hello and welcome to episode 437 of the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast my name is Seth peran historian and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum and with me as always is my esteemed co-host retired Navy Captain Bill toy former Skipper of the Fast Tax submarine USS Indianapolis Commodore submarine Squadron 3 in PE Harbor and many others how are you this fine February the 11th Bill 3 days before Valentine’s Day oh yeah uh don’t remind me

Seth so uh yeah I’ve been recovering from uh I guess the recurrence of the lung condition I’ve had off and on these last 15 years and so I’m on some nuclear antibiotics right now and got to get a chest CT again and uh but uh energy levels declin but I’m still with it mentally I hope we’ll find out today I’m a little more scattered than normal Seth I got all these pages of notes written down and handwritten Pages here uh because of our subject and uh you know uh you’re going to introduce that subject in a moment aren’t you I am I am

I I I I think it’s safe to say that this subject for you is like the Enterprise is for me and uh I know a lot of people listeners and and viewers or whatever have been waiting for this very topic and I know I have as well because I can’t wait to hear the captain dish on his favorite ship so this one’s gonna be good this one’s gonna be good all right well with that bill let’s get into it so there are certain ships of Naval History that stand out among others ships from Nations across the globe that when one mentions their name people almost

instantly recognize them names like Hood bismar Arizona Yamato Enterprise and others these are all names of legendary vess vessels and to the average Joe consumer they may mean nothing but to Guys Like Us they’re special however there is one ship one name that almost anyone can recognize when you mention her name people usually associate her with her tragic final story as told in a fictional movie her name lives like a ghost in the recesses of our Collective Minds because of her ultimate fate and her ultimate mission

she was one of the most enigmatic us warships in US Navy history she was the ship estate for FDR the pride of Roosevelt’s love of the Navy she often served as a flagship for one of the US Navy’s greatest seagoing Admirals Raymond spru she boasted a fine War record distinguished if not the most decorated she was a Workhorse a proud old veteran that deserved a better fate than she got she was destined to carry vital parts for the atomic bomb from the United States to tenum on what would be her final mission and as fate would have

she was only chosen because she was available and for no other reason at all but alas that was her fate and what would happen after her after the completion of her mission is how we remember her to this very day her crew called her Indie Maru history remembers her as Indianapolis and this is the story of her final mission and her Cruz hellacious ordeal Bill I know this one’s near and dear to your heart it sure is Seth of course you know um the the ship predates that mission we we did an episode that went through the

ship’s War history from the Illusions down to the Solomons and 10 Battle Stars half of your Enterprises 20 I note that for the record but remember she was spu’s Flagship and he was often taken out of the fight and you know in order to attend to to the needs of the larger Fleet One thing I’ll note though is that she was commanded by some 10 noteworthy men Thomas concade who you and I have spoken about over and over again as Admiral concade was one of indianapolis’s cosos John schaffroth who we spoke about just a few episodes

ago was another Indianapolis Co there were Indianapolis cosos that were known for their ability to to drive her like a sports car there are Indianapolis cosos who are known for their ability to kind of fight her like a the weapon of war that she was indianapolis’s 10th and final CEO Charles but McVey is the one we’re going to focus on today you know says I have 13 books on the story of the Indianapolis 13 some are really good some basically fiction posing his history but one of those books was written by the

wife of a lost at se crew member of the Indianapolis and and she is pretty harsh on him and there are a lot of the PE family members of Lost at Sea who were harsh at him and not to jump to the end of the story cuz I did an episode on the court Marshal and exoneration McVey as I said then and I’ll say it again the US Navy convicted him in at court Marshal they they said that it wasn’t for the sinking but documents that I discovered in 2016 proved that to be a lie they were convicting him for the sinking why should the family members think

otherwise and we’re going to go through the the most that story you know in the final voyage and all that today Seth but let’s keep that in mind that many of the family members I would say borderline loaded the man after the Navy blamed him for this so let’s um let’s focus that on that keep that in mind as we go through the story today Seth well bill there’s there’s one interesting little tidbit of information though so so McVey was was Indy’s 10th commanding officer is that correct okay that’s correct and you have a relation

we all know your your I don’t want to say relationship but you’re your relationship to Charles Butler McVey but it’s even more intricate than that though isn’t it well I was the 10th and final commanding officer of the submarine Indianapolis Seth so yeah I mean I don’t think I could have named any of the other nine cosos of the cruiser when I was in command of Indianapolis when you when when you walk aboard a Navy ship and you’re the captain they ring a bell four Bells right if you’re 05 or 06 ding ding ding

ding they don’t say captain of the Indianapolis arriving they say Indianapolis arriving because by tradition the captain is the ship so I would hear that every time I walked aboard My Submarine ding ding ding ding Indianapolis arriving I loved hearing that but the guy I thought of every time I heard that was one Charles Butler mcy Seth yeah that’s hard not to so Bill and we’ll get to the story about her sinking and her Survivor survivors here in a minute but there are a few myths that that are still hanging around

about Indie that that I know you want to bust the one that comes to mind obviously is it comes to mind because of a movie because of a very popular movie and that of course I’m referring to Jaws tell us uh dig dish on this first first yeah I the the idea of sharks is what comes to mind for most people when they hear about the Indianapolis because the Quint character in the movie Jaws and I did an episode of The Daily Jaws which is a is a podcast devoted specifically to the movie Jaws okay and I was asked to be a guest on that and and I don’t

