarn just now, making squares for Shel’s Share a Square project. I may make “oceans of love” tags to go with them– 🙂 ~~Fair
That sounds very nice! You’ll have to show me the tag sometime, do you paint a picture on them or what?
I haven’t done them yet. Now that you mention it, I could do something in colored pencil & ink on them– ~~Fair
Oh yes, that sounds pretty!!! let me see okay?
Will do! Still trying to find something to make the tag on. 🙂 ~~Fair