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Paul Allen Finds Long-Lost World War II Cruiser, the USS Indianapolis (usni.org)
An anonymous reader quotes the US Naval Institute News:
Seventy-two years after two torpedoes fired from a Japanese submarine sunk cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35), the ship's wreckage was found resting on the seafloor on Saturday -- more than 18,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean's surface. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, led a search team, assisted by historians from the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C., to accomplish what past searches had failed to do -- find Indianapolis, considered the last great naval tragedy of World War II.
"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 in a statement provided to US Naval Institute News on Saturday... "I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming"... Allen's 13-person expedition team, on the R/V Petrel is in the process of surveying the full site and will conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. They are complying with U.S. law and respecting the sunken ship as a war grave, taking care not to disturb the site.
Paul Allen has shared some photos from the discovery on Twitter.
The ship had delivered components for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima just four days before it was sunk. Only 317 of its 1,197-man crew survived, making it the worst at-sea disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy.
"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 in a statement provided to US Naval Institute News on Saturday... "I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming"... Allen's 13-person expedition team, on the R/V Petrel is in the process of surveying the full site and will conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. They are complying with U.S. law and respecting the sunken ship as a war grave, taking care not to disturb the site.
Paul Allen has shared some photos from the discovery on Twitter.
The ship had delivered components for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima just four days before it was sunk. Only 317 of its 1,197-man crew survived, making it the worst at-sea disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy.
From TFA: Only 317 of its 1,197-man crew survived, making it the worst disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy
1197 - 317 = 880 dead
1177 died on 12/7/1941 on the USS Arizona.
So the USS Indianapolis was not the worst.
The Indianapolis monologue by Robert Shaw in "Jaws" was the best scene out of the whole movie. I was always fascinated by that story. Nice to see the story of the USS Indianapolis concluded 42 years after the movie.
The disgusting part of this disaster was the way the US Navy persecuted Captain McVay, railroading him in a court martial with trumped-up charges shown to be nonsense by testimony of the Japanese sub captain, and finally driving McVay to suicide. He was the final victim, 24 years delayed. It took an act of Congress to force the Navy, kicking and screaming, to finally clear his record of all findings of wrongdoing, 56 years too late.
The mismanagement of the stupidly, needlessly, and literally carelessly delayed search and rescue of survivors, as day after day drifting in the water dehydrating, starving, going mad, and being picked off by sharks, is also a huge part of the disaster. Something very similar happened at the Battle off Samar, in which hundreds of sailors from a small group of destroyers and escort carriers, after being pulverized by a huge Japanese battle fleet, were also left to drift for days, with many needless drowning and shark bite deaths.