"They don't hardly talk about it in the history books..." USS Indianapolis

[elehhhhna]

My Father-inlaw had two --yes two!--childhood friends survive the sinking of the Indianapolis. Proud to say they were guests at my Wedding. These men were 18 years old when the worst Naval disaster (and coverup) in US history struck.

Nightmare at sea
Sixty years ago USS Indianapolis suffered unforgettable ordeal
By JOHN W. GONZALEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES
Map: USS Indianapolis Struck



Sixty years after he narrowly avoided death in the U.S. Navy's worst sea disaster, World War II veteran Loel Dene "L.D." Cox is haunted by a dream.

He's with buddies somewhere — the faces and places change from night to night — and suddenly they disappear.

"I turn around and they're gone. I hunt for them, and I may accidently find one of them, and I lose him again," he said. "It's that way every night."

The nightmare forces the 79-year-old West Texan to relive an unforgettable ordeal. Cox was among 316 survivors of the sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis between Guam and the Philippines on July 30, 1945.

Of the 1,199 crewmen, about 900 lived through a Japanese submarine attack, but they abandoned ship in shark-infested waters and were left for dead until rescuers arrived almost five days later.

By then, nearly 600 more crewmen had perished. In all, about 880 Indianapolis sailors and Marines lost their lives.

"They don't hardly talk about it in the history books. They talk more about Marilyn Monroe than the Indianapolis and it's a crying shame," Cox said last week.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3287250

[ET Awful]

1. Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief.

It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know, 'cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh-huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's ... kinda like 'ol squares in a battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark would go for nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got ... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and in spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost 100 men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe 1,000. I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bo'sun's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well ... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He'd a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, 1,100 men went in the water, 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

[TahitiNut]

2. Yep. 'Jaws'

:shrug:

[Oreo]

3. Where is that text from?

I've seen several shows on this terrible event but that was chilling.

[ET Awful]

4. Jaws :)

Quint's monologue, as voiced by Robert Shaw.

Note: They used the wrong date in the movie, the events actually occurred at the end of July.

[theboss]

6. Didn't Shaw write that himself?

That's such a great scene.

[elehhhhna]

12. It's a mystery:

This section in particular has provoked arguments over its author. Input came from writer/film-maker John Milius, Howard Sackler and Robert Shaw, but quite how to divide the praise between them is an unfathomable mystery.
http://www.homecinemachoice.com/articles/hccarticles/miscarticles/200008Jaws/200008Jaws.php

[elehhhhna]

8. Bless Robert Shaw for acting that part and thank YOU for posting

the sololiquy from the script (from memory?! How?)

The first I'd heard of the story ws when viewing Jaws. It always fascinated me--it was true, it was an eye-opener on our perfect government (the coverup and Captains trial was a travesty) and it was certainly macabre enough to be interesting.

5 years after our wedding (1990?) I was watching a Discovery Channel special on the sinking and yelled to Hubs "Hey, you should watch this--it's a fascinating part of history!". He yelled "Honey, Bob Kuryla and blah-blah-so&so (his parent's card-club buddies and lifelong friends) were ON that ship!" Me; "Yeah right." Next thing ya know there they are interviewing Bob.

Wow.

Harrowing.

[ET Awful]

10. Hehehe, it wasn't from memory.

It was just a quick Google search :).

[FreedomAngel82]

15. Neat

Does this still come on the history channel? I like stuff like that myself. :)

[tsuki]

5. My father's best friend survived the Indianapolis. He went to the

reunions for many years. He said the Navy was full of *. They were running under wartime conditions even tho VJ Day had come.

[elehhhhna]

9. What's his last name? What else does he say?

[tsuki]

20. Philips. He died many years ago.

He was there when they courtmartialed the Captain. Only the Japanese subcommander was allowed to testify. They would have killed him then if they could've gotten close to him. He torpedoed the ship after VJ, but the crew said the Captain was running wartime. The Japanese Commander said not. The crew, according to Huie, remained loyal to the Captain. (The Captain's career was ruined and, I believe, he later committed suicide.)

They were picked up almost by mistake. The real snafu was that San Diego did not monitor when they were supposed to return (they were overdue.) A seaplane spotted them in the water. The plane saw a big shadow and thought it might be something like a slick. It was the survivors that had tried to lash together.

Huie had problems with his skin for all his life.

[RamboLiberal]

22. It was before VJ Day

At 14 minutes past midnight, on 30 July 1945, midway between Guam and Leyte Gulf, she was hit by two torpedoes out of six fired by the I-58, a Japanese submarine. The first blew away the bow, the second struck near midship on the starboard side adjacent to a fuel tank and a powder magazine. The resulting explosion split the ship to the keel, knocking out all electric power. Within minutes she went down rapidly by the bow, rolling to starboard.

http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm

We dropped the Hiroshima bomb August 6th, the Nagasaki bomb August 9th. Japanese surrendered August 15th, VJ Day.

[tsuki]

24. Huie always claimed it was after. I must admit that I don't know. It

was a bad time for him. Sometimes it would well up, and he would gush. As children, we listened and didn't. Then after the Captain died, he stopped going to Indianapolis for the reunions and did not talk about it again. But he was dang sure none of his children would end up in VietNam.

