SYMHC Classics: Unearthed! USS Indianapolis

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Today's the anniversary of the USS Indianapolis being struck by a torpedo during World War Two. That happened on July, so we're bringing out our episode on the Indianapolis is our Saturday Classic today. We originally released this on December seventeen as part of our Unearthed series because the wreck of the Indianapolis had just been found. You can hear from our discussion of that how the number of Unearthed episodes has increased since then. And just in case that name doesn't immediately ring a bell, this is the incident that comes up during the movie Jaws, in which the ship's survivors wound up waiting for rescue for days in shark infested waters. So just f y if that's a little too heavy for your Saturday. We're not gonna begrudge anybody who saves it for later. No, it's a it's a wrenching story in a lot of ways, but here he goes. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. It is time to kick off Unearthed Season on a show a lot of people's favorite season. The things people tell us so they're favorites are pretty much Halloween and Unearthed. So as is as we do every year and now also once in the summer, we're going to spend a couple of upcoming episodes recapping things that were either literally or figuratively unearthed in But as has also happened a few times in the past, we've got a big one that's related to a historical event that we have not covered on the show before. Over the last few years, we've gotten requests to talk about the USS Indianapolis from Margaret Brandy, Sarah, Shawn, Heidi, and Craig among I am sure other people. If you have ever seen Jaw, you have heard of this. So this is part of our Unearthed series this year because a team led by Microsoft co founder Paul Allen actually located the wreckage of the Indianapolis this year, after which point we got so many media emails about it. There were a lot people uh huh. So today, the USS Indianapolis is most known for its cruise horrifying wait for rescue after being torpedoed following a secret mission at the end of World War two. But the ship's history goes back much farther than that. It started out as a peacetime vessel before being active in the Pacific for much of the war, participating in multiple combat engagements and earning ten Battle stars before its destruction. All the way back in the U. S. Department of the Navy decided that it's thirty five cruiser would be named the USS Indianapolis. The New York Ship Building Company laid its keel and cam in New Jersey on March n then construction of the Portland class heavy cruiser continued into ninety one. It was launched on November seven of that year and then officially commissioned at Philadelphia Navy Yard on November fifteenth, nineteen thirty two. During its years of peacetime service, the USS Indianapolis was an important ship in the U. S. Naval Fleet. President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected it as his Ship of State in nineteen thirty three, using it for maritime travel and diplomatic visits throughout his time in office, including his nineteen thirty six Good Neighbor Cruise to South America. In addition to the President, the ship was frequently host to dignitaries, royalty, and other high profile visitors, and it became the flagship of the Scouting Force. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December seven, ninety one, the Indianapolis was at Johnson Atoll also known as Kalama Atoll conducting bombarding exercises, so it escaped the destruction of so much of the rest of the fleet at Pearl Harbor and then joined the unsuccessful effort to try to hunt down the Japanese attack force. With the US at war, the Indianapolis continued to operate in the Pacific, starting in the frigid waters off the coast of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign. Apart from returns to Port for overhauls and refitting, the Indianapolis spent most of its time in the North Pacific and saw combat several times, including sinking the Japanese transport Okagana Maru on February nineteenth nine. After another refitting later in nineteen forty three, the Indianapolis was named flagship of the Fifth Fleet and moved to Hawaii. The ship again saw reputed combat in the Pacific, now in the much warmer waters of the South Pacific headed towards Japan. This included being part of the Battle of the Philippine Sea in nineteen forty four, which was nicknamed the Mariannae Turkey Shoot because of the number of Japanese planes that were shot down around the Marianna's islands during that time. At the beginning of nineteen forty five, the Indianapolis became part of the task force that attacked Japan's outlying islands, participating in numerous assaults from January through March, including providing support and cover for strikes on Iwajima, qu Shu, Honshu, and Okinawa. On March thirty one, ninety five, the Indianapolis was hit by a Kamakazi plane and heavily damaged. Nine men were killed and about thirty injured in the attack, but the ship was able to return to Mayor Island Naval Shipyard northeast of San Francisco under its own power that arrived at the shipyard in late April. While in dry dock at Mayor Island, the Indianapolis again, in addition to the repairs, underwent refitting and updates. At this point, the United States was nearing completion of the Atomic bombs that would be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A crew of scientists and researchers were already the on Tinnian Island in the Northern Mariana Islands doing the final work. There's more on the development of the atomic bomb in our past two parter on Luis Alvarez, who was on board one of the aircraft escorting the Anola Gay when the bomb was dropped and was at this point on Tinnian Island. There were still bomb components on the US mainland that needed to be taken to Tinnian Island. This included the firing mechanism and nuclear material for the bomb code named Little Boy, which would