want to say to people that sharks didn’t kill anybody on the Indianapolis because they did okay sharks kill Surfers the way they kill Surfers is they bite they realize oh this isn’t what I thought it was they let go and the surfer bleeds to death that happened in the water with the people on the Indianapolis as well people bled to death but the notion of Indianapolis biting people the sharks biting people in half and stuff like that there are stories about that out there in The Ether um when you pull the string on

them most of them fall apart what the cir mostly did is feed on the many debt about a third of the crew after the ship was sunk died from injuries the first night and day after they got into the water not from sharks but from injuries that left a lot of cadavers in the water that attracted sharks the Sharks were feeding on the cat cadavers was that terrifying to the people who are alive in the water you bet absolutely blood curling screams absolutely did sharks bump into I know with certainty they did did sharks bite

living people I know with certainty they did but the exaggeration from the movie that U sharks took the rest is qu quint’s exact line is fiction we don’t know how many sharks took whether’s 50 certainly not more than 100 cuz we could do the math but it wasn’t this exagger and the reason I rail it death two things it it caused a horrible tragedy for the Shar world’s shark population you know killing sharks who are innocent it had nothing to do with Indianapolis tragedy and the second thing I think it distracts from the heroism of This Crew

throughout the ship’s you know history during the the war and the heroism that they showed in the water and following for the 50 years following and and Beyond getting their Captain exonerated when the Sark becomes the story My sadness is all about the fact that the SHP and the crew is no longer the story Seth yeah it’s uh that that’s happened with multiple things but this one stands out among among others because because of the movie and you know just just how we’ve in our Collective Minds that’s how we’ve come to remember it and as a

matter of fact I remember there was a documentary on Discovery I think it was or maybe it was National Geographic I I don’t remember the channel anymore and it doesn’t matter but it was something along the lines of Indianapolis the greatest shark attack in history was the title of the show and that’s what the entire documentary Focus I’m sure you’ve seen it the entire documentary focused on shark attacks in the water against the crew yes Seth it’s Discovery Channels shark week every year they had Shark Week and every year they would sew

an expose J of the sharks attack and it might have been the greatest shark attack in history for all we know we don’t know because we don’t know there’s a whole bunch of attacks that never got recorded because nobody survived you know so so it might have been I don’t want to to relegate it to something less than it is what I’m what I rail against is making the Sharks the story because the Sharks should not be the story set for sure for sure so let’s Discovery Channel though made a lot of money Indianapolis and that bothers me so

let’s let’s start we’ve already done an episode on indies’s world record like you said just a few minutes ago uh you got and I don’t even remember which one but you put in here season 2 episode 224 so if you want to look at that listen to that go for it but that’s not what we’re here to talk about we’re to talk about the mission her final mission um she was at Mar Island as as we know Bill CU last was it last year or two years ago that we were there it was last year Seth yeah Mir Island yeah yeah we we were at miror Island we

saw the the the dry dock where she was at one point before she goes to Hunter’s Point and and and loads the parts for the bomb so how exactly or why was Indie chosen to do this I mean like I said in the intro she was available and that’s primarily it right yeah that’s it she was at hand I think it was the Portland was the first choice and part of the ship did part of the the bomb did travel by merchant ship and part of it by aircraft little bits of it but you know basically nobody wanted to the the the ship was going to be carrying half of

the u235 that existed on the planet uh refined half of the bomb uranium bomb material that existed on the planet and we had more plutonium bomb material that’s why we made two bombs out of plutonium one out of uranium plutonium was easier to make than uranium so they sipped half of it on the Indianapolis the other half by other means so they they loaded part of the bomb Parts there at Mar Island in a big wooden crate they loaded the key component which is half of the visionable material though at Hunters Point San Francisco so she

crossed the bay went to Hunters Point and again it was going to be I think it was the Portland Portland got delayed Indianapolis is ready by the way Indianapolis is Marine because she’d been hit by a kamakazi at the Battle of okan we covered that previously one of my friends elco’s uncle um was killed in that comicazi attack by the way and uh you know as one of nine Sailors of Indianapolis that were killed in that kamakazi attack that’s why they’re in Mar Island to get refi and repaired remember they they Transit all the way across the Pacific

from okanawa to Mar island with a 15° list because they couldn’t counter flood enough to to resolve a the list that’s how big a hole that kamakazi bomb punched in in the bottom of that ship so they get to to Mar Island they’re available they load up the bom materials and then they scaddle and again McVey is brought uh to to meet the Admiral and a Navy Captain by the name of Parsons go back to season one we talk about the construction of the bomb and the Navy’s role in the construction of the atomic bomb with and that was with um director

of Navy history and Heritage command Sam Cox right and he talks about Parson’s role so MC meets with Parsons and the Admiral and the only thing they say to him was this can possibly end the war every day you cut off your Transit is a day the the war will end quicker that’s all McVey knows so these rumors that he knew what it was these are all false and so they they load up and they go so Bill let let me and this this episode more than probably any other one we’ve ever done between you just you and I I’m gonna be interviewing

