USS Indianapolis (CA-35)

It's a story about a US Navy Heavy Cruiser which sank by a Japanese submarine a month before Japan surrendered ... precisely on 30th July 1945.

Commanded by Captain Bustler McVay with his 1190 men onboard, the ship sailed alone with no destroyer escorts. McVay actually asked for the escorts in case his ship's under enemy threat. But somehow the Navy CINCUSPAC denied his permission. They even didn't tell him there were some Japanese threats within the Phillipines Sea.



Before She (USS Indianapolis) was ordered to Leyte in Phillipines, her task was to deliver the Uranium and Plutonium substance to Tinian from the US on 26th July 1945. It's such an ironic how the "mailman" finally sunk and rest on the bottom of the sea. There are some controversials here exposed on web regarding the oddities of the mission which sent her to the bottom:

• Captain McVay's request for a destroyer escort was denied despite the fact that no capital ship lacking anti-submarine detection equipment, such as the Indianapolis, had made this transit across the Philippine Sea without an escort during the entire war.
• Captain McVay was not told that shortly before his departure from Guam a Japanese submarine within range of his path had sunk a destroyer escort, the USS Underhill.
• Shortly after the Indianapolis was sunk, naval intelligence decoded a message from the I-58 to its headquarters in Japan that it had sunk an American battleship along the route of the Indianapolis. The message was ignored.
• Naval authorities then and now have maintained that the Indianapolis sank too quickly to send out a distress signal. A radioman aboard the Indianapolis testified at the September 1999 Senate hearing, however, that he watched the "needle jump" on the ship's transmitter, indicating that a distress signal was transmitted minutes before the ship sank, and sources at three separate locations have indicated that they were aware of a distress signal being received from the sinking ship. Its very likely that these distress signals were received but ignored as a Japanese trick to lure rescue vessels to the area.
• Confusion on the part of Navy communications and a faulty directive caused the failure of the Indianapolis to arrive on schedule to go unnoticed, leaving as many as 900 men at the mercy of a shark-infested sea. (The faulty directive - which required only reporting the arrival of non-combatant ships - was corrected days after the Indianapolis survivors were discovered to require reporting the arrival of combatant ships as well.

The Ship itself was a Portland Class with specifications as follow:

Length overall-610 ft.,3-3/4 in. [584 ft. at the waterline
Extreme breadth [beam] -66 ft., 5/8 in.
Projection forward of forward perpendicular - 18 ft., 3 in.
Projection aft of after perpendicular - 3/4 in.
Draft above bottom of keel (no load) - 19 ft., 5-1/2 in. [24 ft. loaded]
Treaty displacement 10,000 tons. [9,950 tons standard displacement]

Powered by eight White-Forster type boilers and four sets of geared Parsons turbines driving four out-turning propellers, the ship has a plant designed to develop 1-7,000 horsepower at 366 R.P.M. and to attain a speed of 32.7 knots [37.6 statute m.p.h.]. The builders were successful in meeting the requirements set, for the ship,and at trials at sea, exceeded the speed demanded in the contract.