On July 30, 1945, the heavy cruiser USS "Indianapolis"...





... is on its way from the US base on the Marianan island of Tinian to the Philippines.

The mission of the ship with the identifier "CA-35" is top secret and runs under the code name "Bowery"!

The cruiser had brought the parts of the first US atomic bomb "Little Boy" from San Francisco to Tinian, from where the B-29 bomber named "Enoly Gay" transported them to Japan on August 6, 1945 and over the city of Hiroshima will throw off.

The first three of the next show the bomb on Tinian ...:










At noon the unsuspecting "Indianapolis" runs the Japanese submarine I-58...





... under Kaigun-Taisa (= sea captain) Mochitsura Hashimoto...



... right in front of the pipes!

Hashimoto has all six bow torpedoes released at the same time ...



... two hit the cruiser under the front turret and under the structure of the command bridge.

The hard-hit "Indianapolis" sinks in just 12 minutes - in the chaos that is now breaking out, an emergency call can not been made.

Only a few lifeboats can be launched due to the heavy lay side of the sagging ship.

The front ammunition chamber also explodes. As a result of the detonation of an ammunition chamber, almost 300 men of the 1196-strong crew die, around 900 manage to leave the ship alive.

However, up to 100 of them die from their injuries within a few hours.

The real drama of the survivors of USS "Indianapolis" is just beginning:

While up to 800 seafarers fight for their lives in the water, the ship is not even missed! And what it is not missing, nobody is looking for the flooded cruiser and its crew.

The reason:

The "Bowery" mission was kept so strictly secret that practically none of the responsible departments of thge US Navy is informed about the trip of the "Indianapolis"!

It was only after four days that those responsible for the transport of the nuclear weapon noticed that the ship had disappeared and did not enter Manila harbour as planned.



Only now do you start a search and rescue mission with "Catalina" flying boats. They search for the route that the cruiser should take - and they also find the floating survivors pretty quickly...:



Of the 900 men who were able to save themselves in the water after the sinking of the "Indianapolis", 316 are still being recovered alive.

The following picture shows some of the lucky ones after their arrival in Guam ...:







Everyone else has succumbed to exhaustion, sunstroke, or dehydration (caused by diarrhea after drinking sea water) - and many of them to the constant attacks of sharks that harvested richly among the helpless survivors (coloured pictures from a movie!) ...








The wreck of the USS "Indianapolis" was found on the ocean floor in 2000 ...:



In the same year, the former commander of I-58, Mochitsura Hashimoto, died. He had become a Shinto priest because of his experiences during the war afterwards ...

Read "In Harm's Way" by Doug Stanton, for a better account.

A post-script...

I'm between books, having just finished a re-read of "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World", so this is a good opportunity to re-read Stanton's book.

Or you can watch Quint's monologue, too...

A couple of things need clarification or correction...

It was 12:05 AM, five after midnight, not noon. She sank around 12:17 AM July 30.

Not exactly.

True, the Indy's mission to carry the components of the Little Boy from San Francisco to Tinian with a layover Pearl Harbor was secret, her route and transit times were not. And they had nothing to do with her sinking.

When she arrived at Tinian, her secret mission was complete. After disembarking her cargo at Tinian, Captain McVay, her commander, planned to proceed to Leyte and join up with the Fifth Fleet to participate in preparation exercises for the pending invasion of Japan. A series of accidents and errors in judgement, none of them McVay's, led to the disaster.

First, Captain McVay asked to conduct gunnery exercises off Guam, before heading across the Philippine Sea to Leyte. The Indy's crew had a large number of replacements, fresh out of boot camp or technical training, and McVay was concerned about getting as much training as possible. His request was turned down. There's the first accident-had he been able to conduct exercises when first planned, the Indianapolis would not have been where she was, when the I-58 found her. Captian McVay decided they'd have to hold exercises instead, when they caught up to the fleet.

Second, Captain McVay was not told about the recent increase in Japanese submarine activity along the route the Indianapolis was to take. Within the preceding days, there had been sightings and an attack. The officer who had this information witheld it from McVay, because he wasn't a task group commander-a judgment call. So, the transit was planned at the normal cruising speed, 17 knots, and evasive maneuvers intended to reduce the chance of submarine attack were optional and discretionary. It was otherwise considered a safe route, a rear area. The front was 1500 miles north, off Japan. Also, it would have been usual for a destroyer to have been detailed to accompany the cruiser along the route, as a precaution. The Indianapolis had no anti-submarine capabilities-it wasn't part of a cruiser's mission. A destroyer would have provided detection-sonar-and defense capabilities-depth charges.

Third, a communcation was sent to Admiral Oldendorf aboard the USS Idaho, whose task group the Indianapolis as to join, that she would leave Tinian. But a mistake was made in handling the message. A decoding error led to a misidentification of the intended recipient. The communications officer handling the message thought it was meant for another command, and so, the message itself was not decoded, simply forwarded. The message was later correctly routed. Another mistake was that the Indianapolis' arrival time was not communicated to the harbor authorities at Leyte, because of regulations regarding reporting the movements of combat vessels. So, both commands knew she was coming, but not when she should arrive. In fact, the harbor master at Leyte assigned her a berth.

Now, regarding the sinking-at the time she was hit, the Indianapolis was steaming in a straight line, not zig-zagging. However, as I noted above, she had no warning that there could be enemy submarines in the area. Also, conditions at midnight 29/30 July were overcast with poor visibility. Earlier in the day, when visibility was better, she had taken evasive maneuvers, following a zig-zg course. She was traveling blacked out, in what was considered a relatively safe area. And the OOD and helm had orders to engage in evasive action if the weather cleared.

Regarding a distress signal-her primary radio room was destroyed in the blast caused by the second torpedo that struck her abeam of her bridge. But her second radio room did send distress signals, which were received by at least 2 sites on Leyte. The messages were SOS signals and identified the Indianapolis. But the reaction to the signals was mixed. One station sent a reply to confirm, but got no response-naturally enough, because there was barely time to send the distress signal, let alone receive and reply to a followup. At both stations, the COs decided that in the absence of a confirming reply, the messages were likely fakes, messages sent by the Japanese as a trick. A duty officer who had received the message had even dispatched a pair of ocean-going tugs, which had made it 7 hours from Leyte. They were called back, 5 hours short of the site.

These things all combined to create the disaster. It wasn't unusual for a combat vessel to get reassigned or redirected, so when the Indy didn't show up at Leyte, no one thought anything had happened. It took those four days for someone to realize that the signals they received, and the sightings of men in the water that the patrol bombers had made, were from the Indianapolis.

Still, Quint's monologue makes a great scene.

Prost!
Brad