you if you will for for for lack of a better term so but I want to ask you a question because I knew several not nearly as many as you but I knew several Indie survivors through my time World War II Museum and of course they all have different stories but by and large most of them remember the the parts for the bomb being brought aboard and they were like bolted to the deck I think they were in mcvey’s quarters were they not spruces spru sprs okay yeah in the flag quarters spru was in Manila at the time and he’s going

to rejoin the ship when they get back out to the Philippines but yeah was welded to the back of spu’s flag Lieutenant’s quarters yes okay okay so but I mean nobody had any Earthly clue as to what the hell that thing was and you know we said Indie was chosen because she was available but to be truthful Indianapolis and as you said Portland which was actually the first choice she was supposed to have get gotten out of can’t remember if she was at Hunter point or or or M Island but regard it doesn’t matter she was

supposed to have gone out like two days before Indie was so she was going to carry this material but there was some sort of snafu with one of her repairs and she went out for for a dry run and something happen and she had to come back and get repaired and of course that’s why Indie chosen as fate you know fate is Str is Stranger Than Fiction so or you know what I mean um but the point is is that these ships both of them they were chosen yes because they were available but also because they were very very fast your speed exactly they

could move they could really book it and Indy sets a speed record does she not she does yeah from from California to Pearl Harbor 72 hours I think it was and you know she refuses and Pearl Harbor drops off one crew member by the way this is where the confusion between were there 3117 survivors the survivors believed there were 3177 survivors the Navy record said 316 it’s because a single crew member disembarked at Pearl Harbor to go to OCS the luckiest crew member on the Indianapolis the survivors didn’t know he got off all he knew is he was

alive after the war the records didn’t show him disembarking and and so that’s why the survivors believe there were 317 B of reconstruction in 2016 proved he had disembarked and he wasn’t he never went into the water when the ship was sunk Seth I got you so so she flies out to Pearl Harbor and then she she doesn’t stop and then when she drops you know does what she needs to do in Pearl Harbor she really bends it on getting out to the Mariana’s islands and once she gets there Bill she it’s it’s business as usual it’s really nothing

spectacular isn’t it that’s true she couldn’t pull Pi side and tenan the water’s too shallow so she anchors out a barge comes in gets the atomic bomb Parts uh remember the the big wooden crate that carried probably the housing for the atomic bomb was was in the port aircraft hanger the airplanes were not loaded on board during this Transit they didn’t need them and so the the ship’s airplane crane loads the wooden crate into the barge along with the metal container that was about knee high was lead lead lined the container to carry

the uranium by the way there was a huge there was a bet first of all there was there were Marine guards post on the wooden crate not the thing that was really important interest course the wooden crate was was almost the distraction to the crew which is fine one of my friends Edgar Herold was one of the those Marine guards posted in front of the wooden crate um and there was all kinds of bets as to what was in that wooden box nobody knew what an atomic bomb was nobody speculated that some people claim they suspected

nonsense none of them had a clue that there was anything like an atomic bomb in existence so but there was one bet was it was going to be a car from MacArthur notice the common theme [Laughter] in not know that yeah for notice the second guess was that it was scented toilet paper from MacArthur are you seeing a Common Thread and the theme of these World War II crew members the MacArthur team was ties them all together Seth this is not me making this up I believe you 100% 19 45 saying these things so anyway the wooden crate was

lifted with the airplane crane on the barge it goes into tenan and they were out to TU Guam where they pulled in Apper Harbor by the way the Indian Indianopolis had been the first American ship to pull into APPA Harbor Guam after Guam was liberated there are um photographs made by this um photographer ship’s photographer M named sevi of crew members ashore looking like Marines that were outfitted with rifles and helmets because there was still a whole bunch of Japanese uh in in Guam at the time this is you know after the

liberation of Guam but but now they pull in after they dropped the atomic bomb in tinian APPA Harbor by the way the number of times I pulled my Indianapolis into APPA haror Guam I couldn’t help but think of that as well Seth for sure went Pi side got their routing orders to latay and we could talk about that if you want yeah yeah let well because of course that brings you know that’s that’s the that’s what brings her to her ultimate fate so she gets into Guam APPA and then she is routed she’s going if I remember correctly correct me if I’m

wrong but she is going out to latay to meet essentially the rest of the fleet and she’s going to conduct Gunnery practice and and the like is is that is that my recollection accurate it is indeed Seth as I would expect from you um yes so the plan for the mar Island refit had been after they finished the refit the ship was going to go down to the vicinity of San Diego where North Island airplane uh target practice they they would they would fly sleeves out of North Island towed by airplanes so you can get your Gunnery practice it was

actually recertification cuz the third of the crew that came on board in Maryland was brand new a whole bunch of 17 18 19 year olds straight out of boot camp brand new had never been to see before so the plan had been get recertified anti-air anti surface down off of San Diego and then transit to the war zone but the the need to to deliver the atomic bomb truncated all that he didn’t get to do any of that so mcve kept saying when am I going to get my training when am I going to get my training they would they would tow

