The narrator of this account happens to be my Uncle Joe. I remember as a kid, listening to his tales of battle in awe. I'm so glad someone preserved his account. Ordinary men doing extraordinary things.
Uncle Joe and Auntie Lue - 1941.
Posted on 07/30/2013 5:49:37 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
When USS Indianapolis was hit by Japanese torpedoes in the final weeks of WWII, hundreds of crewmen jumped into the water to escape the burning ship. Surrounded by sharks, they waited for a response to their SOS. But no one had been sent to look for them.
In late July 1945, USS Indianapolis had been on a special secret mission, delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to the Pacific Island of Tinian where American B-29 bombers were based. Its job done, the warship, with 1,197 men on board, was sailing west towards Leyte in the Philippines when it was attacked.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Thanks For This Historical Gem Hadn”T Come Across This One Yet.
The narrator of this account happens to be my Uncle Joe. I remember as a kid, listening to his tales of battle in awe. I'm so glad someone preserved his account. Ordinary men doing extraordinary things.
Uncle Joe and Auntie Lue - 1941.
McVay, was wounded but survived and was among those rescued. He repeatedly asked the Navy why it took five days to rescue his men, and he 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 it was thought by one commander to be a Japanese ruse, another had given orders not to be disturbed, and a third was drunk.[citation needed]There was much controversy over the incident.[citation needed] In November 1945, McVay was court-martialed and convicted of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag." Hashimoto, the Japanese submarine commander who had sunk the 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 the 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.[2] Despite that testimony, the official ruling was that visibility was good, and the court held McVay responsible for failing to zigzag.
An additional point of controversy is evidence that the admirals in the United States Navy were primarily responsible for placing the ship in harm's way. For instance, Captain McVay requested a destroyer escort for the Indianapolis, but his request was denied because the priority for destroyers at the time was escorting transports to Okinawa, and picking up downed pilots in B-29 raids on Japan. Also, naval command assumed McVay's route would be safe at that point in the war.[2] Many ships, including most destroyers, were equipped with submarine detection equipment, but the Indianapolis was not so equipped, which casts the decision to deny McVay's request for an escort as a tragic mistake.
On 24 July 1945, just six days prior to the sinking of the Indianapolis, the destroyer Underhill had been attacked and sunk in the area by Japanese submarines. Yet McVay was never informed of this event, and several others, in part due to issues of classified intelligence.[2] McVay was warned of the potential presence of Japanese subs, but not of the actual confirmed activity.
After the torpedo attack, no rescue was initiated, because the Navy did not track the Indianapolis.[3]
Although 700 ships of the U.S. Navy were lost in combat in World War II, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed for the loss of his ship.[1]
It was widely felt[by whom?] that he had been a fall guy for the Navy.[4] Despite the fact McVay was promoted to rear admiral when he retired in 1949, the conviction effectively ended McVay's career.
On 6 November 1968, McVay committed suicide by shooting himself with his service revolver at his home in Litchfield, Connecticut, holding in his hand a toy sailor given to him by his father.[5] He was found just outside of his back porch by his gardener.[6] Though a note was not left, McVay was known by those close to him to have suffered from loneliness, particularly after losing his wife to cancer.[7] McVay also struggled throughout his life from vicious letters and phone calls he periodically received from grief-stricken relatives of dead crewmen aboard the Indianapolis.[7]
Quint’s speech was the inspiration for a young boy who eventually got Captain McVay exonerated.
June the 29th, 1945? That should be July the 29th, 1945.
I think it was part of both. In the series I cited earlier, a survivor said once a doctor was called over to a man, he would open his eyelids and say “he’s gone” They would remove his lifejacket as it was needed, the dead sailor would sink and the survivor described it as “shark meat” There are also other accounts where they would hear a sailor scream and be gone.
Also, several hundred were killed or later died from the initial hits. Two torpedoes hit, but the second one apparently was a direct one, and into the magazine area. It was a very hot night in the Western Pacific, and many chose to sleep on deck instead of their oven bunks. Thus the direct hit killed many as a result.
You are right, it should be...
I didn't write the Speech.
Is his account included in any books about the sinking of the Juneau - similar to “Tin Can Navy” stories of those naval battles?
Thanks for the additional details. I sure didn’t mean to make light of the manner of the sailors’s deaths. Dead is dead, be it drowning, shark or otherwise. The movie JAWS leaves people with the impression that sharks were just feasting in a frenzy on surviving sailors for days. The detailed show I watched about it left a very different impression. Like you said, guys would just take the life preserver off a goner and he would just sink down to where the sharks would scavenge on him.
Terrible in any event.
I’m not aware of any.
Mornin’ ;-{)
I thought I'd sleep well, b/c of all the paddling we did yesterday.........but no. Heh. :D
No problem, I didn’t think you were making light of it. Yeah, when I first heard the story I too was under the impression the sharks were the biggest threats. It was as you said the days of exposure, lack of water/food, and the stress of it all.
I couldn’t begin to imagine the horror of it all, it creeped me out just to watch 15 minutes on “Last Days of WWII”
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