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hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elina and this is [Music] morbid this is morbid this is morbid
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this is morbid uh everybody like oh my God everybody's like shut the [ __ ] up um
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this is going to be a long one today really and it's going to be a harrowing one long and T harrowing but a little
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different different long harrowing and different are the themes of today is morbid long harrowing and different and
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repeating each other yeah uh it's going to be very very intense but it's not like a straight up True Crime Story
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we're going to be covering the sinking of the USS Indianapolis all right I don't know if I know this story it is is
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a story everyone should know yeah cuz it's a wild tale of survival of tragedy of lots of death but the survivors here
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wild what they endured wild and then wild what happened after oh man well I love US history so I'm interested yeah
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this is kind of a US History thing there's a lot of crazy gnarly [ __ ] if you've ever seen
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Jaws um you know straight up New England fair right there of course then you have
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heard quint's monologue about the USS Indianapolis because he was supposed to be portraying a survivor of that I
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haven't seen Jaws in so long Jaws is a is Iconic it's not really a movie that like I've ever rewatched I feel like we
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used to watch it at my grandparents house so much I could probably quote that entire movie I became obsessed with
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like this like all watching all the Jaws movies One Summer with my stepmom it was
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a very interesting time to start we were like going to the beach all the time I remember specifically going to a lake
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and my sister being so [ __ ] terrified of Jaws and me and my brother being like
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there's no sharks in the lake lake but some of those movies are scary they are they're crazy one of them the
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shark is like sentient though like oh yeah get Wy it's kind of like psychic yeah I've never seen past the first one
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oh you haven't no I just I I'm a purist the second one is fun and the third I think the third one is when the shark
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literally like knows people's movements like while they're on land becomes like way too intelligent for its own Bruce
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there Bruce is wild the note so we're going to get into it pretty quick today because this is a long one there's a lot
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to talk about so I just want to jump right in let's go so the USS Indianapolis was a Portland class Heavy
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Cruiser so one of just two of those kind of ships commissioned by the US Navy in
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1930 oh wow uh originally it was designed as a quote light Cruiser which would mean it would be you know armed
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with limited armor and Munitions makes sense light uh but the ship was actually reclassified as a Heavy Cruiser the
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following year because it was retrofitted with 8 8 in uh mounted guns capable of hitting a Target several
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miles away wow that's really that's crazy that in 1930 they had that kind of Technology oh this is an impressive
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vessel for sure uh for 10 years the Indianapolis served mainly as a showpiece for the Navy kind of like you
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know it hosted members of the Roosevelt administration it was like a flagship vessel for events it was their like
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crowning Glory you know and then on December 7th 1941 which might be a very familiar date to everybody listening I
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hope it is uh the Japanese military launched a large and unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor yeah uh and it was on
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the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor killing over 2,000 400 people Jesus uh at the time of the I hope they still
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teach people mostly like about this in school we learned about Pearl okay CU I was like this is pretty important U at
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the time of the attack the Indianapolis was participating in a military exercise
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in the nearby Johnston uh ATL I think it's ATL is how you pronounce it uh and because of you know the proximity there
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they were called upon to join the search effort to locate the Japanese aircraft carriers that had launched the initial
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attack so it got brought into the fry now the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States obviously into World War
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II and as one of the military's most prestigious ships the Indianapolis was deployed right into the combat uh
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because again it had been retrofitted it's now like ready to go over the next four years uh the ship provided support
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during some of the most important battles in the Pacific like operation Detachment where the American Military
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captured the island of eima uh under the command of Captain Charles McVey who becomes a very big
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part of this whole thing that name sounds familiar um you might also be thinking of um Timothy McVey the uh
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Oklahoma bomber oh that might be it I don't know Charles McVey sounds familiar to me that's the I mean maybe I was
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going to say maybe you do but it it McVey always makes me think of Timothy McVey yeah know I see what you mean um
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uh so under the command of Captain Charles McVey the Indianapolis bombarded the Japanese from their position a few
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thousand yards of shore while infantry Men Storm the beach according to Indianapolis the true story of the worst
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sea disaster in US Naval History and the 50-year fight to exonerate an innocent man which we will get there um it's
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quote some men said that when they saw that flag go up they thought of home and how it surely wouldn't be long until
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they could sail back to their moms and sweethearts in the good old USA their moms and sweethearts it's very sad now
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during this period the Indianapolis was very badly damaged when a kamakazi fighter pilot Dropped a Bomb through the
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deck and into the mess hall Jes and it exploded in there it tore a hole in the hull of the ship and to prevent the
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entire ship from flooding this is going to like also just show you like the realities of like war is so [ __ ]
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scary yeah uh cuz they needed to prevent the whole ship from flooding obviously so crewman had to close the hatch
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leading to the mess hall but they trapped nine men inside who eventually drowned in there oh my God but it was
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literally like a they just had to what they had to do you know like it's just like but just knowing that that's just
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like a decision yeah Split Second decision yeah the ship's bulkheads prevented any major flooding and the
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Indianapolis was able to return to San Francisco for like major repairs in preparation for what was going to be its
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most important mission of the entire War so it had already had to be repaired yeah while the military fought to
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overwhelm the Japanese in the Pacific a huge team of Allied scientists and Engineers were hard at work in the USA
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on a very top secret project you might have heard of it the Manhattan Project this was led by nuclear physicist Robert
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Oppenheimer uh you definitely know his name recently from theimer Barbie Heimer whatever it was
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barbin Heimer barer Barb Heimer op and Barbie and [Laughter] [Music] Arby we're we're just like free flowing
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thoughts right it's like that when you play that game where you're both trying to get to the same word and you just
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yell your conscious it's like when we when I tried to say ostracized like a different uh a different ostracization
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OST and I could not say again and we just kept saying it I'm sure people were listening like shut the [ __ ] up or just
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screaming the right way to say it I apologize list you have these bit with your friends too okay you do and we're
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friends here uh so the goal of the project the Manhattan Project was to design an atomic bomb the likes of which
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had never been seen if you seen the movie you know all about it did you see alimer uh I have not yet actually wildly
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cuz I did want to see it um I really like Killian Murphy that I get was like a a fascinating and like really
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terrifying and horrifying time in history so it's always really interesting to see how it's done in
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these things and I he great things about it um but the whole goal of this project
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was to design a crazy atomic bomb um that would give the Allies the destructive power they believe they
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needed to stop the Japanese army army and end the war mhm by the summer of 1945 the Manhattan Project had succeeded
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it created two atomic bombs and they nicknamed them fat man and little boy uh the two bombs would eventually be