surface targets that that kind of thing is showed in the movie uh the K Mutiny court court Marshal we shooting at surface targets that are being towed air sleeves targets that are being towed he wanted to get all that so he was supposed to be at latay a date certain before even pulled into latay aircraft are supposed to fly out and meet him Towing the air targets so that was the plan he was going to get worked up and certified he had been sprinting at flank speed across the Pacific which meant he had no time to do anything right

no got I mean real did a little bit of Gunnery practice but but you can’t tell what you’re hitting when you’re transiting at flank speed so what good is it it’s good for loading but it’s not good for targeting aiming and targeting so he was really anxious to get the late and get this stuff so he was happy to get underway as soon as he could be routed to late Seth so of course he’s going to be routed to latay who else knows about the route you know because of course that’s one of the hanging myths of the whole or not myths

but one of the bugaboos about her whole story is you know she was secret and all this other Jazz and her her mission to tenian was secret but was her mission after she leaves she was no longer Top Secret at that point was she not not at all that’s one of those J Jaws myths is you know the top secret mission did end when she delivered the bomb to tenian now she’s routed just like any other ship so she goes to Guam and she she meets with the routing officer um and she just you know gets her orders and you know there’s another another thing

that sadly the the survivors themselves contributed to this myth that a cap capital ship never transited unescorted it’s true that she had no anti-submarine Warfare equipment no sound gear or anything like that but it is not true that she never transited unescorted she transited unescorted all the time not only that she carried spru around unescorted all the time so that’s a one of those things that you know unfortunately now McVey did ask and this is where it gets confused McVey did ask hey is there anybody else

going to lat at the same time a couple of ships did leave two days earlier including a destroyer and a tanker in fact tashimoto saw saw this destroyer and tanker fired kiten at the destroyer and tanker and did not get a hit the kiten exploded uh you know without getting a hit however this is the i58 we’re going to talk about in a minute it is not true that McVey asked for an escort what he asked for is there anybody else transiting that I should go in in company with when he was told nope nobody else going on that day July 30th

he was perfectly happy and he says this in his oral history in his Memoir not Memoirs oral history he says I transited through war zone all the time and escorter it I never thought twice about it yeah yeah it was not an uncommon thing thing not at all not at all the other thing I would say to you is that and this is one of those things that I don’t no other no no book has said this maybe maybe the last book by the way I’m going to refer to I’m refer people to this book here Indianapolis by ly Vincent Sarah ladic not because I’m

in it yes and I’m in it I’m a I’m a character in the book but it was WR it’s the last book written 2018 2016 2018 and and there’s a lot of documents that they discovered in National Archives that had not been found before that’s why I refer to it that’s why I I say that it’s better than the P prior books not because I’m in it but because there’s a whole one of those most recent information yeah yeah it is more recent information one of those documents is a prosecution of a submarine by that was you know targeting

a ship called wild hunter on the path it’s called route Petty p i p d d i e that goes between Guam and Le that is a true prosecution that was declared a CCH sub which means a submarine was identified with certainty so a search sub report went out prior to Indianapolis getting underway and that search sub report should have gone to McVey and didn’t so so this is one of many what I call Big Navy errors involved with the sinking of the ship um so that one was reported in this book something that I think as far I think I’m the first one to make this

point Seth mcvey’s prior assignment before he became CE of Indianapolis was chairman of the combined Chiefs of Staff that’s United States and United Kingdom The Joint Committee intelligence committee that’s it’s in today’s Parliament that would be the J2 you could even call it the NAT J2 it was just UK and us but but think of it that way both us and UK were reading the Japanese Naval messages right McVey in my opinion I’ve s found no documentation of this but I know that that the combined Chiefs of Staff J2 had access to the fact that we had

CRA cracked the Japanese Naval code because of that McVey would have known that we have cracked the Japanese Naval code that’s my speculation but I’m highly confident of that speculation Seth and I’ve never seen any other articles other than my opinion on this so when the people now he was no longer clear when he was to of Indianapolis he did not have need to know so he would have lost his clearance to be reading those cracked messages the Japanese Naval code but he knew that the people in Guam had access to those Naval messages so when commodor

Gillette and others in Guam told him that there was no submarine threat in route we had we knew we read Naval messages that said there are four Japanese submarines underway during this period of time we knew that and we had rough ideas of where they were and we should have known because the message had had been broken that one of those submarines was likely to have been on Route Petty which could was thought of as the Guam to late route and there was a c up message by the wild hunter on the Guam to late route all of this was known in

Guam so when McVey is told you don’t have to worry about a submarine threat he says in his mind they know where the Japanese submarines are because they’re reading the messages when they tell me I don’t have to read worry about subing threat I’m confident there is no subing threat that’s why why after the rescue when he’s interviewed he said I knew his certainty but I knew his certainty sure that there was no submarine threat that’s why he can make this statement with such you know strident you know nature is is because you connect the

dots he was cleared to the Japanese code breaking he knows the people in Guam are reading Japanese messages they tell him there’s no threat therefore he he believes with certainty there’s no threat so people ask why did he stop zigzagging on the night he was under the assumption that there was nothing there otherwise he would have been told he’d been running at flank speed all the way across the pa Pacific his engines were rode hard and put away wet he needs to give his and his chief engineer tells him he needs to give his Engineers some

