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Recollections of Captain Charles
B. McVay, III, USN, Commanding Officer of USS Indianapolis
(CA-35) which was sunk by Japanese submarine I-58 on 30
July 1045 near the Philippines
Source: Charles B. McVay,
III, interview in box 21 of World War II Interviews, Operational
Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center.
The [heavy cruiser USS] Indianapolis [CA-35] had come to
the Navy Yard, Mare Island [in San Francisco Bay] in early May
1945, to get heavy underwater damage repaired from a Kamikaze
[Japanese suicide aircraft] hit that she took in [the Battle of]
Okinawa on 30 March [1945]. We had more time there than anticipated
and knew that we were due back in the forward area at the earliest
practicable date.
On about 12 July, I got orders which indicated that we had to
perform some special mission, so that we knew that we would not
be able to take our usual refresher course on the west coast,
but had been told we would receive that in the forward area. On
15 July, I was in San Francisco, and talked with Admiral Purnell
and Captain Parsons who I know were connected in an intimate way
with a secret project, but I did not know what this project was.
I was informed at that time that when we were ready for sea on
16 July, we would proceed as fast as possible to the forward area.
On Sunday, the 15th of July, about noon, we were at Hunters Point
and they put on us what we now know was the Atomic Bomb.
We sailed from San Francisco, 0800 the morning of 16th July. We
ran into a little rough weather outside the Golden Gate, so the
first day we only made 28 knots. The next two days we made 29
knots and we discovered when we arrived in Pearl [Harbor, Hawaii]
that we had established a new record from Faralens Light Ship
to Diamond Head (an extinct volcano on the Hawaiian island of
Oahu - a prominent landmark from the sea). The old record, which
is given in the World Almanac of 1944, was established by the
[USS] Omaha [CL-4] in 1932 when she made a trip which took
75.4 hours. We made the trip in 74-1/2 hours.
When I arrived at Pearl [in Indianapolis], I knew the approximate
date that I had to get out in the Marianas [island chain located
1,400 miles south of Japan] and since we were able to reach that
area in within a week prior to the time that I knew I had to arrive,
I said that I would make from Pearl to the Marianas a speed of
24 knots at which I would arrive out at Tinian [in the Marianas]
the morning of the 26th. We made this sustained speed without
any difficulty so that we arrived in Tinian the morning of 26
July and unloaded the material and the bomb which was later to
be dropped over Hiroshima.
We left Tinian immediately upon unloading and went to Guam [largest
island in the Marianas], an overnight trip, where we arrived the
next morning and went through the usual anti-aircraft practices.
We got into Guam about 1000. We replenished ammunition, stores
and fuel and left Guam Saturday morning at about 0930. We were
given a routing from Port Director, Guam, and a speed which we
were told to maintain except under conditions which we thought
we had to make a greater speed in order to avoid either navigational
or other obstructions.
We had no incidents whatsoever. We passed an LST [Landing Ship
Tank] headed toward Leyte [Philippine Islands], as we were also,
on Sunday, and talked to them. They were north of us and were
they were preparing to go further north in order to get out of
our area to do some anti- aircraft shooting. My instructions from
Guam called for me to make an SOA [speed over-all] of 15.7 knots
and to arrive at Leyte at 1100 Tuesday, 31 July.
Zigzagged Until Dark
On Sunday night, the 29th of July, we had been zigzagging [evasive
movement, making the vessel a difficult target for torpedoes fired
from submarines] up until dark. We did not zigzag thereafter.
We had intermittent moonlight, so I am told, but it was dark from
about 2330 until sometime earlier the next morning.
At approximately five minutes after midnight [on 30 July], I was
thrown from my emergency cabin bunk on the bridge by a very violent
explosion followed shortly thereafter by another explosion. I
went to the bridge and noticed, in my emergency cabin and charthouse,
that there was quite a bit of acrid white smoke. I couldn't see
anything.
I got out on the bridge. The same conditions existed out there.
It was dark, it was this whitish smoke. I asked the Officer of
the Deck [senior officer on duty] if he had had any reports. He
said "No, Sir. I have lost all communications, I have tried
to stop the engines. I don't know whether the order has ever gotten
through to the engine room."
So we had no communications whatsoever. Our engine room telegraph
[device used to communicate speed changes from the command bridge
to the engine room] was electrical, that was out; sound powered
phones were out, all communications were out forward. As I went
back into my cabin to get my shoes and some clothes, I ran into
the damage control officer, Lieutenant Commander Casey Moore [USN],
who had the midwatch [midnight to 4 a.m.] on the bridge as a supervisory
watch.
He had gone down at the first hit and came back up on the bridge
and told me that we were going down rapidly by the head [i.e.,
sinking bow-first], and wanted to know if I desired to pass the
word to abandon ship. I told him "No."
We had only about a three degree list [ship leaning to one side
from perpendicular axis]. We had been through a hit before, we
were able to control it quite easily and in my own mind I was
not at all perturbed. Within another two or three minutes the
executive officer [second in command on the ship] came up, Commander
Flynn, and said, "We are definitely going down and I suggest
that we abandon ship."
Well, knowing Flynn and having utter regard for his ability, I
then said, "Pass the word to abandon ship."
As I had this word passed, I turned to the Officer of the Deck.
This had to be passed verbally, [and] the man on watch, the boatswain's
mate, had to go below. Two people did go below and the word was
passed. However, I knew from past experience that we had had in
Okinawa, since we had our blood bath, you never had to pass the
word for anybody to man the general quarters station [battle station]
or get on topside when something was wrong. The ship and crew
sense it. They come to their stations immediately. So I am sure
that everybody who could get up topside was up topside before
we ever passed the word.
Then I turned to the Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Orr, and
said, "I have been unable to determine whether the distress
message which I told the Navigator to check on has ever gotten
out."
