http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4805748/Paul-Allen-announces-discovery-sunken-WWII-ship.html

Yes a very sad story but now with closure, finally! A good ship and good men , should never have happened !

 

Ships get torpedoed in war, but someone really dropped the ball by not tracking her and leaving all those sailors in the water with the sharks for so long. The secret mission was over, she was on her way home. No reason for radio silence nor regular posit updates.

 

Orders from on high doomed the Indianapolis and her crew, not the Captain like they tried to pin it on.
And not even a Iowa class battleship would survive 2 hits on her keel by Japanese type-95 Long-Lance torpedoes.

 

The 1200 lb warheads on the Mod2 definitely packed a punch. 3 times bigger than anything we had.

 

Japanese torpedoes were so good, the Germans copied them under agreement..............One of the reasons a encounter with a German U-boat was a very deadly thing.

 

Germans could never adapt the Japanese torpedoes. Most all of the entire German Fleet had 21" tubes. The G7 had about a 4 1/2 mile range. Then they came up with an acoustic torpedo's near the end of the war.

 

As I recall, after leaving Tinian, the Indianapolis was heading for the Leyte Gulf. Where was her original home port?

AFAIK, the Indianapolis was not at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

She was not part of Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf's battleship/cruiser force that crossed the Japanese "T" in Surigao Strait.

The captain of the Indianapolis (McVey - he later commited suicide) was blamed for not zig-zagging and was the only commander of a US Navy ship during the war that was court martialed after his ship was sunk by hostile action.

Also appearing at McVey's court martial, was the commander of the Japanese sub that sank her!

There was another, when the heavy cruiser USS Chicago was sunk, her commander, facing a possible court martial, committed suicide.

I wonder if an Iowa Class BB (all 4 are extant as museum ships) would survive two hits by long lance torpedoes. Towards the end of the war, the USS Pennsylvania was struck by one torpedo that almost sank her.

But the Pennsylvania (sister ship of the Arizona and one of Oldendorf's "Pearl Harbor ghosts") was an older 'dreadnought' design, while the first Iowa was launched in 1942.

 

I should probably watch this at some point. I keep seeing it when I'm surfing through Netflix......

 

Not a bad flick, the special effects CGI is kinda second rate though, about on a par with Sci-Fi network movies, but the story and acting ain't bad.

 

The entire bit in 'Jaws' where Quint (Robert Shaw) is telling the Indianapolis story........completely ad-lib. The writers had about 2 sentences in the dialogue which mentions it.......but Shaw got good and drunk during the scene.......and put in his own bits and carried that entire stretched-out scene. I'll bet anyone who saw that movie.....even if it's been decades ago......remembers that bit. Classic moment in cinema history.

 

or the writers

Quint, referring to the removed tattoo, said: "That Mister Hooper...is the USS Indianapolis."

The first time I saw Jaws, I looked up the crew list of the USS Indianapolis to see if anyone named Quint was aboard.

There wasn't.

Did Robert Shaw or the script writer know this?

 

How about Herbie Robinson from Cleveland? Bosuns Mate?

He was named during the clip about halfway through.........

 

Off-topic, but worth it.

For you readers, I HIGHLY recommend 'Halsey's Typhoon'.....about the 1944 typhoon that sunk 3 destroyers and damaged a bunch of other ships off of the Philipines........

With GREAT mention of that heroic little Destroyer Escort, the DDE "Tabberer"....and her frickin' awesome and beloved skipper, Henry Plage. That plucky little boat dang near snatched half of the survivors herself.........and she was already badly damaged by the storm.

GREAT sea story! Check it out.

 

More like hung out to dry by a cabal of admirals.......led by Ernie King. Not sure I'd blame the 'country' for this travesty.......Although he did get a lot of hate mail from relatives of the dead over the years.

Who should have been (literally) 'hung'? 2 of the 3 officers who received the 3 SOS messages sent by the Indianapolis after she was torpedoed. One gave orders not to be disturbed, and one was drunk.