loving care before the invasion of Mainland Japan so when he gets the opportunity to slow down and run straight he does cuz when you zigzag and I made this point separately you have to make a 17 knot s SOA speed of Advance which is what he was assigned you actually have to do 24 knots to make a 17 knot Sosa when you’re zigzagging if you can run a straight line you could slow down to 17 knots and there was a 16 knot speed limit to save fuel for the invasion of Japan so for both reasons he decides to stop zigzagging did I I jump

ahead Seth no no no no no no because this again I ain’t gonna stop you Bill I’m gonna let you go I’m Gonna Let You Go um so let’s let’s let’s talk about before we get to i58 and and we get to Hashimoto and and all that I know you want to talk about that let’s set the scene as it were so the night is relatively clear I mean this is a it’s it’s pretty much it’s a good night for submarines it the night of course that she takes her head is it not well it starts out not being clear I mean you got testimony of survivors that are all

over the place the ones who went off watch at midnight said they couldn’t see a thing the ones who came on watch at midnight said when you say midnight generally it’s it’s 23:30 when the shift change occurs the ones who came on watch say there were breaks in the clouds um you know I I was involved with the Reconstruction of the location of the moon at at midnight uh on that day you know 30 30 July um 31 July so an astronomer actually did an astronomical Recreation of the of of where the mo moon was what phase it was and and if

there was broken cloud cover there would be periods of time when you could not see the Horizon and when there’s a break break in the clouds there’d be clear periods of time when it was clear to the riseon this is why you get testimony of survivors and the the submarine crew I 58’s crew that are all over the map it turns out when H Hashimoto was transiting to Periscope depth and he can’t see anything he thinks he sees a he actually surfaces and and when the first Lookout goes to the bridge he says the lookout says I think I see see a blip on the

dark spot on the horizon Hashimoto doesn’t even go to the bridge he looks out of out the Periscope he thinks he sees something and he even though he’s just surfaced he tells Lookouts below and he submerges again he actually does a sweep with the radar sees nothing with the radar by the way both the air search and the surface search radar sees nothing with the radar which tells you how bad their surface search radar was because at this point the Indianapolis is probably around 10,000 yards away but he immediately submerges takes a look at

the Periscope and the Indianapolis at that point is coming into view Cloud covers breaking and he does start seeing him kind of uh silhouetted against the dark Horizon by the Sun by The Moonlight all right so let’s let’s talk about Hashimoto and i58 um we met the granddaughter of of Hashim uh a couple years ago when we were in mayor Island but let’s talk about the man if you can his previous world record and then the boat and the setup and like his what what the hell’s going on here with him yeah and I talked about this before he

had been the torpedo officer 1682 I24 at during the attack on Pearl Harbor he lost he launched that submarine that is now in the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg Texas the ha19 as torpedo officer he launched he launched the one submarine to survive the the beach at Bellows and pro Harbor so he was there from the beginning he’d been Skipper of the i-58 for over a year he had never yet sunk a ship he’ launched Torpedoes at ships but he’ never sunk a ship he was a very experienced officer graduated of of the Japanese Naval Academy you know come up

through the ranks so to speak as an officer and was carrying um six kiten during this Mission interestingly they got underway they were supposed to get underway in Kur on the 16th of July he gets underway they’re going to pick up their six kiten at the kiten base it’s not Kur it’s another base so they go into the kiten base he loads his six kiten they get underway they submerge and find that all the kiten periscopes are leaking so they surface again go back to the kiten base they replace or repair I’m not sure exactly which um the

peris the kiten periscopes and get underway in the 18th submerge again all is good by the way my reference for for Hashimoto story is this book sunk it’s his autobiography it’s got a chapter on the sinking Indianapolis and I think I mentioned this before the guy who wrote the forward to this book is my old acquaintance at beach Ed starts a myth with this with his forward of the book where Ed Beach Ned Beach declares that oh he doesn’t believe at all the Torpedoes s Indianapolis he’s not believing Hashimoto’s story at all even though

Hashim gives a plow blowby blow description of how the attack went but but Beach believes that that Hashim Moto sunk the Indianapolis with kiten Hashimoto describes exactly where he launched his kiten he’s not shy about talking about that um but Hashimoto declares it was a Sala of six Torpedoes I believe tashimoto and when they discovered the Indianapolis on the bottom there in a trench in 2017 we proved that Hashimoto was telling the truth and Ned beat just speculation was wrong Seth but he but Hashimoto goes into a great level of

detail about that final Patrol in his book and and his approach and attack in fact he D diagrammed it out and I kind of reconstructed it um as part of my analysis of the attack when I was doing my work to on the m exoneration in 1999 Seth you you want to share that now and I’m just going to take this out like like I can cut this but do you want to share that now or do you want me to just overlay it and you describe it how do you want to do that I’ll startare it and talk through it because again I’m I’m gonna I’m

gonna you’re good you see that Seth yeah I yeah I see you so this is 2930 July right so this is where Hashimoto is ordered the ship to surface you if you could see my cursor and right around 2356 somewhere in here his Lookout on the bridge says I think I see a dark spot on the horizon so Hashima submerges again here at 2356 he gets a to Periscope depth you see that spot right there initial range is around 10,000 yards 23 35 these are all local times the India times the India time zone so there he’s at Periscope depth and he sees the ship