I had asked Commander (John H.) Janney, the navigator, when I
first went on the bridge to make certain that he got a message
out. He went down below and that was the last I saw of him. So
knowing that it was absolutely essential that someone be notified
where we were, since we were unescorted, I felt that was the most
important thing to know at this moment and told the Officer of
the Deck I was going to Radio Room One, below the bridge, to find
out for myself if this message had gotten out. Also I wanted to
take a look at the at a part of the main deck which some people
had said had split near No. 1 stack. Also I could not yet visualize
why we were going down by the head. Nobody had given me any report
that we were other than just badly damaged.
I passed through the charthouse and picked up in my emergency
cabin a kapok life preserver which I put on and stepped out on
the after side of the bridge and Captain Crouch who was a passenger
and who had been sleeping in my cabin said, "Charley, have
you got a spare life preserver?" I said, "Yes, I have.
I've got a pneumatic life preserver," and I stepped back
into my cabin and picked this up and handed it to, I believe,
a seaman quartermaster by the name of Harrison and asked him to
blow this up for Captain Crouch.
I then stepped to the ladder on the bridge which leads down to
the signal bridge and as I put my foot on the first rung [of the
ladder], the ship took a 25 degree list to starboard [the ship's
right side]. People started to slide by and I went down to the
signal bridge. As I reached that platform, she [the ship] went
to about 40 or 45 degrees [of list]. I managed to get to the ladder
leading from the signal bridge to the port [left] side of the
communications deck. As I reached the communications deck, she
[the ship] seemed to be steadied at around 60 [degrees of list].
There were some youngsters there that were jumping over the side
and I got to the lifeline on the communications deck and yelled
at these boys to not jump over the side unless they had life jackets,
or to go back by the stack which was just behind me and cut down
the liferaft, or the floater net rather, and throw that over the
side before they jumped.
Within another few seconds the ship listed to 90 degrees and I
jumped to the forecastle deck and pulled myself up on the side
and started to walk aft [the ship was laying over on her side
and the captain was able to walk toward the rear on the ship's
side]. She apparently stayed in this position for some time, at
least long enough for me to walk from abreast the bridge to approximately
No. 3 turret on the after deck, at that point I was sucked off
into the water by what I believe was a wave caused by the bow
going down rather rapidly, because I found myself in the water
and looked above me and the screws [propellers], port screws,
which by this time had been stopped, were directly overhead.
I immediately thought "Well, this is the end of me",
and turned around and immediately swam away from the descending
screws. Within a few seconds, I felt hot oil and water brush over
the back of my neck and looked around and heard a swish and the
shop was gone.
The sea at this time was rather confused. There had been storms
up north and I was buffeted about quite a bit. We had a long,
heavy, ground swell, the wind was from the southwest and force
about two. We could still see nothing. I was still dark and I
could hear people yelling for help.
Got on a Potato Crate
Something bumped into me, it was a potato crate and I got astride
of that with some more debris which I had under my right arm and
I considered myself pretty well off and in a few minutes, a few
seconds later I would say, two life rafts came by. They apparently
had been released from the ship when she went down, or had been
torn loose as one was on top of the other.
I crawled on these two life rafts. I couldn't find any paddles
or anything whatsoever on them, and I yelled back at the people
who I heard yell and we picked up three others, pulled them on
the raft. That was all that we saw, or all that we heard. There
were two of them, two youngsters, that were pretty well filled
up with salt water and oil and I placed them on one of the rafts
by themselves, and a quartermaster by the name of Alert and I
took the other raft. We secured the two rafts together, and nothing
that I remember happened that night. I guess everybody was pretty
well exhausted. These two boys that were on the other raft didn't
move all night and I thought probably they had died, but they
pulled through perfectly all right, about 36 hours later.
The next morning, at daybreak, we ran across another raft and
a floater net with five men on the raft, a Machinist Mate, First
Class, by the name of Malden and four others that were of inferior
ratings. We secured their raft to ours and also the floater net,
so that we had then three rafts, a floater and nine people.
When I got light, I had discovered why I could not find anything
on the rafts, they had fallen into the water upside down, and
I didn't know that anything was secured on the other side. We
did manage to get from the three rafts, two good paddles. Most
of the gratings had been broken from the explosion. We had nothing
left on the raft, except one canvas bag in which we found a Very
[flare] pistol and 12 Very cartridges.
We had the covered impregnated matches, that is covered with a
cardboard impregnated material which had soaked through during
the night. Consequently, all the matches were useless. Also, our
first aid kit was made of the same material. It's cardboard with
a paraffin impregnation, I believe, that had almost disintegrated.
Consequently, anything that was soluble in the first aid kit such
as the sulfathiazole and the sulfanilamide tablets and crystals--they
had disintegrated. We did have some bandage which was wet; we
did have the tubes of ointment which came in useful later, small
tubes, and some morphine styrettes [small injection units of narcotic
painkiller for the seriously wounded] which, fortunately, we did
not have to use because nobody was badly hurt in our group.
The next morning, as I say, we took stock of what we had and found
the material that I spoke of in this canvas bag. We had nothing
else, except the two canoe paddles. The water breakers, things
of that nature had all been blown loose from the raft. That morning
I saw two other rafts in the distance. I did not know how many
people were on these rafts, but we could see them when we got
up on the crest of a wave and when they got up on the crest of
a wave. One raft was about 1,500 yards from us[;] there was somebody
on there calling for help.
Well, we were all so exhausted the first day we could not even
make an attempt to get over to him. The other raft was way off
in the distance and apparently nobody on that seemed to be in
any difficulty.
We all supposed that small group were the sole survivors of the
Indianapolis. We thought we probably had about 25 or 30
people. I was the only officer in the group and naturally I told
them what they should do.
We managed some time during Monday to pick up a water breaker
with three gallons of water in it; it apparently had been cracked
because I tasted the water and it was unpalatable. It was salty.