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dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima respect as we know uh in San Francisco Charles McVey had been given the details
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of the Indianapolis latest Mission but only so many details uh they had to transport the components of little boy
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including the highly radioactive uranium that would ultimately make the bomb so destructive and in addition to the
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critical Mission McVey would be sailing with nearly 300 new crewmen uh many of them were new recruits to the Navy
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within the last 90 days oh [ __ ] brand new uh not all the crew was new but at least a good chunk of it 300 of them
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were brand new can you IM that's your first [ __ ] mission yeah damn from the moment the plans were made in Washington
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DC everything about this mission was so highly confidential even Captain McVey the literal captain of the Indianapolis
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was only given the details necessary to just execute the mission like execute the delivery and that's it right like
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didn't need to know need to know basis essentially on the morning of July 16th 1945 the Indianapolis departed San
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Francisco on the way to Pearl Harbor where they were going to drop off any non-essential passengers and refuel the
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ship arrived in Hawaii on July 19th and refueled and then departed for tinian a small island in the Northern Mariana
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islands and that's where the bomb was going to be like assembled okay so like on the island like very complex yeah the
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missions and activities surrounding fat man and little boy were deemed top secret Ultra which is the highest level
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of clearance that few in the government or military would ever receive uh according to author Lynn Vincent ultra's
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dissemination was choke point narrow closely held and tightly guarded it seeped out daily to only a tiny group of
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Pacific Fleet commanders so very very hush hush um I'm saying this because when the Indianapolis left Pearl Harbor
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on July 19th very few people knew the ship was on a mission right they also definitely didn't know where it was
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going and this proved to be a problem later oh yeah a big problem okay so on July 26th the Indianapolis arrived in
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tenian and delivered the cargo which would be dropped on Hiroshima it was dropped on Hiroshima Japan a little over
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a week later and had a message written on the side that read greetings to the emperor from the men of the Indianapolis
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I remember learning about that in school and just how [ __ ] chilling that is it's so chilling it's also just like
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it's very chilling is that necessary it's just very chill War gets gets W yeah it's like these are that's a very
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like very like surface level thing to say about war we understand no but it's it's just like these kind of things when
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you read like that like a message saying like greetings you know greeting to the
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emperor from the men of the Indianapolis it's just like it's so haunting cuz it's
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just like such a a casual message written on an atomic bomb you know like it's just something about that just like
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your brain can't connect to it took out half your population yeah it's like it's
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really wild yeah um so from tenian the Indianapolis traveled to a US base in Guam where several crewmen having now
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finished their tour of Duty were dropped off and replaced by new Sailors even more imagine on to it at that point on
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July 29th they left Guam and they were on their way to late an island near the Philippines where they were going to
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receive training throughout much of the day the Indianapolis traveled you know steady pace and they moved in a
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zigzagging motion to make themselves a difficult Target for any enemy fire um any and especially any enemy submarines
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that were concealed beneath the surface that's so scary that those are the things that you don't think about during
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war you don't you know like like as a somebody not as like a civilian you know like you just you don't think about it
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like there it'll take every once in a while I'll just look at my dad cuz he was in the submarine service and I'll
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look at my dad and just be like you were in a submarine for months and months and
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months like and what sometimes he just didn't know where he was yeah and like my mom didn't know where he was yeah and
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like there was no communication there was a time when they were like five they were something like 5 hours away from
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send like showing up at her door and saying we've lost them like that we think they're gone yeah and then they
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got communication back again like insane it's just so Bonkers I'm like I can't and and again I'm saying like Bonkers
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and [ __ ] and like I don't know what else to say it's just yeah inconceivable I
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don't have a lot of eloquent language just to discuss how [ __ ] terrible war is but like it's just beyond it really
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is beyond my wildest conceptions yeah and and I think they like need to teach more about it in school they do cuz even
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I think like we were lucky like Papa told Papa and like your dad told us a lot about it and he took us to the
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Submarine Museum yeah like he's very into history so you learn so much via that but we didn't learn a ton about
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about all of this in school yeah it's important to learn this kind of [ __ ] you
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need to know what happen so that it can't happen again and where you come from you know how you got here and to
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like respect what people were dealing with back then too I think that's something that's very much missing
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generation and the next one very lacking uh so yeah so this is they were having to move in a zigzag motion and at the
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time the maneuver was strictly a precaution they weren't technically worried they were just doing it to make
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sure yeah it's just like a um but unbeknownst to McVey and the rest of the crew the Indianapolis was being tracked
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it was being tracked by an i58 which is a Japanese submarine and it was being captained by Commander Mochi Sur
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Hashimoto the I5 58 sonar and this really blew my [ __ ] mind how mundane the thing is that was able to be
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picked up on Sonar okay the i58 sonar picked up on the sound of dishes rattling in the
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Indianapolis stop from six miles away and this is in the 40s yep six miles away they could he sonar picked up on
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dishes rattling and what do you even there's no way that you fix that and it's just so
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and You' never think of that something about that hit me in the [ __ ] head like a train cuz I was like that is the
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most mundane thing I can think of and how again how do you fix that and why would you even think of it and six miles
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away they could pick up on dishes rattling I do wonder if like they put something like a precaution into place
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like between the dishes to well like and now that they like when they found out that that was how they got trapped I
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wonder if now things are done differently I wonder if you're in the Navy at all write in and let us know cuz
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now I'm so interested yeah cuz that just something about that just shook me to my
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core I could not I was like I can't wait to tell you what the the sonar picked up
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on I know she literally sat that so I'm sitting here I'm like what is it going to be what is it dishes rattling six
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miles away and so they had been silent and this is this gives me chills they had been silently stalking the ship for
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Miles o just trying to get close enough to strike and they had no idea and then so when you're on a ship that's like on
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the surface of the water obviously do they have things where they can track if they're submarines that are watching
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them from like have like sonar and stuff like that like they have more technology
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now I don't know exactly what they had back then to and and again they're six miles away right like they're six miles
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away a lot the Japanese were tracking them but they couldn't track them back like that's it's scary crazy that's so
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chilling you're right so at 12:04 a.m. so a little past midnight the i58 finally caught up to the Indianapolis
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and Hashimoto gave the order to fire six Torpedoes into the Hall two of them hit
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the mark uh McVey said I was thrown from my emergency cabin bunk on the bridge by
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a very violent explosion followed shortly thereafter by another explosion he said I went to the bridge and noticed
