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The
second ship of the name, USS Indianapolis's peacetime years were
distinguished by her frequent passages with President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard. The most extensive of these was a "Good
Neighbor" cruise to South America
(November 18-December 15, 1936) under Captain H. K. Hewitt. The log for Tuesday, November 24, relates the ceremony
for crossing the equator:
Made all necessary preparations to receive his Royal Majesty Neptunus Rex,
Ruler of the Raging Main and Kin of all creatures in and of the Deeps of the
Seven Seas, with honors fitting and proper.... The Royal Party took their
posts on the quarter deck and proceeded to hold court, commencing with the
trial of the most "ratey" Pollywog, the President of the United States. The sentences and punishments
were administered and executed without faltering until the last victim had
paid his penalty at 1515.
The outbreak of World War II found Indianapolis in the Pacific. She was assigned to Task Force 11 and
took part in operations in the waters around New Britain and New Guinea
in early 1942. She saw action in the Aleutian Islands from August 1942 to the spring of 1943. Later in the
year she flew Vice
Admiral Raymond Spruance's flag in the Gilbert Islands (November 1943), the Marshalls (January 1944), Carolines (March and April), and Mariana
Islands (through
September). Later detailed to Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's fast-carrier attack force in operations against the Japanese Home Islands (March 31) off Okinawa, Indianapolis was hit by a kamikaze's bomb that exploded after passing
through the bottom of the hull. She returned to San Francisco under her own power. With
repairs complete, she was ordered to carry to Tinian Island the operative
parts of the atom bomb destined for Hiroshima.
3 SHEET PLAN
1/192 SCALE
TPSW-911-A
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Under
Captain Charles B. McVay III, she sailed from Farallon Light to Diamond Head
in a record 74½ hours. After stopping briefly for fuel and stores at Pearl
Harbor, she reached Tinian on July 26. Her top-secret cargo discharged, she
departed for Guam and Leyte. Shortly before midnight on the second day out,
she was spotted by the Japanese submarine I-58, under Commander Machitsura
Hashimoto. Hashimoto fired six torpedoes at 0015 on July 30. (Some reports
suggest that manned midget submarines called kaitens were used.) One blew off
the bow and the other hit just below the bridge. Indianapolis sank in about
ten minutes in 12°02N, 134°48E, taking an estimated 400 of her crew with her;
they were the lucky ones. A series of radio transmission errors resulted in
there being no overdue message posted, and in the course of the next few
days, 500 of the crew died, many of them eaten by sharks. Finally, on August
2, a patrol plane happened to notice groups of survivors drifting in the sea.
Over the next six days, 316 men were rescued.
As if the "routine stupidity and unnecessary suffering," as Samuel
Eliot Morison described it, of the Navy's second-greatest loss of life from a
single ship were not enough (only USS Arizona had more casualties), the Navy
proceeded to court-martial Captain McVay for failing to order a zigzag course
(a fact he freely acknowledged) and for not abandoning ship sooner.
Incredibly, among the prosecution's star witnesses was none other than I-58's
Commander Hashimoto. McVay was found guilty of the first charge and acquitted
of the second.
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