The other people in the group, however, did not know that this
water could not be used. I told them that we had the water, I
would give it to them when it became absolutely necessary that
they have a drink.
Well, it so happened that during the 107 hours we were on the
raft, nobody ever asked for a drink. I didn't think it was possible
to get along without water, but I discovered you can do it very
easily. I understand after the fifth day, it becomes more difficult.
We picked up an emergency ration can which was excellent. It's
beautifully packed, has a double tin tip which would prevent any
water getting into it. It had a number of cans of spam, the Hormel
spam [a canned loaf of precooked processed meat]. It's a salty
spam, but it is not dry as the usual thing that you get aboard
ship, and it is very palatable. We had a number of those cans,
I've forgotten the exact number now. We also had the usual tins
of malted milk tablets and the tins of biscuits. Everything packed
in the emergency ration tin is packed in an air-tight and water-
tight container inside. So whoever did that job, did a very fine
one.
I looked over the material that we had, the food stuffs, and told the people that I would open one Hormel tin per day. It contains 12 ounces and we would divide that evenly, and I also figured out each person could have two biscuits and two malted milk tablets, which I knew would last us about ten days.
On Tuesday I decided that we would try to paddle over and try
to pick up this other raft, since this man had been calling to
us. We thought he was injured. We could see him quite plainly,
we were about 1,500 yards away. So we took the two canoe paddles
and paddled the three rafts by alternating shifts of two people
paddling at half hour intervals. It took us four and a half hours
to reach this other raft which we secured to the ones we were
with, and there was nothing wrong with the youngster except that
he was by himself and as misery loves company, he wanted somebody
to talk to. He had spent two nights and a day by himself and he
was a little fed up with this. So we put him in the tail end of
our group and we then had the four rafts, one floater net and
only ten people.
I knew that there was one other raft, as I said, in the vicinity,
because I could see it every now and again. It was quite a ways
off. I knew that we could reach it, if necessary, but this four
hour and a half paddle that we had made, the people were so exhausted
from that , I decided that except in a case of dire necessity
we would not put forth the effort to get to this other raft. Also
we had worn blisters on our hands and it was quite evident that
every abrasion, or cut, or blister that you had on your body was
going to develop into a very nasty salt water ulcer. The thing
to do was to try to keep as still as you could and preserve your
strength. We talked to this other youngster who we brought over
and he knew of no other people that were in the water, so that
further convinced us, although it seemed impossible, that there
was nobody that had survived other than this very small group.
Had Fuel Oil in One Eye
We discovered later why this was [that there were no other survivors
around]. A number of people had jumped off the ship at the first
inclination [when the ship started to list], or they had slid
off the deck, and since she did go down rapidly, she had not lost
way [forward motion], and apparently these people had been left
to the rear of us. So that when we got in the water, there was
consequently nobody except the three or four we heard who were
yelling for help.
We managed to get along very nicely during the first two days.
The sea was quite rough, the wind was not very high and we were
not uncomfortable because none of us had been badly injured and
were at that time in fairly good shape. As each hour went by,
people became more exhausted from lack of sleep and from the usual
tension caused by wondering whether we were going to be sighted
or not. It gradually sapped people's strength.
To go back to the midnight of Sunday [when the ship sank] after
we had gotten into the water, I don't believe anybody saw anything
at all that night. Most people had been sucked down by the ship
or were full of fuel oil and salt water and were violently ill
or else so exhausted that they lay more or less in a stupor. I
was fortunate, insofar as I had not been sucked under. I had only
one eye that I had gotten fuel oil in and I could see with my
other eye. The rest of the people, their eyes were filled with
fuel oil and consequently, they spent a very uncomfortable 36
to 48 hours trying to get the fuel oil out of their eyes. It smarts
very badly, you are not to uncomfortable when your eyes are closed
for any length of time. Its rather peculiar that when you open
them for about the first ten minutes, you have a very excruciating,
smarting feeling in your eyes. Then it subsides and your eyes
are quite comfortable. When you close them again, you have exactly
the same smarting feeling. So that it was a question of either
trying to keep them open when you got them open, or trying to
keep them closed when you got them closed.
This Alert, this Quartermaster, Third Class, took a large piece
of canvas, there is a large piece of canvas in each bag, and by
the way, one of the other rafts had a bag of canvas, or had the
usual canvas bag with the matches, first aid kit and such as that
in it, so that he was able to make hats for everybody. That was
the thing, I believe, that saved most of us from very bad sunburn.
He made sort of cornucopia type hat[s] and during the heat of
the day we pulled that down over our ears. You could pull the
collar of the life jacket up above your neck, of course; we were
sitting in the water and you could keep your hands under cover.
That and the fact that we were all covered with fuel oil, I believe,
is the reason that none of us were badly burned.
The first night, the first day, Monday, and Tuesday night, were,
as I say, very uncomfortable. We then had two days of almost no
wind and a glassy [calm] sea. However, the sea still contained
those long rolling swells which did not permit you to see very
far. Also during the nights and the days, we had seen a number
of planes. At night we would fire the Very stars at the planes
which to us were very clear. We could, in cases, see their red
and their green running lights; we also, at one period, saw their
revolving white light, which I thought meant that they had seen
us.
We knew now that these eight or nine planes that we saw and that
we either during the day time flashed these signal mirrors, the
emergency signal mirror at, nobody ever saw the mirror, us, or
any of the Very stars. The reason being, of course, that planes
fly too high to see anything visually. They need their radar,
they are looking at their radar and also their instrument board,
and they naturally, at the height they fly, you cannot see an
individual in the water. You cannot see a raft.