be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August. This made the Indianapolis is time in dry docks somewhat conveniently timed. With an accelerated repair schedule, the Indianapolis could pick up the components as cargo and deliver them to Tinnyan Island without the Navy needing to recall another ship from combat to make that trip. The firing mechanism was packed in a fifteen foot or four and a half meter crate, which was bolted to the hangar deck. In transit. The uranium two thirty five nuclear material was packed into two separate leadline containers weighing hundreds of pounds. These were secured to the deck and the Admiral's quarters to scientists also came aboard for the mission disguised as artillery officers. The Captain Charles B. McVeigh the third knew they were on a secret mission that was critical to the war effort, but he did not know what was actually in those containers. The same was true of the ship's crew, and this led to a lot of ridiculous rumors about what they were carrying in those large, heavy containers, with expensive luxuries for General MacArthur, including a crate of scented toilet paper. As one of the running themes or theories, the Indianapolis stayed close to its maximum speed of thirty two knots while on this delivery mission. It actually broke a speed record that still stands for a ship of its type today. In the process of doing that, they arrived at Tennian Island on July, delivered that critical cargo, and then headed south to Guam to receive new orders. Two days later, the Indianapolis left Guam, headed to the Late Gulf to rendezvous with the U. S. S Idaho, where the two ships were to undergo gun to repractice. And while there were men on board the Indianapolis who had been with the ship for most of the war, more than a quarter of the crew had turned over while in dry dock at Mayor Island. Overwhelmingly, these were inexperienced new recruits in their late teens, and because of the ship's accelerated repair schedule, their training time in San Francisco had also been cut short. So Captain McVeigh was really focused on getting to Laity quickly and efficiently to give his crew as much as much training time as possible. After all, they had no idea that they had just delivered necessary components for one of the two bombs that would be credited with ending the war. Everyone aboard the Indianapolis was working under the understanding that they were getting ready for a full scale land invasion of Japan. McVeigh wanted them to have enough training to be able to succeed at that invasion. There's a lack of consensus about whether McVeigh asked for a destroyer escort when he left Guam. According to some accounts, he did, but was denied because the Navy didn't think there were Japanese threats along that route. But according to others, McVeigh himself didn't believe there was a threat, so he did not request an escort. But either way, the Indianapolis proceeded toward late alone. There was a Japanese submarine along the route that the Indianapolis was taking, the I fifty eight, which fired a spread of six torpedoes at the Indianapolis just after midnight on July. At least two of them hit. It's commonly reported as too, but it is possible that there were other hits, and we'll talk more about what happened after the ship was torpedoed after a quick sponsor break, when two torpedoes struck the U S S. Indianapolis on July, the result was immediate and devastating, and the words of Captain McVeigh quote, at approximately five minutes after midnight, I was thrown from my emergency cabin bunk on the bridge by a very violent explosion, followed shortly thereafter by another explosion. I went to the bridge and noticed in my emergency cabin and chart house that there was quite a bit of accurate white smoke. I couldn't see anything for just a few moments. The captain thought they might stay afloat from his position on the bridge. They had only a slight list, and it seemed reasonably similar to what they'd survived with the kamikaze attack. But the executive officer, Commander Joseph Flynn, surveyed the scene and told the captain it was clear the ship was going down. One of the torpedoes had destroyed part of the ship's bow, the other had hit near a powder magazine and bunkers that held fuel oil. Apart from this colossal damage, the ship's power and communication systems were down. There was no way to broadcast an announcement to abandoned ship or to reach the engine room with an order to stop the engines, so the captain gave the order to pass the word to abandon ship, which had to be done from man to man. McVeigh had also asked the navigator to confirm that a distress signal had been sent. Having not heard back from him, the captain tried to go to the radio room to double check personally, but as he did, the ship suddenly listed to ninety degrees and began to sink so rapidly that there was no possible way to get there. It's still unclear exactly what happened with that distress signal. Survivors who were in the radio room have insisted that according to their gauges, a signal did leave the ship, but no message was ever received. One hypothesis is that an s OS did go out, but that the signal was so short before communication failed that anyone hearing it concluded that it was just some kind of interference or an errant transmission. About twelve minutes after being hit, the USS Indianapolis sunk. About three hundred men had been killed immediately or otherwise went down with the ship, but of the one thousand, one nine sailors and marines on board, the vast majority between eight and nine hundred were able to evacuate before the ship went down. Since the ship was still moving as it sank and men were still escaping the whole time it was going down, Survivors were spread over miles and miles of water. The ship's destruction left a slick of fuel oil on the water it burned the eyes of the men who landed in it or came up through it, and it caused vomiting and anyone who swallowed it. And because it spread so far across the surface of the