[BiggJawn]

7. Cover-up by the Navy.

They fucked-up and didn't bother to list the Indy as "overdue" for an inexplicable period of time. And i don't buy the "secret mission" excuse, either. Lot of ball-dropping and just plain fuck-ups that left them with their asses showing (it's like the "Indianapolis" never existed, for all the efforts they made searching for it), so in order to try and wash their hands of it, they decided to hang the WHOLE thing on Capt. McVay.
They even had the submarine captain who torpedoed him testify at the Courts Martial! Witness for the Prosecution. NEVER in US military history had they had an enemy soldier/sailor testify for the prosecution.

McVay was convicted of "Hazarding his ship by failing to zig-zag", even though Hashimoto claimed at the trial that zig-zagging would not have saved the Indy. (awful damn sure of his shooting, wasn't he?)

The Navy FINALLY exonerated Capt. McVay of any wrong-doing in 2001, but that was too late, since McVay had committed suicide in 1968. People used to write him letters blaming him personally for the death of family members lost to the Navy's fuck-up. I can imagine that wears on a man.

[elehhhhna]

11. The JAPANESE naval commander testified that h'ed have hit the

ship whethre it was zig-zagging or not, and they STILL found him guilty! How f'd up is THAT? This was the only captain EVER convicted of losing his ship during wartime!

The survivors lobbied to overturn McV's conviction.

Clinton approved it, IIRC.

[BiggJawn]

14. No, the Navy refused to overturn the conviction.

He was finally exonerated of Fault, but there has NEVER been, in the history of the US Navy, a Courts Martial conviction or ruling overturned.
And they're not inclined to start.

There was a Senate resolution that expressd "The Sense of The Senate" that he had been wrongly convicted, but while a nice sentiment, the conviction still remains like a huge ink blot on McVay's record.

[FreedomAngel82]

16. That poor man

:(

[knitter4democracy]

13. There's a lot of WWII Pacific theatre that doesn't get told.

I remember searching my high school history book for anything on the Pacific theatre other than the bombs and Pearl Harbor, and there wasn't much. My dad was a kid at Pearl Harbor, and his dad was chief on the Minneapolis out with the rest of the fleet. He's made it his hobby to know as much about the Pacific theatre as possible, and he was always telling me stories of his dad's ship and his uncle's plane going down in the Battle of Midway.

There are so many stories that we're losing every day. We need to make sure that we record them so that we learn from them and remember.

[FreedomAngel82]

17. I think so too

Two of my great-half uncles were lost in WW2 at sea. I'll have to ask my grandmother sometime if she knows about that. My grandfather was in the navy but he didn't have to go to war because his halfbrothers went instead. He was active but never saw battle. What I do now is save things from today on data discs and write about it in my journal so I can always remember and pass it down to my kids. :)

[knitter4democracy]

28. Wow.

Why did he not have to see battle? My grandfather was one of seven sons, all of whom were in the war. They only lost Great-Uncle Ernie, which was a miracle. I think two of them were in the European Theatre and the rest were in the Pacific, and only one had a desk job because of his asthma or something like that. They even named a destroyer after the family, and we all went to a reunion they had for the destroyer when I was in middle school as family representatives.

I have been pestering Dad to write it all down for ages. I guess it'll be up to me. :shrug:

[Ilsa]

18. A movie was made of this. I believe it also covered the

court-martial of the captain of the boat who evetually committed suicide over his dishonor. I can't remember this movie's name, but the part with them in the water was terrifying.

Actor Stacy Keach played McVay in Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (1991) (TV)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102455/

[tsuki]

25. Huie was interviewed for that. The thing is, the Navy claimed that all

the lights were on, but Huie claimed they were jumping in the dark, and did not know where they would land.

[misanthrope]

26. I was the set dresser...

...for that movie.

The story was good; the script not so much.

Mobile AL was location for most of the scenes in that movie.

[BrotherBuzz]

19. The sinking of the USS Meredith doesn't get much exposure, either

My wife's uncle was a junior officer on the Meredith. He survived the sinking only to be attacked and killed by sharks as he attempted to collect his sailors and loose lifeboats. We never got to hear his story firsthand.

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Barracks/1041/meredithsink.html

[Mairead]

21. For a non-horrifying WW2 story...and a lovely mystery, try

http://pages.zdnet.com/hookares/royal-navy-medic-1945/id36.html

[RamboLiberal]

23. Several Books have been published on this as well

Fatal Voyage : The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
by Dan Kurzman (Paperback - August 14, 2001)

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
by Doug Stanton (Hardcover - April 2001)

Left for Dead
by Peter Nelson (Hardcover - May 14, 2002)

These are most recent

[Book Lover]

27. Forgive me, but

when was the last time this man opened up a college or high school US history book, or taken a US history survey class? Yes, making these books is my job and so of course I am sensitive to this criticism, but I don't see my question as invalid. No one has time in a survey course to talk about Monroe, either, fer cri-yi.

And the event *is* in my WWII book.