The thing that I couldn't understand was when one of these planes
would come near us, I thought that the way we had the rafts spread
out, which covered about 75 feet, the fact that the rafts are
about 2-1/2 feet wide, we had two mirrors, we also had some yellow
colored bunting, which is an emergency signaling apparatus, you
might call it, a signaling flag, we had two of those, so the two
of us would use the mirrors, two of them would wave the two pieces
of bunting and the others would wave their arms and legs in the
water, and it just didn't seem possible to us that nobody that
we could see so plainly could fail to see us.
Of course, we knew later that they didn't know that we were missing,
so consequently, they didn't expect to see anything. It's the
same old thing, if an aviator doesn't expect to see anything,
he doesn't see it. He's too busy trying to fly his plane.
I was not particularly perturbed by not being picked up by planes,
nor were the people with me, because I had told them that they
probably couldn't see us or wouldn't see us until they had really
discovered we were missing. And I was basing my hopes on ships.
I did not believe that any ships could reach the area prior to
about sometime Thursday.
Well, about Thursday noon, we did see quite a ways to the south
of us a plane circling and later some other planes circling. I
didn't know what they were doing down there, and then that night
we saw some searchlights of ships down there, so we naturally
thought, well, there must be other survivors. They were quite
a ways south of us and we said, "Well, I guess we do have
other people than just this small group that is apparently is
quite a ways up north here." But the planes kept getting
further away from us and I must admit I had several misgivings,
I commenced to think I was north of the northern limit of their
search. I thought that "We are in a fine fix now. If they're
going south all the time and we're going north, why, it looks
as though they'll miss us."
Well, on that assumption, I decided to cut the rations in half.
We had been getting 1.2 ounces of spam, the two crackers, the
two malted milk tablets, which seemed to maintain us. Nobody seemed
to be particularly hungry, but that night when I saw the ships
down there, I decided that I would let them have the normal ration.
We had been too excited during Thursday to eat. We didn't each
until after dark, by that time we had seen the searchlights so
I said, "Well, I'll give you the normal ration again. We
won't cut it in half."
The next morning we saw planes quite a ways to the north of us,
we saw a plane quite a ways to the north. It was making a box
search and it was gradually getting closer to us, so we felt a
lot better. It made this very wide search, would disappear and
come back again, then go way north and then come back on a westerly
leg and fly its easterly leg fairly close to us. Just about the
time that we had figured out the next sweep he should see us,
somebody said, "My God, look at this, there are two destroyers
bearing down on us. Why, they're almost on top of us."
So one of the kids said, "Well, the hell with the planes,
we know these people will pick us up." They were almost on
top of us when we saw them.
Picked Up by [USS] Ringness [APD-100]
When one of them, the [high-speed transport] USS Ringness,
the APD-100, picked me up and the group on my raft, the other
one the [USS] Register, APD-92, went on north and we discovered
there was another raft north of us which we had suspected, and
picked up that small group. We were never sighted by a plane.
The Ringness picked us up by radar. We had a 40 mm, empty
ammunition can which I had spent a good deal of energy and time
trying to get to, thinking it was an emergency ration, but we
picked it up anyhow and saved it and she [Ringness] got
a [radar] pip from this can. She picked us up [i.e., detected
them] at only 4,046 yards, but she had not seen us visually at
that distance, and the only reason she knew something was there
was because of the radar pip. So it goes to show how difficult
it is to seen anybody in the water, when you have a large ground
swell, or a heavy ground swell.
She came along side and, as I say, picked us up. We were all able
to crawl aboard on our own power. People were pretty well exhausted,
I think more or less nervous exhaustion. I think we had lost probably
about 15% of our weight and I was naturally so elated to get on
the ship, as were the others that we didn't turn in at all. We
were given something eat, ice cream, coffee, such as that. The
doctor said, "You can eat all you want", which most
of us did. We drank quite a bit of water. Nervous energy kept
us going. I did sleep quite a bit that night and the next morning,
let's see, that was the morning of the 3rd that we were picked
up. We sort of lolled around all day of the 5th and we got into
Palau on the 6th when we were put in the hospital.
The interesting point to me is that we should have been so far
north of the large group of survivors which I will call the life
preserver group, as those people, hundreds of them, had nothing
at all except life preservers. Some of them didn't even have a
life preserver. They had to share their's [sic] with one of the
others. I have one or two officers who had only pneumatic life
preservers, that managed to live in those for four days, which
to me is very remarkable. I don't see how anybody could stay up
that length of time.
To go into some detail of what I have been told conditions were
in this life preserver group: first of all, I would like to give
thanks to the Commander, Western Sea Frontier, who was able to
put enough pressure on somebody to enable us to get our supply
of kapok life preservers. We were unable to obtain any until about
48 hours from the time we [on the Indianapolis] were due
to leave, and ComWestern Sea Frontier, himself, his office unearthed
some someplace, and had we not had those, of course, we now know
we would have saved almost nobody, but fortunately these were
new and although I understand kapok is only supposed to hold up
for about 64 hours, we know that these held up for as long as
four days.
It's true that after about 48 hours the wearer had sunk low enough
in the water so that if his head fell forward he would drown.
Consequently, the people had to look out for one another. One
tried to sleep while the other watched him. Very little sleeping
was done the first 48 hours, but after that the people became
so exhausted that they would drop off to sleep. There were apparently
two groups of these survivors all in approximately the same position.
The reason I knew nothing about them was because we were apparently
about seven to ten miles north of them. They were being carried
southwest with the current, whereas we were being blown a little
northeastward or else being just held against the current. So
that is the reason, another reason, why when morning came [after
the sinking], we could not see any of this survivor group which
was south and, as I said before, we did not know of their existence
until we saw planes and ships down south and then we knew that
there must be somebody there.
There are all kinds of horrible stories that have come out of
the experiences that this life preserver group had. They're very
unpleasant. I hope none of the parents will ever know that their
boy was in that group for some time and then could not keep up
until help arrived, but for the record, we had two doctors in
that group, the senior doctor and the junior doctor and a Chief
Pharmacist's Mate who were all saved. They were, of course, topside
administering aid to people aboard ship who had been injured prior
to the ship rolling over and that is why they were apparently
among the survivors.
The people who were in this group had mass hallucinations. One
of the stories is that three or four people would swim away at
dark and the next morning they'd come back and say, "Why,
the Indianapolis didn't go down after all. She is just
over there and we were on her all night. We got fresh milk, we
got tomato juice, we got water." When they would tell these
stories, immediately there would be a break from the group and
these people would try to swim away in the direction in which
they thought the Indianapolis was.
Another hallucination that they had was some of them said they
had been on an island all night where they had coconut milk and
were able to refresh themselves and after those stories were told
people would then break away from the group.
It was in that way that so many people apparently died of exhaustion.
Either that or else they drank salt water and went completely
out of their head. One that comes in my mind particularly was
Captain [Edward L.] Parke of the Marines. He was a very strong,
athletic man, a young man, he just killed himself with exhaustion
through trying to keep those people who were swimming away, trying
to keep them with the group. He died of exhaustion, from that
alone. The injured, of course, that were in the group didn't last
more than 24 hours.
The people who had kapok life preservers on tied themselves together
to try to keep themselves together during the night. They also
had quite a long piece of manila line which they had taken off
a ring life preserver which they used to secure their ties on
their kapok life jackets, which they managed to keep together
during the night, but it must be realized that most of those people
within 48 to 60 hours went out of their head. Some of them lived
through the period, but those who went out of their head earlier
than, say 48 to 60 hours, didn't last. The people that were down
in that group feel quite sure that a number of people just gave
up hope because they were be with the bunch at sundown and in
the morning they would be gone, so they feel that people just
slipped out of their life jackets and just decided that they didn't
want to face it any longer. We do know that people who had pneumatic
life jackets were able to get kapok life jackets from people who
did die or just slipped out of the jacket and it was found in
the morning.
How many people actually got off the ship I don't think anybody
will ever know but we tried to make estimates, we made guesses,
I think we actually guessed at a figure between five and six hundred,
but I don't believe that anybody could definitely say, if you
pinned them down, that that number did get off, because they weren't
seen that night. It was too dark to see anybody until between
two or three o'clock in the morning when the moon came out.
Attacked by Sharks
But the following morning they counted noses down there and they
had a considerable group, quite a number more than actually were
survivors in the final analysis. We had that group down there,
I shouldn't say "we" because I was not with it, I didn't
know it existed until Friday morning when I was picked up. I have
been told by officers who were in that survivor group that there
were people who when they did find something to eat would try
to hide it, and they got food Thursday. Planes came out and dropped
food and water and things like that to them.
They were, I think, you might say a cross-section of what you
would expect in any group of 300 people. There were a few who
were willing to sacrifice their lives for others and did so. There
were those who were in more or less of an exhausted state and
stupefied and they didn't know much of what was going on. There
were others who took the attitude that "I'm going to save
myself and the hell with everybody else." But, I don't think
that you can censure any of that because so many people by that
time were out of their heads, most of them didn't know what they
were doing.
You can't pin anybody down. There are people who think certain
things happened. Nobody naturally, now, in their right mind would
ever admit that he did anything like that and he would deny it
if you confronted him with it. There were no flagrant cases that
we could bring to light, there were just people who said, "Well,
I know somebody who got more food than I did", and somebody
said, "Well, I didn't have any food at all. I wasn't eating
anything." So you can't definitely state that there were
really, you might say, acts of violence.
We had sharks, or rather they had sharks down there [in the life
preserver group]. We know that because we have two survivors who
were bitten by sharks and as I told this one boy in the hospital.
I said "You'd better take some castellan paint and put on
that thing before it heals up because nobody will ever believe
you've been bitten by a shark. You might as well outline the teeth
mark and you will have it for the rest of your life and can say
`I know I was bitten by a shark'."
We have one boy who was bitten on the thigh. The group down there
said that on the calm days, they knew there were sharks around
because they cold see them underneath. They didn't actually seem
to bother them on the surface. It was different with my group
who were in rafts. We had a shark that adopted us apparently sometime
in the early morning of Monday. We couldn't get rid of him. The
kids who were in rafts by themselves on this one raft were scared
to death of this shark because he kept swimming underneath the
raft. You could see his big dorsal fin and it was white, almost
as white as a sheet of paper, apparently [the shark] spent most
of his time on the surface and this fin had bleached out so he
didn't blend in with the water at all.
He had the usual pilot fish [remoras] which we were trying to
catch, hanging on him and we could knock this pilot fish off with
a canoe paddle, but the shark would then swim away and the pilot
fish would be gone.
We were trying to get some fish to use as bait. We had a couple
of the very excellent air tight fishing kits that are put up for
the rafts that are the finest that I've seen. They're a delight
to any fisherman's eye. They have the lures, the hooks and even
a net [and] a gaf, but a spear in them, harpoon, I should say.
But the fact that this shark was with us all the time prevented
us from catching any except the smallest black colored fish. It
looked to me like a member of the Parrot family and, although
the meat was very white, I would not let anybody eat.
Alert, who was with me, turned out to be an excellent fisherman.
He caught most of the fish. But as I say, every time we caught
a little one and used that for bait, the shark got it before we
could get any other fish. There were a number of good sized schools
of fish that we saw and since I've done a great deal of salt water
fishing myself, I know they were either Bonito or small Mackerel
or one of those families which were edible, but we could never
get any of those fish to bite due to this shark.
So about the 3rd day we were getting a little annoyed with this
thing [the shark] and we only had a small knife, the knife that's
put up in this fishing apron which has about a blade I suppose
an inch long, and I would suggest that someplace in this kit that
they put a larger knife, a knife such as a sheaf [sheath] knife.
Well, Heavens! All of you had a sheaf's knife, you wore them on
the ship which is perfectly true. You wore them and they were
uncomfortable, you sat on them and they were uncomfortable and
nobody when we actually got in the rafts had a sheaf knife, either
lost out of the sheaf or else had failed to pick it up and put
it on when he got out of his bunk. Of course, it was unfortunate
that this happened at night, because nobody had a chance really
to pick anything up. So maybe if it [the sinking] happened in
the daytime, we may have had people who would have had sheaf knives,
but it is essential that you have a knife with a blade larger
than an inch.
We believe we could have killed the shark if we had had a large
blade knife, and then we might have been able to get some fish
to eat. We felt that if we had a knife with a sufficiently long
enough blade, we could have killed the shark and we, therefore,
could have gotten some fish to eat.
Another thing I would like to point out is that obsolete water
breakers should be done away with. We ought to have the water
in tins, preferably, I believe, in a 11-ounce tin so that you
can open that, drink it and it is small enough so that it will
fit in the packet of a kapok life jacket. The matches should be
in water-tight tines, the first aid material should be in water-tight
tins. In fact everything that you expect to use in abandoning
ship should have the best protection there is.
The Very rocket--that is well protected. It has a tin covering
which may be opened with a can opener and inside of that is a
lucite cylinder which further protects the material. The one thing
that we noticed in the two containers we had that the first night
when I tried to use one, we opened it with the can opener that
lifts the top off. It has a narrow edge which you are supposed
to grab with your fingers an pull out from the rest of the tin
container. All that we saw had been damaged to such an extent
that you could not pull this out. Consequently, you should have
a small can opener inside this tin which will allow you to cut
longitudinally to remove the tin from the inside container which
holds the cartridges. I was afraid to cut this off at night the
first time I tried it because I didn't know what I was running
into. I realize now that it is essential that everybody aboard
ship should be thoroughly familiar with every type of material
which he may run into when he abandons ship.
Suggests Raft Radar Screen
I would certainly make certain that the crew and the officers
were familiar with all this material. They should actually see
it opened up to know what's in it, to know how to use it rather
than wait until the time you have to use it. The emergency signaling
mirror is not an easy, not by any means an easy gadget to use.
It takes quite a bit of ingenuity. I say this because I think
I have normal intelligence, it took me about an hour and a half
to two hours to chase this so-called reflected cross on your body
around to see that it reflects back in the small cross in the
back of the mirror and then you have to at the same time see a
plane in that. It is not at all easy when you're going on a raft
which is not a steady platform. I felt that after two days trying
this I had at least mastered the technique and I felt certain
that we were shining this thing directly on planes, but maybe
were weren't. Certainly nobody saw the mirror or saw either on
of the mirrors that we had with us, nor was any other group able
to attract the attention of a plane with them. In fact, we could
not attract planes with either the mirror in the daytime or with
the Very stars at night.
The Very stars are excellent; however, they are not strong enough.
They might possibly have a parachute attached, something that
will stay up a longer period of time. Of course, we know now that
they have perfected a light which they think can be seen by a
plane at night regardless of whether he's looking for anything
or not. But certainly the old type Very star has proved to my
mind that it's a very difficult thing to see from a plane. Of
course, we know we can see them from ships very easily. On ships,
although we have radar, we have not secured [i.e., removed] our
lookouts. In a plane you can't watch your radar, your instruments
and also have lookouts, because you can't carry that many people.
So I think that every raft should have a radar screen on it, should
have some method of giving signals or certainly reflecting signals
so that they may be seen by a plane. I believe the aviators have
these, if we had one of those on each raft, we unquestionably
would have been picked up much sooner.
I understand that the group that was down south did have a reflector
dropped to them and also a talkie [hand-held radio]. Well, none
of them knew how to use this talkie, what the pilot was trying
to do was determine who was down there. He knew there were people,
but he didn't know from what ship the survivors were from and
he was trying to make his report. He made his report saying that
there were survivors but he didn't know from what ship.
I don't know that I can personally add anything regarding life
saving equipment. I naturally feel very strong that our present
material is inadequate, because I tried for some hundred hours
to attract people to us and was unable to do so [while floating
on the life rafts].
I would like to go back to the actual damage of the ship and from
what we have been able to piece together with the help of the
people from the [US Navy's] Bureau of Ships, we now have what
we think is a fairly good idea of about what did happen. We believe
we were hit by two torpedoes, one around frame 8 or 10, because
the bow was blown off forward around ten. Another one [torpedo]
around frame fifty. We believe that they were large torpedoes,
that they were running close to the surface, because none of us
believe the magazines blew up, that is the only way we can account
for the flashes of flame through the ship.
We do know that the doctor, for instance, whose room is second
on the starboard side forward on the port bow, was blown out of
his bunk. He said flames shot through the deck in his room. He
gained the passageway and flames shot by him and he pulled back
and then went in to the wardroom [officers' dining and socializing
room] where he fell. He supported himself with his left hand,
apparently on the deck. He touched the deck with his right hand
and his right hand was very badly burned. So he knows the deck
was very hot. He got up and got to a port[hole] in the wardroom
on the starboard side. He got that open and crawled through the
port.
He said it was so hot in the passageway forward, so hot in the
passageway aft, that that seemed to him the only way he could
get out. The fact that it was very hot in those passageways was
borne out by people who were aft the wardroom sleeping in offices.
They opened the doors of the office and found the heat so intense
that they closed them immediately and opened the ports, went out
the ports. That happened on both the starboard and port side of
the ship.