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in my emergency cabin in Chart House that there was quite a bit of acrid white smoke I couldn't
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anything the first torpedo that hit the Indianapolis killed dozens of men immediately and sent a violent shock
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wave through the entire ship and smoke started filling the corridors when he finally made it under the bridge Captain
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McVey learned that the officer on Deck had tried to contact the engine room to tell them to cut the engines but the
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torpedo blast had taken out the communication system and he couldn't get through so as the two men are talking on
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the bridge the second torpedo struck the the side of the ship and it was a little
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further from the bow than the first torpedo the first hit had knocked the bow of the massive ship leftward and
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ripped it at one of the seams which left a large opening in the hole Yeah the second had kind of like a little bit of
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the same effect it tore a large hole in the side of the ship okay now with the bow of the ship effectively sheared off
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and the engine's still running the wreck of the Indianapolis is still being driven forward through the water my God
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filling the corridors below deck with water anyone who didn't manage to escape from the lower decks would either be
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burned alive or drown in the flood my God so it's just a a screaming just pain awful awful scene with the entire
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communication system now out McVey ran back to his room to get clothing on because this is the middle of the night
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right and he ran into the damage control officer Casey Moore Lieutenant Moore had
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been down in uh B down to the bow after the first hit and told McVey the ship was quote going down rapidly by the head
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sinking bow first oh [ __ ] and he asked whether McVey wanted him to give the order to abandon ship now at the time
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the ship was only listing about three degrees and thinking back on the last time the Indianapolis was attacked in
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okanawa McVey thought they would be you know they could still steer the ship safely cuz they were able to do that
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before yeah so he told Moore hold off for a second on giving that order a few minutes later though Commander Joseph
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Flynn the second in command told McVey we are definitely going down and I suggest that we abandon ship and McVey
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said he had complete faith in Flynn's judgment and abilities so he said Abandoned Ship holy [ __ ] now Captain
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mcvey's hesitancy to give the order to abandon ship would later become a matter of great debate uh but at the time McVey
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had yet to fully comprehend the damage that the Indianapolis had sustained you also have to think this man literally
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just woke up to a giant [ __ ] EXP exact that's the thing it's like there was no way for him to completely assess
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the damage of the entire ship in that one second so he is listening and trying to lean on his officers to tell him like
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one of them tells them I think we're going to need to abandon ship and he's like okay hold on a second let me take a
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minute and you can understand why that's not the first thing that you want to do
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that's not what you want to do another officer who he has even more faith in is saying we got to get out of here two
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people saying it yeah and he said immediately he did it uh the i50 that hit them was outfitted with
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Japanese type 95 Torpedoes which were designed to deliver a massive explosive and then had a secondary effect like
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that they tacked onto it which would apply a huge amount of pressure when it happened to basically Buckle whatever
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The Targets target was its internal framing so it was it was made to cause severe structural damage uh when the
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Torpedoes hit the side of the Indianapolis they not only ripped a hole in the side of the ship but they really
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compromised its structural Integrity like right away uh it was taking on a [ __ ] ton of water at the same time the
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explosion from the blast had ignited the ship's fuel stores which caused a massive fire that quote incinerated or
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severely burned anyone below deck to the in the forward part of the ship wow so they just met on fire everywhere this
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section included the Sick Bay a large section of sleeping quarters and the area occupied by the stewards that whole
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section so tons of them died immediately in an awful ways now to make matters worse the fire was rapidly making its
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way to the decks above risking the lives of anyone in that area too by the time the order to abandon ship had started to
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make its way around the ship because they also don't have a communication system right now it's cut out M McVey
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had managed to send out a distress signal but with the ship's entire electrical system again having just
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taken out he had no way of knowing whether it had even successfully been sent out oh God but he just he did it as
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best as he could given that they were on a highly classified Mission the entire crew of the Indianapolis would be
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abandoning ship not knowing whether they would be rescued and without knowing how
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close the Japanese submarine was and whether it was still hunting them that's the thing that you think of like okay
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now they're just abandoning ship and going into like life rafts sitting ducks in the middle of the water that's so
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scary and that and so abandoning ship under those circumstances was only slightly less risky than being on board
00:22:33
a burning ship yeah like there was really no good op two evils and by barely yeah like a fraction McVey had
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just climbed onto the ladder that led to the bridge when the ship suddenly shifted violently about 25 degrees to
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the right and the jolt caused many of the crewman on Deck to fall off the side of the deck and into the water below oh
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my God a few seconds later when he reached the bridge mcve V said the ship shifted again this time about in a 45°
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angle and that sent more crewmen flying into the water and these guys don't have
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life jackets on right no they're not like they're trying to grab life jackets but many of them are just being shot
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into the water when McVey finally reached the communication deck the ship appeared to have settled at a 60° angle
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uh and what he recalled he said there were some youngsters there that were jumping over the side and I got to the
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lifeline on the communications deck and yelled at those boys to not jump over the side unless they had life jackets oh
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so he's trying to save these kids like oh now at the time McVey was trying to unsecure the lifeboats and make sure as
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many crewman had life preservers on before jumping but a few seconds later the Indianapolis shifted hard to the
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right yet again leaving the ship at a 90° angle McVey was making his way to the uh the end point of the deck at this
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point and the bow of the ship snapped off and dropped into the water oh [ __ ] now the impact of such a large section
00:24:00
of the ship hitting the ocean caused a wave that swept up onto the ship and sent McVey and many others tumbling from
00:24:09
the ship into the water now like they got swept off in a wave also think about the fact that this was so many people's
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first mission literally like and these are 18 and 19 year olds who Justin like ened or a bunch of like teenagers my God
00:24:26
yeah and MC as soon as he went off the side McVey said I immediately thought well this is the end of me and I turned
00:24:34
around and immediately swam away from the Indianapolis now McVey and several others had only been swimming for a few
00:24:40
seconds when they felt a rush of Heat against their backs and then a swell of hot oily water when they turned to see
00:24:47
what happened they saw that the remains of the USS Indianapolis got sucked down into the black water oh God I can't even
00:24:54
imagine that in my [ __ ] head never mind my stomach in front of you it churns my stomach like the water
00:25:02
literally just swallows the boat that you were just on and the sh I should not say the boat the [ __ ] ship ship like
00:25:10
dude and if you look up a picture of the USS Indianapolis it'll just give you even more of like hug oh my God and
00:25:18
watching that thing just get sucked down Into the Depths must have been oh I just
00:25:23
got chills yeah like it is huge wow and they watched this thing just go right under the ocean my God this is a massive
00:25:36
ship massive now the explosions on the Indianapolis had dumped countless gallons of oil and debris into the water
00:25:45
and when the ship sank it churned up the waters so that makes it even worse and it was well after midnight so pitch
00:25:53
black like pitch black so MC McVey couldn't see anything but all he could hear around him was
00:26:00
screaming and so and some of them were I mean some people were just screaming because of what just happened and some
00:26:07
of them were screaming cuz they were horrifically injured it's oh out of the darkness he
00:26:12
ended up seeing um a large vegetable crate Float by so he climbed on top of it to get out of the water smart and he
00:26:19