closing in fact initially he thinks the ship has a zero angle on the bow he’s not sure what it is and he’s worried that the shp’s going to run over the top of him and is going to close so quickly that he won’t be able to get a shot eventually he turns towards a little bit here and and he notices the the Mast starting to break out so like kind of like this and he sees there’s a for Mast and an a mast and he sees there’s an angle on the bow which means it doesn’t have zero angle in the bow it’s not going to probably run straight over the

top of them but there’s going to be an intercept point he’s happy about this and he also knows because there’s two sets of masts that it’s larger than a destroyer okay so he thinks it’s a battleship Idaho class Battleship initially so he sets the mass head height at the battleship what he thought would be a mass Battleship M of 90 ft turns out that’s not far off for Portland class cruiser so he gets the range which is done in reticles through the Periscope ipce right you how many divisions in high power and you use the

nasad height and the number of Divisions in high power to get a rough range his sonar team initially doesn’t have this the ship on Sonar but they do pick him up and they say the ship’s traveling at a high rate of speed they’re estimating 27 knots but he can now see the ship well enough that he says no they’re not going that fast I’m going to mark them at 20 knots just based on the bow weight okay the bow wave and you could do that if you use the bow wave length as a percentage of the length of the ship you can come up with a rough guess of speed

and he guesses this about right he’s a very experienced commanding officer he gets that about right he guesses 20 knots they’re actually doing 17 so he guesses the Mast head about right he’s got he’s got angle in the bow from being able to split the difference between the four and half mast he’s got speed about right he’s got range about right at this point he’s got a wonderful firing solution so he he suits a salvo of six Torpedoes again how many times have I said it Seth you don’t shoot at the ship you shoot at the point of intercept

here’s kind of my rough estimate with two degrees of separation where the Torpedoes would have been now when I was doing this back in 1999 I did a whole bunch of theoretical zigs of the Indianapolis right Zig away Zig towards and based on the firing solution hasimoto described in his book and the range when he saw him and some random Zig patterns my question was would he have missed if the Sip had zigged and I in fact F sadly this is called the Monty Court Carlo analysis when you run it over and over and over

and over again and you try to get a probabilistic estimate of what the probabilities would be of of getting a hit and all I had was a manual what’s it called it a desktop calculator was the size of your desk set it was huge it was an HP uh thing that we used as a backup to our fire control computer you could program Torpedoes salvos you can program Targo range and speeds what I didn’t have the ability to do was say do 90 runs for me do 200 runs for me and random Zig patterns and tell me what the outcome is computer I wish I could have done that I

couldn’t I would have to manually Zig do another one manually Zig did I get a hit do another one manually zig and I do this I did this over and over and over again in my spare time basically we were we were decommissioning the submarine when I was doing this I couldn’t do it I I had a day job I couldn’t do it all the time but I did it enough times where I convinced myself it was over 90 runs and I had these documents I’ve lost them long time ago I did over 90 runs and in I take all but nine or 10 runs Hashimoto got a hit so bottom line was I

convinced myself that the spread of six t Torpedoes would have got at least one hit and if you get one hit you’re going to slow that ship down to the point where you could do a re-attack and syn it okay that’s the way real world works right you don’t go home if you miss it’s not like game over video games over you go home so he was going to get a hit over 90% probability he’s going to get hit this is this is how I convinced myself and I think the larger um listening audience and I published the article 1999 called

the sinking of the Indianapolis and the responsibility command that failure to zigzag did not Hazard The Vessel cuz he was going to get a hit anyway okay and and that’s uh you know I I hope was you know part of the calculus that the Congress used in the exoneration in any case so he got the hit and I was pretty convinced the first torpedo hit was the second fired that that blew the bow off the second torpedo hit was the third fire that exploded under number two Mast by the way Hashimoto thought he hit him with three

Torpedoes he thought he hit him with a torpedo aft their number three turret and he also thought he had two turrets aft by the way which is why he thought he had a battleship not a cruiser he was wrong about both there’s no hit after there were secondary tertiary explosions after but by the way hasimoto also thought that the ship went active on Sonar after the Torpedoes exploded wrong it didn’t have sonar very entertaining and the additional explosions were the ship frankly breaking up so after he gets that after

he launches the torpedo he goes deep and he turns away why does he go deep it’s easier to reload your torpedo tubes with a stable platform and you’re not rocking and rolling at Periscope depth so that’s why he goes deep so he goes down here reloads his Torpedoes at 00 21 so the actually the siip is sunk at 0012 ship took 12 minutes to sink okay so even when he goes deep the ship’s already sunk he doesn’t know it yeah and so he comes back around and he’s going to re attack so he surfaces around here comes and he’s on the surface and he he

doesn’t see anything he sees nothing no flatsome nothing so it’s really dark again which means the Moon is again behind the clouds you know going back to why when mcvade made the decision to zigzag he decides to zigzag when the he couldn’t see the Horizon and the orders to the office of the deck who did not survive by the way so no one’s throwing them under the bus were if the situation changes wake me up so when that Moon came outside the clouds the officer the deck didn’t wake McVey up the thing that woke McVey up

