USS Indianapolis

USS Indianapolis, U.S. Navy heavy cruiser that was sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945, shortly after delivering the internal components of the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Up to 900 men initially survived the sinking, but many succumbed to shark attacks, dehydration, and salt poisoning as they awaited rescue; only 316 were saved.

Construction and dimensions

The USS Indianapolis was built in Camden, New Jersey. The ship was launched in 1931 and commissioned by the U.S. Navy the following year. A Portland-class heavy cruiser, the Indianapolis was 610 feet 3 inches (186 metres) long and displaced 9,950 tons. It carried a main battery of nine 8-inch guns and eight 5-inch antiaircraft guns. Powered by eight boilers turning four steam turbines, the ship could reach speeds of more than 32 knots (nautical miles per hour). In its first years, the Indianapolis operated in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The ship carried U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt on three cruises, including a “Good Neighbor” visit to South America in 1936.

World War II: delivery of atomic bomb parts and sinking

After the United States entered World War II, the ship was assigned to aircraft-carrier task forces in the Pacific theatre. In 1943 it became the flagship of the U.S. Fifth Fleet under Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance. The Indianapolis participated in the bombardment of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima in February 1945. The following month the Indianapolis was damaged by a Japanese kamikaze plane off Okinawa island, but it was soon repaired and returned to active service.

In late July 1945 the Indianapolis was sent on a high-speed voyage to deliver cargo to a U.S. air base on Tinian, one of the Mariana Islands, in the western Pacific. No one on board knew that the cargo consisted of parts for atomic bombs. The Indianapolis traveled from San Francisco to Tinian in only 10 days. After completing the delivery on July 26, it proceeded to Guam and then was sent to Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines. The ship had traveled about halfway to Leyte when it was hit on July 30 by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58. The Indianapolis sank in about 12 minutes.

Rescue and aftermath

Of the nearly 1,200 men on board, as many as 900 survived the sinking. They were stranded in shark-infested waters with no supplies aside from life jackets and a few life rafts, however, and it took four days for help to arrive. Because of communications errors and other problems, the ship was not reported missing when it failed to arrive in Leyte Gulf as scheduled on July 31. The survivors were discovered by accident on August 2, when they were spotted by a passing U.S. naval aircraft. By that time only 316 of the men remained alive and were rescued. The U.S. government delayed reporting the tragedy until August 15, 1945, the same day it announced that Japan had agreed to surrender.

The commanding officer of the Indianapolis, Capt. Charles B. McVay III, was among the survivors. He became the only ship’s captain in the U.S. Navy to be court-martialed in connection with the loss of his ship in combat in World War II. In February 1946 McVay was found guilty of negligence for having failed to steer the ship on a zigzag course to help evade enemy submarines. He was found not guilty of another charge: having failed to promptly issue orders to abandon the ship after the torpedo attack. The military court recommended clemency, and the sentence (a decrease in seniority) was set aside. Upon his retirement in 1949, McVay was promoted to rear admiral. He committed suicide in 1968.

Many survivors of the tragedy believed that McVay had been scapegoated by the U.S. Navy. They contended that the captain had been ordered to zigzag only at his discretion and that poor visibility before the attack made that inadvisable. At the court-martial, the commander of the Japanese submarine I-58 testified that zigzagging would not have thwarted the torpedo attack. In addition, McVay’s request for a destroyer escort had been denied. It later came to light that the U.S. Navy had known that Japanese submarines were operating in the area, but McVay had not been warned (perhaps to avoid revealing that the Japanese navy’s secret code had been broken). Following a campaign to clear McVay’s name, in 2000 the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution exonerating him. In 2001 the U.S. Navy placed in McVay’s record a memorandum noting that the resolution had absolved him from blame.

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Discovery of wreckage

Over the years numerous efforts were undertaken to find the Indianapolis. However, given its depth—some 3.4 miles (5.5 km) below water—and uncertainty about its location, the wreckage remained lost until August 2017, when it was discovered by a team of researchers led by Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft.