Friday, July 31, 2020
USS INDIANAPOLIS
Sunk in the Philippine Sea 75 years ago with the greatest loss of life in a single ship disaster ever experienced by the USN. Everything done up until the moment the torpedoes hit her was done well but everything after that was a tragedy and it was all made worse by the scapegoating carried out by the Navy high command back in Washington, DC. The survivors would not be rescued from the sea for another 4 days after the ship sank.
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Had just delivered the A-Bomb to Tinian. Was on her way back and a Jap sub torpedoed her. Sank in 12 minutes. Many survivors....at first. 300 went down with the ship, the lucky ones. The survivors of the initial attacks faced the unrelenting heat, no water, and worse...the sharks The sharks moved in and out of 900 initial survivors, only 316 remained 4 days later. The Captain was court martialed, and to add insult to injury, they brought in the Captain of the Jap sub that sank them to testify against him.
Capt Queeg in "JAWS" was a survivor of that incident and tells one hell of a story during part of the movie.
I read some more on McVay. As with DDLM he was promoted to admiral when he retired. He was treated most unfairly and now it looks like admiral King was getting payback for a letter of reprimand McVay's father issued him back when he worked for him. It was really shabby treatment. Nimitz put him in for a letter of reprimand and was overturned by King who demanded a court martial and he found some real scumbags to sit on that court.
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