was the Torpedoes exploding okay so the officer of deck violated the standing orders that night by not waking McVey up it’s it’s likely I think that if McVey would have got up seeing the Horizon was visible again because the moon was be was not behind the clouds anymore he would have ordered them to resume zigzagging not because he thought there was a submarine threat because he’s trying to reinforce the right practices in a war zone okay but but that didn’t happen by the time Hashimoto gets back to the surface here comes

around he can no longer see the rising he can’t see anything he says well the ship couldn’t have gotten away I know I got two hits but I’m going to clear the area in case somebody is is following him and somebody’s going to you know he radios that I’ve been torpedoed and some destroyers are going to show up so he skedaddles it out of the area that’s the end of Hashimoto’s story he does conduct other attacks using kiten following the attack on the Indie gets no more hits so this is Hashimoto’s one and only successful sinking Seth all right bill

so Hashimoto fires Indie gets hit and as you said very briefly in 12 minutes she goes down so the hits that she takes are significant you know the bow comes off of the thing and she takes another hit after you know toward towards her Stern and I mean she’s huge holes ripped in the thing and then we don’t need to get into the damage if you want to see the damage of Indianapolis go watch the multiple shows that have been made since petrol discovered Indianapolis and you can including the one that we were on Seth indeed indeed and you can and you

can see those but Bill so who gives so I knew a gentleman named harlon Twi twible yeah who was an Inon on Indianapolis and and he was a he claimed and I’m not you know disparaging any of his memories at all but I mean as we know memories change over the years but he claimed that he as far as he knew he was the one that gave the order to abandon ship because he was up forward when all this started to happen and nobody was really doing anything can you go over the whole Abandoned Ship process and the guys getting in the water here yeah so Haron

was a good friend he and I did tag team interviews over the years prior to his passing where he and I would um would do radio interviews and things like that about the Indianapolis um he was the only Anapolis graduate um remaining when I got to know the survivors uh but he was on he was an nen he’d been on the ship all of two weeks when they got sunk and like so many of the survivors uh I will just say it this way so let me start with this so as I talked about my experience in the Pentagon and 911 what was interesting for me

was over the years I had memories of how the events transpired so I’m going to point the finger at myself before I point it anywhere else my memory was pretty clear on H on what sequence of events things happened I remember you know going in at this going back into the building at this point pulling somebody out at this point then tending to somebody at this point so on and so forth I had Clarity in those visions and those memories then in 2016 our friend um Kirk wolfinger does a document about the Pentagon and I live

in it asks me to be part of it and and reveals some ABC news footage that shows from beginning to end the sequence of events without being cut it’s a continuous video and I see me in it and I see that the order events in the video are different than the order of the events in my memory sure and I realize I’m remembering it wrong okay that was a hard that was a Awakening moment for me because over the years that’s that’s 2016 going way back to 1999 1998 when I first meet a large number of the survivors I would hear their

stories and I would hear those stories evolve over time there would be guys who’ say who had said to me in 99 I don’t know what this shark stuff is all about I was in the water I never saw a Shark I never saw a single shark in all that time I was in the water 7 years later they’re telling stories about sharks I’m not going to name names but this is the way these things evolved sure their memories evolved guys who were in two different groups they weren’t there weren’t within 3 miles of each other would tell the

same story from the same point of view right somebody else’s memory became theirs sure and I I believe I believe that they believe that it was their memory that that they were telling but I know they weren’t even in that group where that event happened so what I’m telling you folks is if you go back and and there’s been a there’s a wonderful documentary made by our friend Sarah vladic who co-wrote this book it’s not write that one WR co-wrote this book yeah she didn’t write some um and the document is called USS Indianapolis

the Legacy and stories are told by survivors in that documentary that are 100% not true I’m not going to pick on individuals and say like this one or that one although I’ve I said publicly that they weren’t in place to see the flag raised on eima that’s one story that’s provably false okay but there are other stories in harland’s story about giving the order to abandon ship is one of those stories there there’s a there were several survivors who were on the bridge with McVey when McVey gave the order to a man ship and by the way those

stories are in this book not the other book um the and absolutely McVey gave the order the 1mc was out it was lost with the first torpedo right so the the announcing system couldn’t be used to make the order so the order abandon ship was Word of Mouth Abandon Ship Bandon ship Bandon ship and um and and a lot of the survivors tell that story no I’m sorry but harlon my friend didn’t give the order to abandon ship set that’s one of the many myths and and just read the book it tells the truth so and and well you know and

that’s another subject not to not to get not to digress but you know as you know I did literally thousands of oral histories with World War II veterans and more often than not if I was trying to interview somebody from a a specific event let’s say tinaroo river that that just comes top of mind you know there were a couple of companies of Marines up there and and I would do more I would do my best to get as many guys that were in that unit that were on the line as I could for for many reasons not the least of which is

quantity but also to be able to triangulate all those stories into one you know what I’m saying I know you know what I’m saying and it’s you know just because Frank says this and Ed says this and bill says this and they’re all completely different there’s got to be some truth in there somewhere and you have yeah and and that’s what you have to do as a historian especially when you’re using roal history is you have to be able to you know make all that meat in the middle and you can’t take uh unfortunately you can’t just as you just

