![\"USS_Indianapolis_CA-35\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/USS_Indianapolis_CA-35-500x324.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nChief Tango reminds us that Thursday will mark the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis. The ship was unescorted when around midnight a Japanese submarine sank the ship with a torpedo. What followed was the stuff of horror movies. A crew of about 1200 was reduced to about 900 by the sinking of the ship, but by the time they were rescued, only 321 survived their time in the water and three of those died after their rescue.<\/p>\n
From Smithsonian Magazine<\/a>;<\/p>\n As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce. The living searched for the dead floating in the water and appropriated their lifejackets for survivors who had none. Hoping to keep some semblance of order, survivors began forming groups\u2014some small, some over 300\u2014in the open water. Soon enough they would be staving off exposure, thirst\u2014and sharks.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n The sharks fed [on the survivors] for days, with no sign of rescue for the men. Navy intelligence had intercepted a message from the Japanese submarine that had torpedoed the Indianapolis describing how it had sunk an American battleship along the Indianapolis\u2019 route, but the message was disregarded as a trick to lure American rescue boats into an ambush.<\/p>\n After 11:00 a.m. on their fourth day in the water, a Navy plane flying overhead spotted the Indianapolis survivors and radioed for help. Within hours, another seaplane, manned by Lieutenant Adrian Marks, returned to the scene and dropped rafts and survival supplies. When Marks saw men being attacked by sharks, he disobeyed orders and landed in the infested waters, and then began taxiing his plane to help the wounded and stragglers, who were at the greatest risk. A little after midnight, the USS Doyle arrived on the scene and helped to pull the last survivors from the water.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Additionally, the destroyers Helm, Madison, and Ralph Talbot were ordered to the rescue scene from Ulithi, along with destroyer escorts Dufilho, Bassett, and Ringness of the Philippine Sea Frontier. They continued their search for survivors until 8 August.<\/p>\n The commander of the ship, Captain Charles B. McVay III, survived the ordeal to be court martialed and convicted of “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag”. But Mochitsura Hashimoto, commander of I-58, the sub that sank the Indianapolis, testified that zigzagging would have made no difference. McVay was the only Navy ship commander who was convicted of losing his ship during the Second World War. In October 2000, Congress passed a resolution exonerating Captain McVay and President Bill Clinton signed on to it. The Secretary of Navy ordered McVay’s record cleared of wrong doing in July 2001.<\/p>\n 31 of the survivors are still with us and they had a reunion<\/a> this last weekend in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"