said a few minutes later two of the life rafts likely released from the ship as it went down floated by so he grabbed
00:26:26
both of those and the wood lattice that would stabilize the bottoms of the rafts
00:26:30
had gone and there was no ores but he said it's better than nothing yeah you got to do what you got to do he got
00:26:36
inside one and he said he called out to anyone around him trying to collect the nearest survivors and get them on the
00:26:41
rafts and with the help of the Quarter Master Vincent Vincent Allard uh Captain McVey lashed the two rafts together so
00:26:49
they wouldn't get separated by the current now in another part of this disaster Glenn Morgan another crewman
00:26:57
spotted an on uh one of the sea planes that had come loose from the ship when it sank cuz the ship was so massive it
00:27:03
had sea planes attached to it 610 ft long yeah massive now miraculously the plane appeared to have survived the
00:27:11
explosion and was in an upright position wow so he swam towards it thinking holy
00:27:16
[ __ ] this might be the only way for us to get out of here yeah but when he reached the plane he saw that it was
00:27:21
badly damaged and it was slowly sinking oh no his disappointment was only slightly tempered by the fact that just
00:27:28
underneath the plane's tail was one of the wooden life rafts oh that's good so he acted real quickly cuz this thing was
00:27:34
sinking and taking the life raft down with grab the raft before it was sucked down with the plane once he was on board
00:27:40
he took a look around and spotted another raft nearby and started paddling towards that with his hands so these men
00:27:45
are like getting the idea that we need to like start lashing these together and stay together but they're in the pitch
00:27:50
[ __ ] Block in in the middle of the godamn ocean and horrifically injured at that point Morgan couldn't
00:27:56
see any other survivors he could hear people screaming mhm so he started lashing the two rafts together just
00:28:03
hoping he could get more people on them and as he was working to get the rafts secured to one another he said heads
00:28:08
began popping up out of the darkness several feet away and he said one after the other he just saw heads popping out
00:28:14
of the ocean completely covered in oil and completely unrecognizable oh my God Morgan paddled
00:28:21
the rafts to the men and they climbed aboard exhausted but okay and covered in oil right by Dawn the reality of what
00:28:29
had happened became very apparent the Indianapolis had gone down hundreds of miles from land and there was nothing
00:28:35
but water in every direction oh my God to make matters worse when many of the rafts fell into the water they had
00:28:42
landed upside down dumping any unsecured contents like rations and blankets into
00:28:48
the water oh no so um the men on mcvey's rafts managed to flip a lot of the boats
00:28:55
and found that they some of them still contained ores and a canvas bag containing one flare gun and 12
00:29:01
cartridges uh no things were more encouraging on Morgan rafts because they did find some quote meager rations
00:29:09
flares fishing supplies and some flashlights okay the flashlights and flares could have been valuable in
00:29:15
finding you know other crewmen and S signaling passing ships and planes but they also were risky according to
00:29:22
Vincent and vladic that um the authors of that book that I mentioned up ahead and we'll Link in the show notes
00:29:28
Japanese submarines had been known to lurk at a sinking site and machine gun any
00:29:33
survivors oh my God again war and they're an enemy Waters yeah they're just like sitting ducks now the men in
00:29:41
McVey and Morgan's groups had been lucky all things considered and while they were all exhausted and covered in oil
00:29:48
they had managed to avoid suffering any serious physical harm at the like a lot of them were like pretty much with it
00:29:55
many of the others though were less fortunate many of those not killed in the blast or dragged down with the ship
00:30:01
suffered serious flash burns from the explosions many of them would die within hours of being in the water but think of
00:30:08
those grueling hours that it took to die suffer pure suffering and those who did
00:30:14
managed to find each like other survivors a lot of them found now this wasn't always the case but there was
00:30:20
patches of this some of them would find that the camaraderie that they had on the ship did not extend not extend to
00:30:25
the crisis in the sea after the ship went down Harpo CA found himself stranded without a raft or a life jacket
00:30:33
and he was so happy to spot some other survivors but when he got to the raft and tried to pull himself on board they
00:30:40
pushed him off the raft and pushed the raft away what the [ __ ] if there's room
00:30:44
why not what the [ __ ] dude and the same thing happened when he spotted a second
00:30:48
raft it's happened him twice yeah so he grabbed onto a rope trailing behind the raft and clung to it so he wouldn't get
00:30:54
separated from everyone what about no man Left Behind isn't that like a a [ __ ] pledge what the [ __ ] and again
00:30:59
these were small pockets of behavior yeah it wasn't for the most part these men were working together and trying to
00:31:05
help each other but damn but you're always going to get some dicks in the bunch now the instances again of
00:31:11
selfishness and cruelty very disheartening but again uncommon for the most part whenever any of the rafts
00:31:17
would spot a Survivor floating in the water they would do their best to get to them and drag them on board once they
00:31:23
were in full daylight the men on the rafts started paddling around their immediate area looking for any supplies
00:31:29
anything that was heavy and not lashed to the boats had sunk with the rest of the ship but they did manage to find
00:31:34
some cans of spam and other tinned Foods along with some medical supplies most of
00:31:40
which were water logged and kind of useless right the one thing they didn't find which they would desperately need
00:31:46
was fresh water at one point early that morning McVey found a three gallon jug of water
00:31:53
but he said immediately he found out it had been tainted he said it apparently had been cracked because I tasted the
00:31:58
water and it was unpalatable it was salty oh no now of the 880 men who survived the attack wow around 400 would
00:32:08
eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group wow yeah
00:32:14
that's the most injured were pulled onto the handful of Life rafts but most were
00:32:18
floating in the water beside the rafts some with life's jackets but many without just treading water and just
00:32:24
holding onto a raft uh getting the group together this way 400 men took nearly all their first stay in the water and
00:32:32
expended almost all of their energy they were exhausted they only had one or two
00:32:36
paddles on board and it took hours to travel just a few hundred yards wow the task was made even more arduous by the
00:32:43
tide because it was always working against them they were just going against the tide at all times on the
00:32:48
first day the survivors had drifted nearly five miles from where the sight of the thinking was wow and the rolling
00:32:55
waves constantly threatened to pull them apart in different directions for the first day or so the men in the main
00:33:02
group got along pretty well despite being exhausted in pain and horribly terrified in addition to whatever
00:33:08
injuries they had suffered when they abandoned the ship most of the men were covered in fuel which had also gotten in
00:33:13
their eyes and caused excruciating Burning Sensations and then you're just flushing it out with salt salt water
00:33:20
also many had unintentionally swallowed large amounts of seawater and fuel causing them to become VI ently ill for
00:33:28
much of the first day oh God yeah despite all of this they still managed to work together to locate supplies care
00:33:36
for the wounded and make hats from the canvas to block out the worst of the sun that's insane that they were able to do
00:33:42
that the human Spirit man yeah at night they would occasionally see a plane fly overhead and would fire one of the
00:33:50
flares but the pilots never acknowledged them and also you don't know that must have been so scary cuz you don't know if
00:33:55
that's your plane yeah um McVey later said we knew now that these eight or nine planes that we saw and that we
00:34:03
either during the daytime flashed these these signal mirrors the Emergency Signal mirror at nobody ever saw the
00:34:09
mirror us or any of the the flares that they were shooting at at their altitude it was impossible for the pilots to see
00:34:17
even a large group of men in the water below oh and the survivors didn't know at the time that nobody even knew where
00:34:23
the Indianapolis was Jesus so they weren't looking for them like these planes were not search planes they were
00:34:30
just going overhead now as the men worked throughout the day on Monday they were
00:34:35
so preoccupied with what was on the surface of the ocean that didn't occur to them there was probably some [ __ ]
00:34:41
below them as well oh no um this is something that a lot of people if you've read or heard about the Indianapolis um
00:34:47
which definitely read further into it it's very fascinating and horrifying and some of these interviews with these
00:34:52
survivors later very interesting um this is something that a lot of people know about the Sharks yeah um throughout the
00:35:00
day many of the sailors had to kick and splash to fend off you know Barracuda that would swim up next to them oh my
00:35:06
god um but otherwise their biggest concern besides that was the Sun and you know the Japanese the enemy yeah uh then
00:35:14
late that afternoon Seaman second class uh Curtis Pace saw from the corner of his eye something moving below him no he
00:35:22
glanced down to get a better look and he said he saw a Shark whip its tail once and it's silhouette Blended in with
00:35:29
dozens of others just like it no now the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean that they were in is home to a variety
00:35:37
of shark species including the Hammerhead tiger shark and the notoriously aggressive and pissy oceanic
00:35:45
white tip oh God uh you just describe that shark as pissy very pissy such a pissy [ __ ] pissy and very
00:35:53
opportunistic I will say they're very lazy and opportunistic because they tend to be solit AR in their behavior um
00:36:00
they're so pissy they they're pissy they don't want to deal with anybody else but
00:36:03
they will put away their pissy piss and pettiness if they uh see that there's a large food source that they can
00:36:11
congregate together for oh great so they'll congregate for something um but they're scavengers and like I said
00:36:17
they're opportunistic they don't really want to expend much energy to hunt they like it when it's just popped in front
00:36:23
of them which it was oh boy was this just popped right in front of them so they were like [ __ ] dinner like they
00:36:30
were literally like wow this is like a banquet are you going to tell me that people were eaten by sharks in these
00:36:35
Waters yes often oh God sharks of all species like if you if you know anything about sharks they've evolved over time
00:36:46
to be very sensitive to sound they can detect noises miles away yeah um sharks are fascinating yeah they really are I
00:36:53
[ __ ] love sharks I do too shark we sh um they they this ability allows them to
00:37:02
locate prey and also makes them really good at identifying when prey might be you know in distress and you know an
00:37:10
easy meal because sharks again pretty lazy love fast food like the rest of us so they're like if it can just be
00:37:17
dropped in front of me why not like that's what she that's what sharks really look at they're like it's got to