water, it was nearly impossible to get away from for anybody who was caught in it. Captain McVeigh and a handful of other men were relatively fortunate. They wound up in the water close to a few life rafts, some of them capsized that they were able to use, but most of the emergency supplies above a board the rafts were gone or ruined, so matches and first aid kits had been packed in paraffin infused cardboard that disintegrated, and most of the drinking water was no longer podible because the containers were leaky and seawater had gotten in. The men did, however, have a few cans of spam, a couple of signal mirrors, and some signaling flares. Most of the other men, though, were in a much worse situation. They had virtually no food or water, apart from a few supply cans and emergency rations that were either taken off the ship or found among the very few life rafts that had deployed, they had no way to protect themselves from the heat or the sun. There was little to nothing that could be done to treat injuries that were incurred in the blast or the evacuation. Many of the men had no life jackets or belts, and even for those who did, nearly all of them were kapok jackets that were only really designed to work for about forty eight hours, and after that they became water logged and they didn't have enough buoyancy to keep a person's head above water. The belts were pneumatics, so they didn't have that issue, but they had another problem. If they slipped too far down on a person's body, they could basically force them to flip over with their head under water, and it became a constant effort simply to stay afloat. For the first couple of days, the men tried to work together and protect each other as best they could, forming groups trying to rescue whether survivors they saw, and using things like cargo netting and rope to try to group themselves together. But as time went on, conditions got progressively worse. Eight to ten foot swells meant that the various groups of survivors couldn't see or reach one another. People by themselves often didn't know there was someone else not far away in the swells, and it was physically exhausting to be in all of that. Men who became desperate from thirst drink seawater, which made their dehydration rapidly worse. Hundreds of men died due to dehydration, salt poisoning, injury, exposure, and drowning. Dehydrated, exhausted, traumatized men also started experiencing hallucinations, swimming away from the group because they believed that they saw an island, or attacking their fellows because they thought they were enemy combatants. And the thing that has become most anonymous with the USS Indianapolis sharks. For McVeigh and his group in the life raft, these were mainly a nuisance. They had an undamaged fishing kit, but a large shark kept scaring away any fish that they might catch with it. For the men in life jackets who were floating in the water, the sharks became both a threat and a terror. The sharks mainly fed on the dead and dying, but they were easily visible through the clear water by day, and then they brushed past the submerged parts of men's bodies by night. Survivors would go on to describe being surrounded by fins in the water, or seeing other men's life jackets suddenly submerged, with parts of their bodies resurfacing later, or of hearing sudden, blood curdling screams nearby or in the distance. Captain Lewis L. Haines, chief medical officer, was with one of the larger groups who were floating in the water and tried to render aid to the other men, even though he had no supplies or medicines to do it with. At first, he also collected the dog tags of all the men who died, but eventually he just had more of them than he could possibly hold. When the U S S. Indianapolis didn't arrive at late he is scheduled on July one, it wasn't noted as missing, its name was removed from the arrivals board, and the next shift didn't realize that it hadn't actually arrived. Meanwhile, the surviving men spent days in the water, at first praying and holding onto hope that their s O S had been received, and then thinking surely the Navy would come looking for them when they didn't show up at late on time, but since no one realized the Indianapolis was missing, no one was searching. The survivors of the USS Indianapolis were spotted only by coincidence. On August two, ninet, well over a hundred hours after the ship had gone down. By chance, Lieutenant Wilbert Chuck Gwyn, flying on a routine patrol, looked down from his plane and spotted something unusual in the water. He flew lower to investigate and saw wreckage and survivors scattered along a huge stretch of ocean. Gwyn radioed back to base and Lieutenant Adrian Marks was dispatched aboard a p By flying boat, a seaplane capable of landing on water. He wasn't supposed to land the plane in the open sea, but when he saw the men in the water, he did, ultimately pulling fifty six men aboard, including loading them onto the wings to get as many out of the water as possible. Sadly, there were men so desperate to get to the plane that they exhausted themselves on the way and drowned. Marx had also flown over the U. S. S Cecil Jade Doyle on the way to where Gwen had reported spotting these survivors, and he radioed the destroyer to notify them of what he was doing. The Doyle came to the survivor's aid, becoming the first of eleven ships to be part of the searchain rescue effort. The captain and his group were picked up by the USS ringness Because of the swells in the sea, they had no idea there were any other survivors until later. They didn't know anything about Gwin spotting them or the flying boat rescue. The ships that came to the rescue deployed landing craft to pull men out of the water. Those who were able also clung to rope ladders on the sides of ships and were pulled aboard. Overwhelmingly, due the combination of hunger, dehydration, and all that time in the water, they just could not stand. Those who had to be lifted aboard had to be pulled by their life jackets