Missing: the Indianapolis
- Episode aired Nov 12, 1997
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Water, Water, Everywhere.
Concise description of the life course of the cruiser USS Indianpolis in World War II.
In the spring of 1945, shortly before the war ended, she was damaged by a kamikaze in the Pacific, repaired in San Francisco, and given the mission of transporting the prime elements of the first atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian by way of Hawaii. After her refurbishment, the Indianapolis was a good clean ship. Her average speed between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor was an incredible 30 knots.
After unloading the secret cargo at Tinian, she was ordered to fleet exercises in the Phillipines. She never got there. She was torpedoes by a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Phillipine Sea and sank in ten minutes.
Of her 1200 men, about half was able to abandon ship, mostly without any supplies. Some men were injured or burned. Some had no life preservers. They were strung out over ten miles of ocean. By one of many strokes of ill fortune, the Naval command in the Phillipines was not aware of her non-arrival and the Indianapolis was more or less forgotten about for three or four days.
Half of the survivors died waiting for rescue, some from wounds, some from dehydration, and many from shark bites. Finally, on a routine submarine patrol, the several knots of survivors were finally spotted by an American airplane and rescue ships were sent at top speed. There had been about 1200 men aboard. There were about 300 survivors.
It was a horrifying incident. A character describes it in the feature film, "Jaws." But rescue wasn't the end of the ordeal. The Navy, and the military in general, has a way of finding a target after a loss like this. The target doesn't necessarily have to be guilty but it has to be punished. Captain McVeigh, a responsible commander, well liked by his men, was court marshaled and found guilty of needlessly hazarding his ship.
The Navy took the unprecedented step of flying in the captain of the attacking Japanese submarine to testify against him. The submarine skipper's testimony more or less exonerated McVeigh, but the verdict was sustained. McVeigh remained in the Navy but was never given command of a ship again. After the war he received all sorts of hate mail from families and friends of those who had died, and he committed suicide in 1968 on the front steps of his Connecticut home.
Sometimes, as Rabbi Harold Kushner, among many others, has pointed out, bad things happen to good people. One of the reasons is our need to punish someone openly and resolve ourselves of blame. But sometimes there's little blame to go around because the tragedy is the result of a juxtaposition of unfortunate circumstances. When you sit down behind the wheel of a car and find the seat is too far back, it isn't your fault, and neither is it the car's fault. It's what's called a dysfunction in sociology. A series of such dysfunctions resulted in the loss of the Indianapolis and most of its crew.
In the spring of 1945, shortly before the war ended, she was damaged by a kamikaze in the Pacific, repaired in San Francisco, and given the mission of transporting the prime elements of the first atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian by way of Hawaii. After her refurbishment, the Indianapolis was a good clean ship. Her average speed between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor was an incredible 30 knots.
After unloading the secret cargo at Tinian, she was ordered to fleet exercises in the Phillipines. She never got there. She was torpedoes by a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Phillipine Sea and sank in ten minutes.
Of her 1200 men, about half was able to abandon ship, mostly without any supplies. Some men were injured or burned. Some had no life preservers. They were strung out over ten miles of ocean. By one of many strokes of ill fortune, the Naval command in the Phillipines was not aware of her non-arrival and the Indianapolis was more or less forgotten about for three or four days.
Half of the survivors died waiting for rescue, some from wounds, some from dehydration, and many from shark bites. Finally, on a routine submarine patrol, the several knots of survivors were finally spotted by an American airplane and rescue ships were sent at top speed. There had been about 1200 men aboard. There were about 300 survivors.
It was a horrifying incident. A character describes it in the feature film, "Jaws." But rescue wasn't the end of the ordeal. The Navy, and the military in general, has a way of finding a target after a loss like this. The target doesn't necessarily have to be guilty but it has to be punished. Captain McVeigh, a responsible commander, well liked by his men, was court marshaled and found guilty of needlessly hazarding his ship.
The Navy took the unprecedented step of flying in the captain of the attacking Japanese submarine to testify against him. The submarine skipper's testimony more or less exonerated McVeigh, but the verdict was sustained. McVeigh remained in the Navy but was never given command of a ship again. After the war he received all sorts of hate mail from families and friends of those who had died, and he committed suicide in 1968 on the front steps of his Connecticut home.
Sometimes, as Rabbi Harold Kushner, among many others, has pointed out, bad things happen to good people. One of the reasons is our need to punish someone openly and resolve ourselves of blame. But sometimes there's little blame to go around because the tragedy is the result of a juxtaposition of unfortunate circumstances. When you sit down behind the wheel of a car and find the seat is too far back, it isn't your fault, and neither is it the car's fault. It's what's called a dysfunction in sociology. A series of such dysfunctions resulted in the loss of the Indianapolis and most of its crew.
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- rmax304823
- Feb 6, 2016
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