00:37:23
be easy yeah right there and if it seems like it's in distress then it's really not going to put up that much of a fight
00:37:28
and I can get my meal and peace out and go on my way but when the Indianapolis went down it churned up the sea causing
00:37:35
a large commotion in the water which you know sharks all over the place were like
00:37:40
what the [ __ ] up with that and also there was a lot of splashing from the men and the blood from the injured and
00:37:48
dying would have sent a strong signal to nearby sharks I mean this was like a homing Beacon to sharks who would have
00:37:56
followed the scent and at Le come to investigate what was going on right so throughout the day Curtis page and the
00:38:02
others watched as the group of white tips below grew larger and larger they just kept on congregating and they're
00:38:09
just circling just circling and for the time being they were just circling lazily kind of going and then all of a
00:38:17
sudden they would like they said they would like go below all of them and then sometimes would grow bold and
00:38:23
investigate but then crewman would like Splash and kick at them and they'd kind a retreat away uhhuh but it's like you
00:38:29
don't have the energy to keep doing that no then the sun went down and they said
00:38:34
it was as though they got more emboldened by the sun going down oh my God coelle Smith was laying on one of
00:38:41
the floating Nets with several other men this is so scary so it was a floating net and he was laying on there with a
00:38:47
few other men when one of the white tips shot up from below at like a high speed
00:38:52
CU that's what they do and grabbed Smith's hand in its mouth and he screamed high pitch streak everybody
00:38:59
said they heard in the middle of the [ __ ] night the shark dragged Smith off the raft pulled him 10 ft below the
00:39:07
surface and whipped its head back and forth with his arm and its jaws oh my [ __ ] and he's 10t in the ocean in the
00:39:15
pitch black so even if he's opening his eyes he's seeing pitch Blackness and just being thrown I need
00:39:23
you to fully comprehend that cuz I how could you ever until I like like cuz you hear that and you're like oh my God
00:39:30
that's awful H and then you really think of every single component of this and you go oh my God that is like hell on
00:39:38
Earth yep I can't think of what you're laying down a shipwreck and get you survived a shipwreck like a
00:39:47
insane military attack yes two Torpedoes hitting your ship you get dragged beneath the surface from a shark into
00:39:57
the pitch black depths of the ocean where you are looking around at nothing but you also know that multiple other
00:40:07
sharks have been surrounding you all day even if this one doesn't get you there's
00:40:12
however many more and are they just descending upon me am I about to just be torn from limb from limb and this one is
00:40:19
tearing a limb off of me well this guy survives he survives what the [ __ ] cuz Smith managed to hold his breath by the
00:40:26
way cuz you got it you're 10 ft below the surface and is punching and poking at the shark's snout cuz that's what
00:40:33
you're supposed to do that's supposed to work sure is it didn't no he was unwilling to let go Smith so he managed
00:40:41
to sink his other hand into the shark's gills and pushed as hard as he could and
00:40:48
finally the shark let go and he was able to shoot back up to the surface he frantically swarmed towards the net like
00:40:56
he ran he like swam as fast as he could towards the Nets his hand was shredded oh by the shark by the way oh yeah cuz
00:41:04
they they got teeth on teeth on teeth on teeth teeth on teeth on teeth it gets worse no because when he gets to the sh
00:41:12
he gets up survives this gets to the raft get him again and his crew mates shouted at him to get away from the boat
00:41:19
[ __ ] because the shark was going to come back and pull more of them down cuz he's
00:41:23
now bleeding everywhere [ __ ] them what the [ __ ] and they're kicking and pushing
00:41:29
him away and in that moment though he said [ __ ] Y'all he had so much adrenaline that he pulled himself onto
00:41:36
the raft anyways good you can make a [ __ ] T they kicked him off again it get oh no one of the men started
00:41:43
slashing at Smith with a knife why and he succeeded in forcing him off of the boat and now he is
00:41:53
bleeding from slashes on his arms and he shreded hand what the [ __ ] so he slid
00:42:01
back into the water and they were literally about to sa they not even about it they were sacrificing they like
00:42:07
get out get out of here die and they so he gets away from the raft cuz he's like [ __ ] y'all like I'm
00:42:13
not going there and is without a life a jacket and is bleeding profusely now and
00:42:19
there's just sharks everywhere by then the Sharks had started attacking other groups of crewmen because once they saw
00:42:25
this happen the Sharks were like let's go and they just started going crazy darting Up From Below now and just
00:42:32
grabbing injured people grabbing dead bodies like they're just jumping up and grabbing people down the PTSD that these
00:42:39
survivors must have had unfathomable how do you even treat that level of PTSD truly the trauma yeah just
00:42:48
seeing multiple of your friend like your crew members and Friends be and and multiple sharks shooting up through the
00:42:56
surface well and to show you how horrifying this ordeal was like they're hearing there's terrorized
00:43:05
screams just echoing in the night in the middle of the ocean men just screaming crying begging for mercy oh that's
00:43:14
heartbreaking and so and um this other crew member SE uh Seaman uh James King he was like a a young man he was wounded
00:43:24
by the blast already and he was so terrorized by this whole thing that he removed his life jacket and tried to
00:43:31
swim down into the water and just die but he was quickly retrieved by his friend and this is what shows you like
00:43:39
the very ends of humanity here yeah uh his friend Denny price pulled him back up and he said he did it several times
00:43:48
and Denny kept pulling him back up oh my God and when he was asked why he kept rescuing him during his multiple
00:43:54
attempts to end his life price later said it's just the right thing to do that's a G right there that's a that's a
00:44:01
human that's a [ __ ] friend cuz he was like we're going to get out of this like
00:44:05
I know you're terrorized right now but we're going to get out of this you got to keep a circle around you that you
00:44:10
know after a a sink a sinking you go down with a sinking ship you survive that there's sharks attacking you
00:44:17
everywhere and you are at your wits [ __ ] end you better surround yourself with friends that will rescue
00:44:22
you every godamn time every time you give up and you should never doubt that your friends will do that for you and if
00:44:27
you doubt that get new friends drop them yeah get new friends now until the Sharks began attacking the survivors had
00:44:34
been keeping you know the dead men that they had that were growing in numbers each day oh God they kept them secured
00:44:42
to a raft and they The Hope was that they could return their bodies to their loved ones once they were rescued so
00:44:47
they were really trying to like you know have some honor here for them when the attack started though those in positions
00:44:55
of authority like IGN har and twible started cutting away the bodies and allowing them to sink cuz they were like
00:45:01
they're just going to keep attacking us like we can't well like you were just saying the sharks can literally smell
00:45:07
and they were like we're just kind of drawing them to us right now so and most of them were grabbed by the Sharks
00:45:13
before they could sink very far uh twible said everybody was scared to death these were all 18 and 19yearold
00:45:19
kids there wasn't any fighting any turmoil but everyone was scared and then you're just watching sharks eat sinking
00:45:26
friends yeah for an extended period of time the survivors were more or less helpless and
00:45:31
could do nothing more than listen to the screams and cries of their brothers essentially one by one as they were
00:45:39
dragged off by white tips like how do you even disassociate from that like that like right next to
00:45:47
you you're the the guy who you have been serving with and who you survived with gets dragged off screaming and you can't
00:45:55
help them that's so fun and then you just watch as they get mauled by a shark like that's the kind of thing that you
00:46:03
these are the kinds of thing like we didn't talk about this in school these are the kinds of things they need to
00:46:08
tell you about yeah now by Tuesday Morning most of the groups had set set up shark watches and worked in shifts to
00:46:15
keep an eye out for anything on or just below the surface uh once the large group of white tips had picked off many
00:46:21
of the dead and dying uh and face the resistance from the injured and you know any of the a able bodied that could
00:46:27
fight back the attacks did begin to slow in frequency but they remained a terrifying reality through the entire
00:46:33
ordeal until the very end like it never let up no of course not McVey later said
00:46:38
the kids who were in rafts by themselves on this one raft were scared to death of
00:46:43
this shark because he kept swimming underneath the raft you could see his big dorsal fin and it was white almost
00:46:48
as white as a sheet of paper apparently the shark spent most of his time on the surface and his fin had bleached out so
00:46:55
he didn't blend in with the surface at all and I was like that sounds like like the
00:46:59
super villain of sharks and I don't like that now in the decades that followed the tragedy of the Indianapolis would
00:47:06
become synonymous with shark attacks that's something that a lot of people know about it and one of the things that
00:47:12
really made it synonymous with it with it was a large Soliloquy given by the character quint in Steven Spielberg's
00:47:18
1975 film Jaws um Quint was played by Robert Shaw played wonderfully by Robert Shaw love Quint he's a he's awesome like
00:47:29
love Quint and he was played as a Gruff Shark Hunter whose hatred of sharks stemmed from his experiences surviving
00:47:36
the USS Indianapolis which now carries so much more weight it certainly does I want to read his Soliloquy because it's
00:47:44
very real like they really pulled from the actual thing well now you know that what it actually is harrowing details so
00:47:51
he said Japanese submarines slam two Torpedoes into her side Chief we was coming back from the island of tinian to
00:47:57
late we just delivered the bomb the Hiroshima bomb 1100 men went into the water vessel went down in 12 minutes
00:48:04
didn't see the first shark for about a half hour tiger 13-footer you know how you know that in the water Chief you can
00:48:10
tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail what we didn't know was that our bomb mission was so secret no distress
00:48:16
signal had been sent they didn't even list us overdue for a week after first light Chief sharks come cruising by so
00:48:23
we formed ourselves into tight groups you know by the end of that first Dawn lost 100 men I don't know how many
00:48:28
sharks there were maybe a thousand I don't know many I don't know how many men how many men they averaged six an
00:48:34
hour Thursday morning Chief I bumped into a friend of mine Herby Robinson from Cleveland baseball player uh
00:48:40
bosen's mate I thought he was asleep I reached over to wake him up he bobbed up and down in the water he was kind of
00:48:46
like a top upended well he'd been bitten in half below the waist God and this is
00:48:52
like real [ __ ] like he just explained a very real scenario that happened like picture a thousand sharks I can't