I have one officer, the chief engineer, who had the eight to twelve
watch [8 p.m. to midnight], and his room is on the forecastle
deck, starboard side, just aft the Captain's cabin. He had come
down and was in what we call the head of department's head [bathroom]
and shower, which is amidships, there just by the ladder which
leads down to the main deck in the midships section there. He
was in there when we were hit. He came out of there and remembers
that there was intense heat, his hair was singed, he knows that,
his fingers were very badly burned. H doesn't know how they were
burned, although he feels that he must have touched something
that was particularly hot.
He was able to aft on the starboard side, although badly injured,
he didn't get to the main engine room, No. 2 engine room, where
he found No. 2 engine had lost vacuum and that was shut down.
He did talk to somebody in No. 1 engine room. They told him that
apparently the main steamline going through the port side of the
forward engine room had been knocked loose. They had no steam
and asked for instructions.
He told them to secure everything in No. 1 engine room and to
abandon it, which they did. At that time, there was very little
water in No. 1 engine room so that we feel that the No. 1 fire
room must have gone up and possibly that is what caused the explosion
which caused the heat. On the other hand, there were no more sparks
or fire noticed from the No. 1 stack than you would expect to
see when you fired a salvo.
Since there were only two explosions, I don't feel the boilers
went up. We have men who were in No. 1 [main battery gun] turret
and No. 2 turret who got out, so that I do not feel that a magazine
blew up.
I do not know about the aviation gas. We had one full tank of
that [for the use of the cruiser's spotter aircraft]. We only
had one tank left at the time, about 3,500 gallons. The people
who were up there don't seem to think that there was a gasoline
fire. We have two or three officers that got out of the second
deck space, Warrant Officers [commissioned officers below the
rank of Ensign], who by the time they reached the deck outside
their room, it was filled with oil and water. So we do know that
there was very rapid flooding.
The No. 2 engine room was perfectly all right. Of course, securing
No. 1 would stop your outboard [propeller] shafts, No. 1 and No.
4 We know that No. 2 had lost vacuum, therefore that was secured.
He [the chief engineer] was still making about a hundred rpms
(revolutions per minute) on his No. 3 engine. When "abandon
ship" went, he secured.
All power all lights were lost forward. The fact that the [torpedo]
hits were there, at least we think they were up forward, are borne
out by the fact we have almost no Marines who were reported in
that section of the ship. We have not a single steward's mate
and their compartment was up there and we have very few officers
that were in their rooms at the time of the explosion. So we believe
all of those people were killed almost instantly.
We do now that sick bay [the medical dispensary compartment] was
a shambles. We have evidence to indicate that the number one mess
hall [enlisted dining compartment] which is under the main deck,
the quarterdeck, was flooding. I think that many people lost their
lives because the ship rolled over so rapidly. They got caught
under some debris or they got caught in a compartment. How Lieutenant
Redmayne, the Chief Engineer, got off the ship he himself doesn't
know. He knows that he got out of the engine room, he knows that
he got in the passageway on the port side when the ship took almost
a 90 degree list and after that he just knows he was in the water.
He can't imagine how he got out of that debris and stuff that
piled on top of him. He was probably just lucky.
All my other heads of departments, (except the senior doctor and
the chief engineer), are missing. I talked to the damage control
officer; the navigator; to Captain Crouch, a passenger; to my
executive officer; and in fact talked to all the heads of departments
except the chief engineer and the gunner officer before the ship
went down. I talked to them on the bridge. Whatever happened to
those people, I haven't the faintest idea. I can only say that,
as somebody put it, maybe they went back to their room to get
a flashlight, a knife, or some money or something else. That's
the only thing that would make any sense to me.
I can't believe that they got in the water and were never seen
and it's true that we did not see any of them, so they must have
gotten caught and not gotten off. It was very embarrassing to
me, being the old fud on the ship, to find out that there is nobody
between me and, well, the doctor's about 31 or 32, but I have
no line officer above a [naval] reserve lieutenant. I can't account
for that in any way except possibly the fact that when I thought
I was going to be sucked under with the ship, I tried to swim
away.
You have rather peculiar thoughts that go through your mind. I
thought that, well, it may be embarrassing if I'm the only one
left, or at least if I, as a Captain, am left and my ship is gone.
But, I decided that I would attempt to save myself. I must admit
that I had the thought that it would have been much easier if
I go down, I won't have to face what I know is coming after this.
But, something stronger within me decided that, spurred me to
get out of the way, at least to attempt to save myself.
And, on the raft, of course, I had a great many hours to think
of the disaster and I knew of some of the people I had lost. I
hated to think of having to see their wives and a great many of
them I knew quite well, having been in the States over two months
just previously. Most of them had been up at Mare Island. I knew
there was nothing I could say to them, and I think probably the
fact that I enjoyed life, that I thought of many a cocktail hour
that you have at home after you have an exhausting day and you
come back and take a bath and can relax for a few minutes and
get away from the worries of the office. I thought I would certainly
like to repeat some of those evenings and I guess that's what
kept a good many people going. They just thought of some of the
happiness that had been theirs in life and decided they'd stick
it out.
On the other hand, we know of many people who apparently just
decided it wasn't worth it.
To go back to the time when we were hit [torpedoed] and I said
that I was attempting to get to Radio One to find out if the message
had gotten off. I knew what the message was, as I had told the
navigator that besides the ship's position which should be going
out now. I wanted to say that we had been hit by two torpedoes,
I wanted to give our exact latitude and longitude. I knew we were
sinking fast and we needed immediate assistance.
And I know that message got to Radio One because we have a survivor
who was in Radio One sending that message out--at least he thought
he was sending the message out. Of course, now we know that that
message apparently did not get out. At least, we know of nobody
that picked it up.
We know that we had lost all power forward, but we have evidence
from people who were in Radio Two, (unfortunately my radio electrician,
Woods, who is an excellent man and who was in Radio Two was not
saved), but we have evidence from some men there that they know
that power was on, they knew that a message was apparently being
sent out and we can't understand, nor can they why no message
got off the ship. I suppose that our antenna must have been knocked
down our grounded by the explosion.
