Books: Death of a Ship

ABANDON SHIP! (305 pp.)—Richard F. Newcomb—Holf ($3.95).

A truly proud ship was the heavy cruiser Indianapolis. Before World War II, she had served as an ocean-going White House for Franklin Roosevelt. She had flown the four-star flag of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and had fought in many a Pacific battle. As July 1945 drew to a close, Indy had just steamed 2,091 miles from the Farallons to Diamond Head at a record-breaking, rivet-loosening 28 knots. Reason for the haste: she was on her way to the Marianas with an unprecedented cargo—the components of the atom bomb for Hiroshima.

After that the war seemed remote for Indianapolis: the orders were to proceed alone from Guam to Leyte for training exercises. In the dark first moments of July 30, she was halfway to Leyte. With no warning cry from any lookout, there were two tremendous explosions on the starboard side. Precisely how many men the blasts killed will never be known. In about twelve minutes—at 0014—the Indianapolis sank, throwing some 850 officers and men into the water. They had life jackets and a few rafts, but no boats.

Nobody Heard. The carnage caused by the torpedoes was bad enough, but what happened next resulted in the deadliest single-ship disaster the U.S. Navy ever suffered at sea. Why and how it happened is the theme of Richard Newcomb’s book, which sheds sharp new light on a tragedy aggravated by bumbling.

With virtually all power gone, it was doubtful that Indy could get off an S O S.

But her radiomen tried. Nobody heard the signal. Next afternoon Navy code crackers at Guam broke a report from a Japanese submarine, saying it had sunk a battleship of the Idaho class in the exact position where Indianapolis should have been. Even though old battleship Idaho was near by, nobody gave it a second thought—the Japs were always making such claims. Nobody stopped to figure that with his sea-snail’s eye-view, a Jap sub commander could mistake Indianapolis for Idaho.

The hundreds of castaways found themselves choking in a slimy bath of fuel oil that blinded them, made them retch and vomit to utter exhaustion. Men on rafts were so tossed about that soon they were cut, bleeding and rubbed raw. Those in life jackets faced a different hazard: some of the jackets became waterlogged, sinkers instead of floats.

Some men died quietly from wounds or exhaustion. Scores drank sea water and died in agony. The living fought to tear the life jackets from the dead. (Some did not even wait for the dying to die.) There were mass hallucinations: there was an island with a hotel, and somebody was telephoning but the hotel was full. Still, some threw off their life jackets and swam “to the island” and to their deaths.

Nobody Saw. Planes flew high overhead or off to the side of the square miles of human flotsam, but nobody was looking for Indy survivors, and for 84 hours nobody saw them. When they were spotted, it was by accident. Then rescue measures were swift and effective—the one aspect of the disaster that was a credit to the Navy. But only 316 (15 officers, 301 enlisted men, from a total complement of 1,196) survived.

Author Newcomb, then a Pacific war correspondent, now a Manhattan deskman for the A.P., has doggedly sleuthed the inside story by talking to survivors and Navy brass. With her SOS unheard, Indy would not have been missed until she became overdue at Leyte two days later. There the fact that she was overdue was overlooked for more than a day. It was not immediately reported because a loophole-riddled directive saying “Arrival reports shall not be made for combatant ships” was construed to mean that non-arrivals were not to be reported either.

After Twelve Years. Who was to blame for the loss of an estimated 500 lives—beyond those taken by the Japs’ torpedoes? The Navy’s high command figured it must have been Captain Charles B. McVay 3rd, respected, competent commanding officer of Indianapolis, and took two unprecedented steps: it court-martialed an officer for losing his ship to the enemy and called the enemy (in the person of the sub commander who sank Indy) to testify against him. McVay was convicted but with a recommendation of clemency. The conviction was soon set aside.

The Navy also issued letters of reprimand to four land-based officers responsible for the control and reporting of ship movements—without ever letting them know that there were any charges against them. The reprimands got wide publicity. Only now, after twelve years, does Reporter Newcomb disclose that the reprimands were quietly withdrawn within a few months. Newcomb’s conclusion: in the Indianapolis tragedy the Navy was its own worst enemy.