00:49:01
picture one [ __ ] thousand sharks and that you're just a Sitting Duck in the water I can't even picture 20 sharks
00:49:12
without [ __ ] myself I can't imagine being on a boat and seeing a shark I would be scared to see a shark in the
00:49:17
water from a boat absolutely cuz like you said they just they go to the [ __ ] depths of the ocean and then
00:49:23
they shoot all the way Powerhouse up to the surf oh it's so scary I'm never getting on a
00:49:28
boat again [ __ ] that no it's real [ __ ] scary and what's even worse is like that wasn't even the most of their
00:49:38
problems that the Sharks were like high on the list of problems what was worse there's a lot of [ __ ] that's going down
00:49:44
the bigger issue was they had a complete lack of water to drink oh I literally forgot that yeah of course because why
00:49:53
would you even there's so many focused on the thousands ofar personally in general a person can survive without
00:49:59
water for about 3 days but the effects of dehydration though can set in fast like you can survive but at what cost
00:50:07
but barely uh they set in Fast and they range from really strong thirst and headaches to confusion and
00:50:14
hallucinations eventually the body will go into complete shock and unconsciousness before it just shuts
00:50:19
down systematically like slowly now some of the rafts in the main group had managed to scavenge some of the water
00:50:25
jugs that hadn't fled away but that was really barely anything and definitely not enough to meet the needs of all the
00:50:31
survivors yeah like hundreds of them um by Tuesday those injured who hadn't been
00:50:36
you know taken by sharks began to give up hope or just lose Consciousness and simply would float away yeah like they
00:50:44
would literally fall into unconsciousness and they would just float off yeah which is just really
00:50:48
haunting to think and a lot of them who were floating off would just remove their life jackets and let themselves
00:50:54
drown oh like that happened a lot cuz they just didn't want to prolong it anymore yeah now IGN twible later said
00:51:01
we tried to keep the men thinking that they would be saved but there was no way in God's green earth that I knew we were
00:51:06
going to be saved right by the third night in the water many among the crew had become Delirious suffering from heat
00:51:12
stroke in the day or hypothermia at night or dehydration all the time or all three probably in mcvey's group a large
00:51:20
number of men had tied themselves together using a length of rope secured to one of the rafts uh he later said
00:51:26
some of them lived through the period but those who went out of their head earlier than say 48 to 60 hours didn't
00:51:32
last the people that were down in that group just gave up hope so they feel that people just slipped out of their
00:51:38
life jackets and just decided that they didn't want to face it any longer oh my God in twi's group the effects of
00:51:44
dehydration and Madness had begun to affect many of the men around him Lieutenant Richard redm once um once one
00:51:51
of the strongest among them had been steadily declining over the course of the third day and was fre heard crying
00:51:57
out I need to get to the engine room before trying to throw himself over the side of the raft so he's just like
00:52:03
hallucinating fully others were in a similarly hallucinatory State muttering about seeing a water fountain down below
00:52:11
then diving beneath the surface and some of them wouldn't come back up um I found
00:52:15
an account by uh Survivor wood Woody Eugene and he said on that third day this is his quote he said the sun did uh
00:52:23
the Sun finally did rise and it got warmed up again so some of the guys had been drinking saltwater by now and they
00:52:29
were going berserk they tell you big stories about the Indianapolis is not sunk It's just right there beneath the
00:52:34
surface I was just down there and had a drink of water out of the drinking fountain and the g dunk is still open
00:52:41
the G dunk being the commissary where you buy ice cream cigarettes candy what have you it's still open they tell you
00:52:47
come on we'll get a drink of water and then three or four guys would believe this story and go with them oh that's
00:52:53
horrible which just like that's heartbreaking my heart like shattered in my chess
00:52:59
reading because you're just think like they're all just like let's go get water and candy like oh my god oh it's just
00:53:05
like and these are like 18 and 19y old so like oh it makes you want to cry I just like want to hug their parents um
00:53:14
among the last of the injured to voluntarily give up his life was commander Stan lipsky this is just so
00:53:20
sad he was the indianapolis's Gunnery officer he had suffered serious Burns in the explosion after the first torpedo
00:53:27
strike and by the time he hit the water um quote the Flesh on his hands had been
00:53:32
burned down to the tendons and his eyes were burn closed oh my God despite having remained
00:53:41
in the water since abandoning ship he had managed to avoid the Sharks and hold out longer than most of the others who'd
00:53:49
been Gravely injured he was still there on the third day then on the afternoon of August 1st he looked to his friend
00:53:56
Louis Doc haes and said I'm going now Lou tell my wife I love her and I want to marry her again oh I know that one
00:54:04
like really got me no no I almost just cried saying that oh my God [ __ ] you just ruined me I know tell
00:54:13
my wife I want to marry her again like no [ __ ] [ __ ] hold on I know that like
00:54:18
really got me like that's awful and just your friend looking at you and being like I'm going now like it's just like
00:54:25
for you to and he looked at his friend because he was like please remove my life jacket like he couldn't cuz his
00:54:31
hands were burned down to the tendons oh [ __ ] dude so Hayne said he he knew he's
00:54:37
like I he was in pain like he was miserable it would be awful to stop that his eyes he told and so he said he
00:54:44
removed his friend's life jacket and allowed his body to slip under the surface of imagine being his [ __ ]
00:54:49
wife and heing that and like thank goodness Haynes was later able to that message that like tell my wife I love
00:54:59
her and I want to marry her again stop saying that I know every time I say it I got a lump in my throat I know [ __ ] that
00:55:04
literally brought tears to my eyes now throughout their 4-day ordeal on the open ocean the survivors had seen
00:55:11
several planes fly overhead like I mentioned and they made strong efforts to get the attention of the pilots but
00:55:16
obviously to no avail um in fact by the last day any fears of being captured by the Japanese had left most of their
00:55:23
minds to be honest and all that matter least of their worries and all that mattered at this point was getting the
00:55:27
[ __ ] out of the water right the Indianapolis was expected to arrive back in the Philippines on Tuesday July 31st
00:55:34
but when it failed to arrive no one sounded the alarm after all they'd been on a top secret mission and there were
00:55:40
many reasons why they could have been delayed so the few who were aware of their existence saw no reason to be
00:55:46
concerned dear God also the control offices in Guam and the Philippines had been charting the indianapolis's travel
00:55:53
each day using their last known coordinates and their speed to approximate the location yeah now in
00:56:00
truth the US Navy had no idea where they were or that it had sank yeah it's just
00:56:07
the truth of the matter just didn't know by that time the wreckage had sunk to the bottom of the ocean which was nearly
00:56:12
10,000 ft deep in that area Jesus Christ I was looking up some of the pictures of
00:56:17
when they eventually found it yeah so there wouldn't have been anything to indicate that the ship had ever even
00:56:23
been there on the surface and even if there was evidence of a ship being attacked in that location that would
00:56:28
have been very little help to the survivors of the Indianapolis Because by the time the Navy had become alarmed
00:56:33
about the cruise failure to return the survivors had drifted anywhere between 60 and 200 miles from the site of the
00:56:40
attack so they were nowhere near where that happened so a search of the area wouldn't have really led to their rescue
00:56:47
really yeah that the crew of the Indianapolis were rescued at all had more to do with luck and coincidence
00:56:52
than it really did military policy and tracking ability wondering how they were found on the morning of August 2nd
00:56:59
Wilbur Chuck Gwyn was flying over the Philippine Sea in his pv1 Ventura bomber conducting a sweep for enemy vessels a
00:57:07
new antenna had been installed on the bomber that morning and it had snapped off a few minutes into the flight so he
00:57:13
had been told to come back to base so they could replace it and then so he ended up being like an hour behind
00:57:19
schedule and a little past 11:00 a.m. he was about 350 Mi north of palao at the tip of the Philippines cruising at
00:57:27
roughly 3,000 ft because he had fallen behind schedule his trajectory had him facing directly into the Sun at that
00:57:34
time of the day but he could still see about 20 miles in every direction he hadn't been out very long when the
00:57:40
second antenna snapped oh man and it was only replaced like 10 minutes earlier damn and it snapped off and the radio
00:57:47
men suggested he return and get a replacement for the replacement so after turning the controls over his co-pilot
00:57:54
Warren Colwell he du Gwyn ducked into the belly of the plane and he was trying to secure the antenna wire to the plane
00:58:01
to keep it from like damaging the tail right so he grabbed a long length of rubber hose and then opened a small
00:58:06
hatch to start reeling the wire back into the plane when he looked down though he saw something and he jumped to
00:58:14
his feet and ran back to his co-pilot and he yelled to him he said look down and when he looked down it appeared to
00:58:20
be an enemy submarine oh now at that time of day the sun had reflected really hard off the sub the surface of the
00:58:28
ocean so it made it impossible to see like anything but like a general shape in the water [ __ ] uh he had said it's
00:58:35
like glass down there you can't see a thing assuming that what he was seeing was an enemy vessel Gwyn ordered his
00:58:42
co-pilot to open the Bombay doors and prepare to release one of the depth charges shut the [ __ ] up but the Ventura
00:58:49
got descended and got into position so it had to descend a little and Gwyn realized he was not seeing an enemy ship
00:58:56
thank goodness he realized yeah but he's seeing a few hundred men floating in the
00:59:01
water on rafts or some most he said were just bobbing on the surface alongside the lifeboats can you imagine if they
00:59:07
survived all of that got bombed by their own men accidentally bombed by their own
00:59:12
men [ __ ] that would have been I mean I can't even now by the fourth day in the water the survivors
00:59:21
had begun to accept that rescue wasn't likely going to come and they were going to die uh then late Thursday morning
00:59:27
Kenley lanter one of the men in Glenn Morgan's group spotted something in the air coming in their Direction so lanter
00:59:34
called out hey Morgan look and he said jerking his head in the direction of it he said do you see it and Morgan and the
00:59:40
other was going nuts yeah well he was probably just like look another plane that's going to fly by us and not do
00:59:44
anything and so the other men on the rap looked up and they saw it and they were
00:59:48
like yeah I see it and it at first he said is it a bird cuz he was like I couldn't really like my eyes were so
00:59:54