We know that we attempted to send an SOS [radio distress call]
over the distress frequency, at least the people back there thought
it was going out. It does not seem possible that such a message
could have gotten off the ship, because it would have been picked
up because that distress frequency is guarded [i.e., continuously
monitored] by about four stations in that area. As I say, until
I was told that no message got out I could not believe from what
I knew that we hadn't gotten one out, and even now, I haven't
any idea why the message never got off the ship. I have no explanation
for that. All I have is the word of several people that we picked
up who are positive that the message got off, apparent evidence
to the fact that the message was never intercepted, so you can't
come to any other conclusion but that the message didn't get off
the ship.
Moran, who was a first class radioman, has said that he has a
feeling that possibly the ship's call with the SOS that he believed
went out--his feeling personally is that if he had been on watch,
he might have been standing a split phone or that might have been
tuned in on a loud speaker as sometimes it is on a smaller ship,
he feels that if it had been keyed only two or three times the
average radioman would have said, "I think I hear an SOS,"
and then listen more closely to make certain whether he actually
did hear it and not hearing the thing again would say, "Well,
I guess I was mistaken." Moran said, "That's my personal
feeling of what could have happened, since I feel that that might
have happened to me under similar conditions."
The fact that no help arrived, of course, is certainly mute evidence
to the fact that apparently no message did get out, or was picked
up by anybody else. It was this unfortunate circumstance that
caused such loss of life and it is natural that the public will
criticize the Navy for not getting aid to us sooner, yet if all
the circumstances would be told, I don't believe you can hold
any one outside the ship responsible for not getting there sooner.
I don't believe you could--might say "pin it" on anybody.
You might blame us for not getting a message out. However, since
we believe that we made every possible attempt to get one out,
I don't think that that is a just criticism. The thing is just
one of those unfortunate disasters which many of us have thought
of during this war.
Whenever I was traveling without an escort, I always had the feeling
that "Suppose we go down, we can't get a message off. What
will happen?" Well, we know now what will happen--it happened
to me. I know that you can't escort every ship, but I know that
people who have had similar experiences are bound to have that
in their mind. It's inconceivable that you can't get a message
off or that we didn't get a message off. However, we do know that
we were in the water about 107 hours, therefore, next time we
think that we would like to have a positive means, in case we
went down, of somebody saying, "They're gone", somebody
with us and tell the outside world about it. The's not a criticism,
that's just a personal feeling that I have.
To give some explanation as to how we were picked up and when,
I talked to the aviator, Lt. Wilbur C. Gwinn, USNR, who was piloting
a [PV-1] Ventura [a patrol bomber manufactured by Lockheed]. He
as stationed on Palau and in VPB [patrol-bomber squadron] 152.
He was on a regular routine reconnaissance and search from Palau
when he said he went back to take a Loran [navigational] fix.
Ordinarily, he said he wouldn't take a Loran fix, that the radioman
would do it, but the radioman was busy and he stepped back there
to get the fix and happened to glance down towards the water and
saw a large oil slick.
He then decreased his altitude and followed the oil slick for
a number of miles when he sighted the group of what he thought
were about 30 survivors. He did not know that they were survivors
from the Indianapolis. He did not know the Indianapolis
was missing.
This was about 1125 K time (11:25 a.m. local time) Thursday, 2
August, that he sighted these survivors in what he believed was
11 degrees 30 minutes North Latitude and 133 degrees 30 minutes
East Longitude. He also said he had dropped a transmitter and
life boat and emergency IFF. He then, an hour later, sighted another
group of survivors and sent a message, "Send rescue, 11 degrees
54 minutes North, 133 degrees 47 minutes East, 150 survivors in
life boat and jackets. Dropped red ramrod."
That message went out, and that, of course, started things going.
Gwinn said that he saw the slick only by the Grace of God. He
happened to go back to get a Loran fix. He wasn't looking for
it. He didn't know there were any people that he was supposed
to be looking for and he just was plain lucky in finding us.
Of course, it appears that everybody came to about the same time
and realized that the Indianapolis was missing. It was
one of those peculiar chain of circumstances that everything is
quiet for a certain length of time and then suddenly all hell
busts loose and everyone starts doing what they should do.
As I say, this was around noon on Thursday and most of the survivors
in that group were picked up that night by ships which had been
diverted from their spots that could get close to us, close to
that group within 12 hours.
I was sighted the next morning, Friday, 3 August, at about 1030
(10:30 a.m.) and we were picked up then. There was one group of
survivors that had been picked up the previous night by the [high-speed
transport USS] Bassett [APD-73], 155 [sailors], which were
taken to Samar [Philippine Islands]. They did not get the message
to come to Palau and the skipper knew there was a hospital in
Samar so he headed for there rather than Palau or Ulithi, even
though Samar was a little further away.
The groups which were picked up by the Ringness and the
Register were taken to Palau. There were 166 in that group.
In Palau when they reached there, two of the enlisted men died.
In Samar when that group reached there, two of those enlisted
men died. So that the total number of survivors originally picked
up was 320. We had left, finally 316, 15 officers and 301 men.
All the people who did survive were apparently in quite good physical
condition. They had some people with fractured arms or fractured
ankles, but on the whole those who survived the four days in the
water were in very good shape.
I think I've said before, everybody was suffering from exhaustion,
most people had quite bad sinus problems from the salt water and
oil that had been washed up their nose[s]. A lot of people had
burns, everybody had those salt water ulcers which are very painful
and take quite a while to heal up, and my personal feeling is
that had we not been sighted when we were , within another 24
hours, we would probably have had only 50% and 24 [hours] after
that we might not have had hardly any in that life preserver group,
because eve we, on the rafts, were getting very uncomfortable.
20 April 2003