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RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED the wreckage of the lost warship the USS Indianapolis, 72 years after the World War II cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
The wreckage was found in the Philippine Sea 5.5 kilometers below the surface, according to philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who headed the civilian research crew that located the ship.
The ship was hit in the final days of World War II just after completing a secret mission delivering parts of the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima.
The vessel sank in just 12 minutes, meaning it was unable to send a distress signal or deploy life-saving equipment, according to the history division of the US Navy.
Some 800 of the ship’s 1,196 sailors and marines initially survived the maritime disaster, but only 316 ultimately lived after enduring several days in shark-infested waters where they also faced risks of dehydration and drowning. Of those survivors, 22 are still alive today, the US Navy said.
“To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role in ending World War II is truly humbling,” said Allen.
As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the crew for their courage, persistence and sacrifice in the face of horrendous circumstances.
While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming.”
Allen posted several photos of the wreckage on his Twitter account, including images of the ship’s anchor and bell.
Before it was struck the USS Indianapolis was advancing towards the Philippines to deliver atomic bomb parts to Tinian island.
But four days after completing that mission, on July 30, 1945, it was spotted by a Japanese submarine that fired six torpedoes at the vessel.
The Indianapolis burst into flames when one hit a magazine near the fuel bunker and another struck the ship’s bow.
Others have searched for the Indianapolis in the past, but the wreckage location long eluded researchers.
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The ship Robert shaw was referring to in his brilliant performance in the movie jaws.
@Dave Hogan: Quint wasn’t spoofing!
Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss): You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody (Roy Scheider): What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s… kinda like ol’ squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’ chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
@Dave Hogan: Show me the way to go home……
@Mark o’ Leary: Keith Lemon and Paddy McGuinness did an awesome job recreating that scene with Stephen Tomkinson.
@OU812: the actual scene was written by Martin Scorsese after Speilberg asked him to write the scene for the film
@David Harvey: didn’t know that. Very interesting.
What a find, an incredible story.
Avoid the Nicholas Cage Movie, its poor. The book ‘In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors’ is a great read. The court martial treatment of the surviving captain by officials looking for a scapegoat was especially disgusting. He was posthumously cleared of blame.
@Jurgen Remak: Quint’s couple of minutes monologue in Jaws told a better story than the whole of Cage’s film.
@Mick Power: True Mick. And many Americans – indeed people the world over – were unaware of the Indianapolis story until that Shaw scene.
@Frank Cooney: Is there not enough articles on that subject to keep you happy you fool?
@Frank Cooney: Way to politicize everything! Numpty.#getalife.
@Frank Cooney: Actually Frank, my opinion was on the man himself, the fact he and his pals wanted the Nazis on Irish soil and the inevitable murderous consequences. Something that all his defenders assiduously avoided admitting. I couldn’t care less about the statue.
@Jurgen Remak: dad,nut so were the deaths of thousands of Japanese civilians when the bombs dropped,LEST WE FORGET
@Frank Cooney: correct
@Frank Cooney: I don’t
@billy Dorney: sad but so were the deaths of the thousands of innocent Japanese civilians when uncle Sam dropped his payload
@Frank Cooney: Tool. Wonder if we could erase you from the history books…
Hopefully they’ll find some survivors too.
@Spodo Komodo: and charge them with war crimes for their part on dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population.
@Fluich Go Craicean: Cop on.
@Fluich Go Craicean: don’t you know that its ok for the usa army to murder innocent people ?
When the survivors were being rescued, wouldn’t that have been the location of where the ship had sunk? I don’t get that.
@Peter: they were floating for several days before being rescued.
@Peter: did they really care about it? I doubt they had any plans to recover it
@Fluich Go Craicean: That’s a good point.
Cheers Frank & Jay!
Great news for the families of these men who can now get nearer to a closure of this sad event.
The steel in this battleship would be highly sought. Low-background steel is any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first atomic bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. It is a very valuable commodity used in Geiger counters and precision scientific equipment. The primary source of low-background steel is ships that were constructed before the Trinity test, most famously the scuttled German World War I battleships in Scapa Flow.
@Sean: can the steel not be recreated?
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