blurry and everything like I can see like is it a bird and they all squinted they couldn't really make it out and
00:59:59
Morgan had just opened up his mouth to be like yeah it's a bird when lantern interrupted him and said that's a
01:00:04
[ __ ] plane now all the men in the rafts and many more in the Water started shouting cuz they're not giving up like
01:00:11
if they see something they're going to try of course and they're all and it's like their voices must have been so
01:00:15
strained and harsh and like they just cot in mouths and dry throats and just like and have been screaming for four
01:00:24
days essentially they're all waving their hands in the air and as Gwynn's plane descended further he could see
01:00:30
them in the water and he said they were covered in oil and he said and what surrounded them was a huge miles long
01:00:37
oil slick wow the amount of oil in the size of the crew in the water suggested him that his ship had gone down but Gwyn
01:00:44
hadn't heard of any ship sinking because nobody knew so he was like this doesn't
01:00:49
make sense but he was like regardless of how they got there they were clearly in
01:00:52
trouble so he ordered the bay doors opened again and he started dropping the life raft and every life jacket they had
01:00:59
on the plane and a buoy and all the buoys they had on board down to them to at least start the process like here
01:01:05
here's what we have going to need more manpower but at least here's this when he done that he ran back to the cockpit
01:01:10
and got on the radio to report many men in the water at that at those coordinates now his antenna is broken
01:01:17
remember uhhuh so his message back to base came through really badly garbled sounding like am circling life raft but
01:01:25
that's all that technicians could really make out fortunately the closer they got
01:01:30
the more Gwyn and the flight crew began to understand the scope of what they were seeing and he returned to the radio
01:01:35
to make additional reports which were better received luckily but at first it was like are you kidding me the
01:01:40
communication staff moved quickly to set the rescue operation in motion and they
01:01:45
launched amphibian rescue vessels that if they made good time could reach the men in about 3 hours but then there also
01:01:51
still an enemy water and those can be hit by Torpedoes exactly I'm [ __ ] ter a lot of attention is being put on this
01:01:58
scene so they're getting even scareder at that time the C J Doyle a US Navy Destroyer Escort was cruising about 50
01:02:05
mies off the coast of palao as one of the vessels dispatched from command base Flew Over the doyle the pilot Adrien
01:02:12
Marx radioed to the ship below and alerted them to what was happening they had not received any official orders to
01:02:19
assist in the emergency the ship's Captain though Graham clater knew it would be hours before a rescue team
01:02:25
would reach those men in the water so he made the decision without even being ordered to to change course and go Aid
01:02:32
the men from the Indianapolis which is like a badass decision hell yeah although the official order came through
01:02:37
to the crew of the doyle an hour and a half later according to one report it is not possible to say how many lives
01:02:44
Clayton stolen 90 minutes saved wow so like good on him for real for several hours that morning um Sean first class
01:02:53
dick Thelen who gives some interviews too that you can watch and they're very fascinating he had been drifting away
01:02:59
from the larger group in the water and then in late morning he heard the sound of what he would later learn with Mark's
01:03:05
plane flying overhead theen watched with absolute astonishment as the cargo B bay
01:03:12
doors opened and the plane um dropped a Lifeboat about 50 yards from where he was floating he said he called out to
01:03:18
the three other men nearby and they all started swimming towards the raft and were probably I can't imagine the
01:03:24
Elation that they probably sitting there questioning if this is real yeah like are we being tricked like what's
01:03:29
happening are we hallucinating well that's the thing they probably thought they were by the time theen made it to
01:03:34
the raft two of the other men had already climbed in but there was still no sign of his friend Robert Terry theen
01:03:40
looked back and spotted Robert Terry a few yards behind him and he said he had stopped swimming and was clutching his
01:03:46
chest and he said his face was twisted in like a Grimace oh no and theen thought Terry might be having a heart
01:03:53
attack and then all of a sudden he just disappeared completely under the water did a [ __ ] shark get him and he said
01:04:00
a few seconds later he appeared again above the water and he was now swimming towards the raft and theing called out
01:04:06
to him encouraging him being like you're going to make it you're going to make it
01:04:08
come on and even got into the water to help him and he had just lowered himself into the water when he turned to see a
01:04:15
large white tip bolt out of the water and grab Robert Terry dragging him under the
01:04:21
water and he was gone he was that close to he was that close to rescue that [ __ ] shk that shark is a
01:04:30
[ __ ] assle love sharks that shark's a [ __ ] [ __ ] that particular shark I hate cuz
01:04:36
that was a [ __ ] move that was like that to be are you kidding You've Had A Feast
01:04:41
for days you piece of [ __ ] and he was that and he was so close and and for and
01:04:47
for his friend to watch his friend and be encouraging him being like come on like we're almost there and getting into
01:04:51
the water to help him and then watch him be dragged under by a shark oh my God and you can't even like you can't even
01:04:58
properly celebrate that you're being rescued cuz you just watched your watch your friend get eaten and it's like Fu
01:05:03
how do you ever get over that and and thenen said like um he said that he was in complete shock and he just sat in the
01:05:10
water for a second and complete shock I couldn't overcome it and he's like and obviously I had to and I managed to get
01:05:16
myself back on the raft yeah before another sh he's like I can't let myself get dragged under now Mark's plain was
01:05:22
just the first of many to arrive at the scene um the for the rest the afternoon a steady stream of planes flew overhead
01:05:28
dropping rafts life jackets other supplies just making sure they could survive in the time before they could
01:05:34
get them out knowing the rescue ships were still a ways off and that time was of the Ence markx made a decision that
01:05:41
would likely save a ton of people's lives he decided so to land a sea plane of that size on the open ocean and in
01:05:50
such a small window um to be like accessible to stranded survivors was very very risky it's just not something
01:05:57
you can do but Marx decided to that he was going to do it that he was going to try it so he descended to the lowest
01:06:04
point he could and put the plane into a power stall which is an aviation phenomenon that causes the plane to lose
01:06:10
lift and he brought the plane down on the surface of the ocean with three hard bounces and he said to his astonishment
01:06:18
the plane suffered only minor damage and once he got the Bay's doors open Marx and the other crew members began loading
01:06:25
in the most vulnerable men from the Indianapolis so he like put himself at risk to make sure he could get at least
01:06:32
the most vulnerable on damn the door this is what I mean when you see like you really see like the opposite ends of
01:06:38
the spectrum of like humans being humans here people shoving people off of Life RS but then risking their own lives for
01:06:44
each other wow now the doyle was the first ship to reach the survivors a little after 9:30 p.m. given the size of
01:06:51
the destroyer and the extent to which the men were scattered across the water cler and the crew of the doyle had to be
01:06:56
extremely careful to not churn up the water and set them a drift yeah or run them down cuz he couldn't it was night
01:07:04
yeah uh but that wasn't the only problem clater had also received warnings of Japanese submarines patrolling the area
01:07:10
I had a feeling putting the pressure on them to get the men of the Indianapolis out of the [ __ ] water as quickly as
01:07:15
possible other ships arrived a short time later and working with only the light from the doy because they didn't
01:07:21
want to draw attention they worked diligently to pull every Survivor out out of the water wow Corporal Edgar
01:07:28
harell said most everyone was pretty much in my condition you couldn't stand up even difficult to sit up you were
01:07:34
exhausted probably lost 20 to 25 pounds in four days yeah Captain mcvey's group never saw the planes fly overhead but
01:07:42
that evening the USS ringness a high-speed transport boat spotted the group on their radar and slowly made
01:07:48
their way over to them McVey heard one of the men say my God look at this there are two destroyers bearing down on us
01:07:55
why they're almost on top of us um and he said when he turned the ship was pulling up beside them and lowering the
01:08:02
rescue equipment and he said it was just like a a view I can't even describe yeah
01:08:07
on the on board the ringness the injured were tended to by the ship's doctors and
01:08:11
other men ate and drank to excess yeah um they hadn't eaten in 4 days right the USS Indianapolis went down at around
01:08:18
12:15 a.m. on July 30th 1945 taking with it roughly 300 men the remaining 8 90 crewman spent 4 days and five nights in
01:08:28
the Water by the time the rescue crew arrived on August 2nd only 37 men had survived 890 went into the water
01:08:39
3177 survived wow in total the rescue operation took nearly 24 hours uh years later during an interview Harland twible
01:08:50
said saw some great heroism and I saw some great fright and I saw some things I wouldn't ever want to talk about and I
01:08:57
can't imagine now on August 6th 1945 the US dropped the atomic bomb on H Hiroshima
01:09:04
Japan which was followed by the bombing of Nagasaki 3 Days Later although the Japanese wouldn't officially surrender
01:09:11
for nearly a month this basically effectively ended World War II in all the enthusiasm over the end of the war
01:09:18
few people really gave a lot of thought about the missing men on the USS Indianapolis the survivors were taken to
01:09:23
hospitals on the closest Islands including the military base at Guam where they started the long road to
01:09:29
physical recovery uhhuh meanwhile the US Navy went into damage control mode developing a strategy to deal with what
01:09:36
was obviously a very botched Mission yeah old M up yeah among other things those in positions of authority had
01:09:44
denied McVey the military escort he'd requested when they set out from Hawaii ignored the distress signals received by
01:09:52
the Indianapolis at the time it began sinking and failed to recognize the reports from late when the ship didn't
01:09:58
arrive as expected so they did send out sucessful distress signals in simple terms my jaw is wide
01:10:07
open yeah the entire situation made the Navy brass look incompetent at best and at worst liable for the deaths of
01:10:14
hundreds of sailors I'd say so that kind of Scandal and the Fallout for any investigations not only reflected badly
01:10:20
on the military but also threatened to overshadow the enthusiasm over the US victory in the Pacific uhhuh in fact in
01:10:27
Washington high-ranking military officials had already begun demanding answers and scheduling a hearing to
01:10:33
determine the cause of sinking a few days earlier on August 13th Captain Charles McVey found himself before the
01:10:40
court of inquiry in in Guam where he was intensely questioned as to the cause of
01:10:46