because their skin and flesh were so damaged. At that point, the men being rescued had been in the water for four and a half days. Fuel oil had to be carefully removed from their skin and hair, and for many of them, Their oil soaked and salt laden clothes had to be cut off of them, and the end of the roughly eight hundred fifty men who went into the water when the Indianapolis When the Indianapolis sank, only three hundred seventeen survived. You'll also see this number as three hundred sixteen, including in official Navy records. This is apparently a discrepancy that has gone on for decades. The reason is reportedly that radio technicians second class clearance William Donner was incorrectly reported as deceased, but survived survivors were taken to bases in the Philippines before being sent on to Guam by plane and aboard the hospital ship Tranquility. More ships returned to the area on August four, but no one else was found alive. The few bodies that were recovered were buried at sea. We'll talk more about the aftermath of this disaster and the discovery of the wreckage this year. After one more quick sponsor break, the survivors of the U S s. Indianapolis were allowed to write letters home from glam although, as is the usual case in wartime correspondence, their letters were censored. They were also told to write as though nothing had happened to the Indianapolis. There was no announcement that the ship had been destroyed or notification of the families of the deceased for weeks. On August six, the Anola Gate dropped the atomic bomb assembled using the components delivered by the U s s Indianapolis on Hiroshima, Japan. On August nine, the US dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Japan announced its unconditional surrender on August fourteen. Only then was the destruction of the Indianapolis made public, and families were finally notified of their loved ones deaths. By that point, an inquiry and to the cause of the disaster was the greatest loss of life at sea in US naval history had already begun. Captain Charles Butler McVeigh the third was court martialed. He was acquitted of a charge of failing to issue a timely order to abandon ship, but he was found guilty of failing to zigzag. It was a standard procedure to steer the ship in an evasive zigzag course in waters where a submarine attack was likely. McVeigh had done so during the day, but he had stopped at night due to weather conditions because he needed to conserve fuel to reach late on schedule. While also zig zagging, he would have needed to travel at a faster speed that just wasn't fuel efficient. He basically had contradictory orders here to simultaneously zigzag and conserve fuel, and it like it wasn't possible to do both of those things at the same time. This court martial was highly publicized, and it included the testimony of Moti Sara Hashimoto, captain of the who said it would not have mattered if the Indianapolis had zigzagged, he would have hit the ship anyway. This court martial was and continues to be highly controversial. Overwhelmingly, survivors of the U. S s. Indianapolis have maintained that McVeigh was a good man and a good captain and that he had done nothing wrong, arguing that it was within his discretion not to zigzag that night. McVeigh had also continued to act as captain for the handful of men that were with him in the life rafts, bolstering their morale, rationing their food, and signaling any planes that they saw with mirrors and flares. He also sent letters to the families of his eight hundred seventy nine deceased crew. In September of another circumstances, McVeigh might have faced a letter of reprimand, and it's still not fully clear why the Navy instead pursued a widely covered court martial. One of the hypotheses that it came down to someone's personal grudge against mcveigh's father, who was also career military for Guardless, though even though McVeigh was not punished, the fact that he was found guilty meant that in the eyes of many people, especially the family members of men who did not survive, it was his fault and he should carry all of the blame. To be clear, Captain McVeigh was ultimately responsible for the safety of this ship. This was his job. He knew this and accepted it, and he didn't try to deflect the blame or pass the buck. He took full responsibility for the decision not to zigzag. But simultaneously, the Navy didn't show that same level of accountability in return, for many years pinning the entire disaster on the failure to zigzag, even though that did not at all explain the more than four days that survivors were left waiting in the water. There's also been ongoing speculation about whether the Navy did or did not know that there was likely to be a Japanese sub between Quam and Laity, whether they withheld that information from McVeigh if they did know, and whether the secrecy of their mission contributed to the breakdown in communication in reporting the ship missing. Captain Charles B. McVeigh retired in nineteen forty nine and was promoted to rear admiral, although he was never given command of another ship. On November six, nineteen sixty eight, he took his own life. In October of two thousand, Congress passed a resolution that McVeigh should be exonerated for the loss of the Indianapolis, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, and two thousand one, a memo was placed in his personnel file absolving him of blame. This action by Congress took place after years of advocacy by survivors of the Indianapolis and their families. Then thirteen year old Hunter Scott came to the public's attention after doing a school history project on the Indianapolis, which became something of a viral news story. Also involved was Commander William J. Tody, who commanded a submarine called the USS Indianapolis. When the submarine Indianapolis was decom isstioned, Tody invited the survivors of the cruiser Indianapolis to attend the ceremony, since they had not been able to decommission their own ship. Tody became an