Secret atomic mission took tragic toll on crew
JULY 16, 1945 THE Atomic Age began on July 16, 1945.
That was the date when the Manhattan Project scientists successfully detonated a plutonium-based weapon in the desert in New Mexico.
That same day, the USS Indianapolis slid out of San Francisco on the most-secret Second World War mission.
The heavy cruiser was bound for Tinian Island in the South Pacific, where she would deliver parts of the atomic bomb “Little Boy” that would be dropped on Hiroshima three weeks later.
The Indianapolis had already fought her way across the Pacific
Indianapolis carried atomic bomb parts and enriched uranium
in the United States’ “islandhopping” campaign, which took them closer to the Japanese home islands, one group at a time.
And just hours after Robert Oppenheimer detonated the very first artificial nuclear explosion in the “Trinity Test” at Alamogordo, Indianapolis sailed for her top-secret destination carrying bomb parts and enriched uranium.
Racing unescorted at top speed across the ocean, she reached Tinian a week later.
Once the cruiser’s classified cargo had been delivered, she received orders to head for Okinawa to join Task Force 95. But she never arrived. Just after midnight on July 30, the Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 and sank just 12 minutes later, taking 300 of her 1196 crew with her.
The remainder were set adrift with few lifeboats or lifejackets and the survivors were only spotted by chance four days later by a routine patrol flight.
By the time they were pulled from the water, just 317 were alive, the rest succumbing to dehydration, exposure and – most notoriously – sharks.
If that rings a bell, you’re probably remembering the scene
in Jaws when the men compare scars on the boat and Robert Shaw’s character explains his hatred of sharks comes from being an Indianapolis survivor.
He says the nature of her mission meant strict radio silence, so no distress call was made by the Indianapolis, but that isn’t actually true.
Three stations received a signal but one officer was drunk,
another told his men not to disturb him and the third thought it was a Japanese trap.
The final victim of the Indianapolis was her captain, Charles McVay.
Though cleared of any wrongdoing by a court martial, many families still blamed him for the sinking and, burdened by guilt, he committed suicide in 1968, aged 70.