the disaster during the hearing a lot of the surviving crew members who were well
01:10:50
enough to appear testified as to their experience during and after the whole thing when the hearing concluded a few
01:10:56
of the communications officers were lightly punished for failing to recognize the indianapolis's absence
01:11:02
when it didn't returned so like they really just got like a slap on oh like they didn't return on time and you
01:11:07
didn't say anything like who you but it was McVey who the court really went after sorry what oh his story is
01:11:16
horrifically sad but they do get Justice for him later I'll give you that why did
01:11:20
they go after him in their letter to the Judge Advocate General which is the Jag
01:11:25
uh military officials wrote full justification for ordering the trial Springs from the fact that these CA this
01:11:31
case is of vital interest not only to the families of those who lost their lives but also to the public at large
01:11:38
but when it came time to making their case officials in Washington failed to mention the Myriad ways in which they
01:11:43
contributed to the tragedy themselves choosing instead to lay blame completely at the feet of Captain McVey I don't
01:11:51
understand how in their summary report the Jag wrote the court is of the opinion that a contributory
01:11:57
responsibility for loss Indianapolis rests upon Captain Charles B McVey III US Navy for failure to order zigzag
01:12:05
courses to be steered and that a contributory responsibility rests upon Captain Charles B McVey third US Navy
01:12:12
for delay in connection with reporting the loss of that ship due to failure to send out a distress message for both of
01:12:19
those things are incorrect mhm but a media blackout went into effect with only the most basic information about
01:12:26
the disaster being released to by the military on August 15th 1945 an Associated Press article went out on the
01:12:33
wire announcing that the Indianapolis had sunk in the Pacific and a few days earlier the military reported 100%
01:12:42
casualties and gave a version of events that directly contradicted the statements released a few days later so
01:12:48
it was just mayem like things were being released that were just completely not true yeah like full falsehoods so the
01:12:55
worked very hard to make the charge of failing to send out a distress signal stick but it soon became apparent that
01:13:01
they couldn't do that without implicating themselves so instead they went after him for failing to properly
01:13:08
execute the zigzag maneuver he was doing a zigzag maneuver before that but he wasn't at the time of the attack that's
01:13:14
what they're hinging this on okay uh and like I said before it was precautionary
01:13:19
what he was doing before it wasn't even ordered it wasn't necessary right uh in support of the charge the government
01:13:25
subpoena Commander Mochi Surah Hashimoto the guy who ordered the the captain of the submarine that fired on the
01:13:32
Indianapolis we're going to we're going to trust that guy oh get ready in his testimony Hashimoto acknowledged that
01:13:40
McVey hadn't engaged the zig magag maneuver but then said zigzagging would have made no change in the way he fired
01:13:47
the Torpedoes and that he would have sunk the defens defenseless ship either way uhhuh he's going to come back
01:13:56
later now given this heavy censorship and the media blackout the military was able to effectively control the
01:14:03
narrative that's not good they Pinn the institutional failures on McVey that's to have that man man his crew the way he
01:14:11
did and all of that good his crew comes out for him in November 1958 McVey was found guilty of negligence shocking
01:14:21
everyone familiar with the situation they just scapegoated him completely reporter Paul MC MCV McGee excuse me
01:14:28
wrote The Verdict came as complete surprise the evidence in the case was believed by most to have indicated that
01:14:34
instead of McVay being negligent his ship was efficiently was an efficiently run vessel yeah and it was the decision
01:14:41
to court Marshal Charles McVey pissed off the survivors of the Indianapolis I bet who all believed generally all
01:14:49
believed him to be a very strong leader and at no fault whatsoever for what happened
01:14:55
uh twible recalled once the captain was Court marshaled my first thought was how
01:14:59
can we get these guys for doing this good and they all all the men started writing letters to Congress and speaking
01:15:06
out publicly on mcvey's behalf eventually finding an ally in New Hampshire Senator Robert Smith who
01:15:12
called the court Marshal morally unsustainable unfortunately Smith's attempts to overturn the verdict were
01:15:19
unsuccessful and the decision stood it literally forever marred mcvey's Mill milary record and in the wake of the
01:15:27
decision McVey began receiving an endless stream of angry letters from the public and civilians who blamed him for
01:15:33
the tragedy now and um author Doug Stanton wrote he read every letter he received and took them all personally oh
01:15:42
eventually and this is very this is very tragic eventually the burden and shame unfairly thrust upon Him Charles McVey
01:15:52
became too much to bear of I can't imagine on on November 6th 1968 Captain Charles McVey shot himself at his home
01:16:00
in Connecticut oh that's so sad he had lost his wife to cancer several years earlier and those who knew him best
01:16:07
believed after she passed he had nothing left to go on for oh God that's awful now there is more after this that is an
01:16:14
awful awful tragedy um but something does come out of it now as was common of this era and that generation the men who
01:16:24
survived surv the sinking of the Indianapolis never spoke publicly about their appearance for the most part at
01:16:29
first um and they never talked about the effects of the trauma that they had endured um but after mcvey's death and
01:16:37
the passage of time Inspire it inspired many of them to come forward and tell the world what really happened because
01:16:42
they were like [ __ ] that like he's not dying nothing in vain um Edgar Harold said it's not justifiable to put the
01:16:49
blame on Captain McVey they just broke him in more ways than one that's so [ __ ] up Harold was a several crewmen
01:16:56
who after over the later Decades of the 20th century told their stories through books television interviews oral history
01:17:03
projects um he said I can still see and feel the trauma of swimming those four days I can still remember today as if it
01:17:10
were just yesterday as early as 1960 the survivors began getting together every year for a union and to remember as
01:17:17
those that they'd lost eventually their group once again rallied to exonerate Charles McVey and they finally succeed
01:17:24
eded in 2000 with the help of the most unlikely Source you can imagine you said that guy was coming back 54 years after
01:17:34
he' testified at at Charles mcvey's Court Marshal Mochi Surah Hashimoto was again
01:17:40
before the United States government this time in order to help restore mcvey's name and reputation let me just say
01:17:49
that's a full karmic Circle right there that's a wild Circle in his testimony Hashim Moto said he wanted to join the
01:17:57
brave men who survived the sinking of the IND Indianapolis IN urging that your National legislature clear their
01:18:03
captain's name our people have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its
01:18:07
consequences perhaps it's time your people forgave Captain McVey for the humiliation of his unjust conviction wow
01:18:16
this is the man who essentially is responsible for sinking yeah he ordered the Torpedoes which he had to It's War
01:18:23
like that's what I can't even this is the man who ordered the Torpedoes and he is coming forward full
01:18:30
circle and saying to the US to Congress he's saying maybe it's time your people forgive Captain McVey for the
01:18:40
humiliation of his unjust conviction yeah that's a mouthful yeah it is this time the US military was willing to
01:18:49
listen and moved by the testimony Congress voted on a October 12th 20 000 to exonerate Captain Charles McVey you
01:18:57
just wish that he was there to experience that 13 days later Mochi sah Hashimoto passed
01:19:06
away that is on some life [ __ ] that you just can't explain like that's the last
01:19:10
thing you you had to do that yeah had to clear that I just feel like you got to believe in
01:19:15
something story like I don't know exactly I don't know what but that makes you believe in something holy [ __ ]
01:19:23
Harold later said just to have him exonerated meant something but it didn't do him any good and then he said it
01:19:29
certainly did US good that's good that like his crew got to see that happen like the hopefully wherever he is
01:19:35
hopefully he saw it happen I know that's so sad that he lived the rest of his life being blamed for something that was
01:19:41
not shouldering it yeah reading every letter to the remaining survivors of the Indianapolis exonerating McKay was
01:19:49
literally the last chapter of the indianapolis's story yeah but 17 years later the story got a kind of epilogue
01:19:56
that no one was expecting in the summer of 2017 a dive team led by Microsoft founder Paul Allen announced they had
01:20:04
found unmistakable wreckage of the Indianapolis more than 18,000 ft down in the Philippine Sea um he said in a
01:20:11
statement while our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue I hope everyone connected to this historic ship
01:20:17
will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long incoming by that time only 19 of the original survivors
01:20:24
remained wow and most were too frail and too you know pass the point of being able to make an appearance or comment on
01:20:30
it but instead Captain William toy a spokesperson for the survivors released a statement on their behalf for more
01:20:37
than two decades I've been working with the survivors to a man they have longed for the day when their ship would be
01:20:43
found solving their final mystery they all know this is now a war memorial wow I just sent chills on my back and that
01:20:51
is the sinking of the USS Indianapolis what a story from beginning to end and thank you to Dave for such amazing help
01:21:01
with this research because this is a this is a this is a ship in and of itself of a of a of a research pile and
01:21:10
it's there's so much to this and so many different rabbit holes you can I'm sure
01:21:14
a lot of like you don't really I never learned about Captain Charles mcve and the and what had happened after that and
01:21:21
what he went through and that it was Hashimoto who was the one who moved the US military to exonerate him like of the
01:21:29
story if you wrote that people would be like that's wild and like too fictitious
01:21:33
to to have yeah like that's a that's a story seriously blew my mind I I'm I'm absolutely mind blown right
01:21:42
now B my mind I feel like I'm just going to dive into like a whole I just I want
01:21:46
to go like find out even more yeah cuz listen to these like survivors interviews and stuff and read their
01:21:50
stuff it's fascinating what they went through and to hear all the different perspective I can just like hear the
01:21:56
History Channel playing in our house Papa always listens to the history or watches the History Channel I maybe
01:22:02
that's why Charles mcvey's name sounded familiar to me actually it probably did yeah yeah to go dive into the History
01:22:10
Channel go re go research this guys it's fascinating wow I'm like shocked yeah that's a crazy tale truly I
01:22:19
know how to properly harrowing I don't even properly know how to end this so guess I'll just say we hope you keep
01:22:25
listening and we hope you keep it weird I me it's guys be cool to one another yeah
01:22:38
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