advocate for clearing mcveigh's name. Commander moch Sarah Hashimoto also wrote to the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee during all of this, saying, quote, our people's have forgiven each other for that terrible war. Perhaps it is time your people's forgave captain McVeigh for the humiliation of his unjust conviction. Although there are still questions and criticisms of how the Navy handled the aftermath of the Indianapolis is Sinking, especially in regard to Captain McVeigh. After the ship's loss, it did adjust procedures for ship escorts, life saving equipment, and reporting procedures to try to prevent something similar from ever happening again, which brings us to why this is in our Unearthed series. On August it was announced that a civilian research team had located the wreck of the U S sus Indianapolis. Although this is a civilian project, historians from the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, d C were involved as well. Leading, as we said at the top of the show, was Paul G. Allen, who co founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and has put a chunk of his resulting wealth into various philanthropic efforts. The discovery was made from Allen's research vessel, the RV Petrol. It's a two hundred and fifty foot that's seventy six vessel capable of diving to a depth of six thousand meters. It's a little more than nineteen thousand feet and the researchers aboard the Petrol found the ship in water about five thousand, five hundreds, or eighteen thousand feet deep. Often the discovery of wreckage like this takes some time to authenticate, but in this case, the wreckage has been protected from sunlight and it's in a spot on the seafloor that doesn't have a lot of currents, so it is incredibly well preserved. There is very little marine growth or corrosion on the surface of the ship. The number thirty five remember this was the thirty five cruiser is clearly visible on the whole and supply boxes are still legible and visibly marked with the USS Indianapolis. Paul Allen's team wasn't at all the first to look for the ship. One reason that earlier efforts had failed was that they were looking in the wrong place. Although Allied intelligence did recover a transmission from the Japanese submarine if confirming the kill, that message didn't specify what ship had been sunk, and the Allies didn't recover information saying exactly where. Commander Mochusura Hashimoto also destroyed his records before surrendering at the end of the war. So initial searches for the wreckage we're working off the idea of where the ship would have been along Convoy Root Petty if it was traveling exactly on that route, which was what it was following from Guam to Laity, and also exactly on schedule. But as it turns out it was it it was slightly off the convoy route and slightly ahead of schedule. Both of these were well within the captain's discretion, and as we discussed earlier, he was trying to make good time for late for training purposes for his crew. This new information about the Indianapolis position is a recent discovery in the Naval History and Heritage Command decided to review the case of the Indianapolis to see if any new information came to light and to make sure the Navy's in the public's understanding of the disaster was accurate. This review uncovered a Memorial Day blog post John Murdick did about his father, Francis G. Murdick. John Murdick told the story of his father having been stationed on a tank landing ship or LST that passed by the Indianapolis before it was sunk, and how thankful he was that his father's ship hadn't met the same fate. Historians followed the bread crumb from Francis G. Murdick to the LST he was stationed on to the l S. T. S Log, and although the log did not mention the Indianapolis directly, it did include a lot of other data about where it was and what it was doing, along with weather and sea conditions, and so they crossed referenced this with an oral history from Captain Charles B. McVeigh, which was already on the record in which he mentioned communicating with an LST in the hours before the torpedo attack. So by cross referencing this data and the LST log and the LST s log with mcveigh's description, historians figured out a more precise location for where the ship had probably gone down. Alan and others then put that information to use in their searches and the press releases about this discovery. They actually alluded to a project by National Geographic when it turned out to be Paul Allen who found it. UH twenty two survivors of the Indianapolis were still living as of August. When that discovery was announced, reactions from survivors and their families were really pretty mixed. Captain William J. To, speaking for the survivors, said, quote to a man, they have longed for the day when their ship would be found, solving their final mystery. But there are family members of men who died who were also quoted as saying that this discovery was quite painful and they had actually hoped it would never be found. At this point. The side of the wreck is considered to be a military grave site, so its exact location was reported only to the Navy and any exploration and survey of the site has to be done without disturbing it. There is a lot of footage from the wreckage that you can watch online, including a PBS special called USS Indianapolis Live from the Deep, and we will link to that in our show notes. There's also documentary called USS Indianapolis The Legacy that's pretty much all interviews with survivors and their families and the family members of the deceased. Uh If you are interested in this, it is highly worth watching, and I will say parts of it are devastating. UH So watching this with your handkerchief and just be ready for the emotional to bring tissues. I watched it at my desk. Thany so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at I heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen. To podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.