said you know memories you memories fade memories change and you can’t take someone’s word for it just because they were there you have to be able to prove that every single time but that’s that’s neither here nor there so McVey gives the order to abandon ship and guys I don’t think a whole lot of them especially up forward need it an order they’re getting the hell off of that boat as fast as they can and as you alluded to earlier when the ship gets hit twice and then the resulting explosions occur guys are getting hurt

you know guys are guys are killed when the thing gets hit you know there are guys in in in the bowel of the ship when poof when they goes yeah and and there there are dead men there or there are men who are terribly wounded and this is the same kind of thing that happens along USS Juno you know the Sullivan Brothers when when she was hit by the big Kaboom that sinks her there were actually two Sullivan Brothers who survived so what somewhat survived but one of them was critically critically wounded and he died

later this is the same kind of thing here a lot of the guys that get off of the ship and Indi on Indianapolis are significantly wounded and they either blown off thrown off washed off or they roll off one of the you know in some way shape or form so let’s look at the story from the position of the survivors now you know you got wounded guys everywhere what what’s going on yes so the ship continues to steam after it’s been torpedoed in fact you know when the first torpedo takes the bow off you know the second torpedo uh underneath number

two turret ignores ignites explodes the aviation gasoline tank which caused people to be roasted I mean screaming below eventually the screaming dies off as people die but that’s where most of the stewards and and M what we call today M Mountain Specialists um were there the most of them were killed then but people leave the ship almost immediately because they say This ship’s going down I don’t need a hear in order but the ship’s moving so groups of people are scattered the the final group actually is the one that

McVey is with he’s one of the last guys to leave the ship um and by the way one of the things that really infuriated me 1996 the senator Luger asked the Navy to revisit the McVey Court Marshal and the Navy gave the task to a Judge Advocate General by the name of Roger Scott to review it he wrote this unconscionably bad report in which he says the Navy’s never questioned Captain mcf’s claim that he didn’t go down with the ship because he was Swept Away by a wave I really reacted badly that’s a 96 report I read it in

99 when I was on on the vice Chief staff I reacted really badly to to that stupid Commander’s statement because it was not Captain M’s duty to go down with the ship and a commission Navy J Advocate General should have known but I digress he’s actually with the last group to get to get swept off the ship so these groups there there are one two three there are probably nine different groups of survivors clusters that are based on when they left the ship then once they’re in the water they all kind of drift together

but but they drift some some of these groups drift faster than others based on how the current is Flowing so there are very different stories some of them have life rafts some of them don’t some of them have life jackets some of them don’t some of the the largest group is about 300 somewhere between 300 and 400 people you know but but there’s some very brave stories heroic stories of the guys in the water and there are some horrifying stories of guys in the water particularly as time went on and the psychoses of dehydration begin

there were murders in the water Seth there was a lot of zero some gamesmanship where one of us is going to to live and it’s not and and it’s going to be me so if you have to die in order for me to live you’re going to die you know remember bosons have always have a knife on their belt with a you know a FID you know for doing lashings and things like that so there’s weapons in the water so there there are some wonderful Stories the kinds you would imagine but there were some stories that every one of them said I never want to

think about so so I’m not going to name Nam Seth but I do know the one of my really really good friends um I will say one of the gentlest men I could ever imagine that after he passed one of the other survivors came and told me a story about him along these lines that’s all I’ll say and I would never have imagined it but he he assured me that it was true horrifying act that this person you know was guilty of I guess what that says to us is that you know depending on the circumstances the State of Mind state of psychosis that that

anybody uh could um find thems in a position where they they’re guilty of something like this because this is not this kind of guy never would imagined uh having done something like he’s accused of doing Seth desperate times um so you know there’s there’s the whole story you know we we kind of crossed it well no we did cross it out here earlier in this episode so where you said or where you said that the the the leg of her journey from Guam towards L before she sunk or while she’s on that route rout Petty was not classified it

was not top secret it was not unknown what the hell happened you know why did why did nobody know what the heck was going on and what happened to her before and we’ll get we’ll get to the Discovery in that in a minute but but you know was there a distress signal sent who heard it did anybody hear it what you know what the heck happened here there was a distress signal sent I’m almost certain of it the way it was described there’s a warrant officer by the name of wood um fun fact um um leaving the launching of the USS Indianapolis leral

combat ship in April and uh Willet Wisconsin and a snowstorm hits and I I can’t get to the airport I get stuck in a snowbank in April in Wisconsin why we built a shipyard in Wisconsin God only knows so I’m standing outside my stuck rental car and a car pulls over and they recognize me in the middle of nowhere this isn’t by the the shipyard this is in the middle of nowhere they recognize me and say captain toon and I’m a little worried yes he said are you do you need a ride yes they have four-wheel drive I didn’t and I had a

Herz rental car and say so I get in their car they take me to the the Green Bay airport so I could fly home and it’s this guy Warr officer’s Woods nephew just you can’t make this stuff up Seth this has happened so many times in my life right and so he was lost at sea went down with the Sip transmitting that SOS there are others he told other Sailors to radiomen to get out he would stay with it and so they left and they know that the needle would the transmit needle was deflecting which means the continuous Wave radio signal

was leaving the ship here I’ve talked about this before high frequency signals are very susceptible to ionospheric interference in fact it’s skips off the ionosphere and there are Shadow zones even when I was in submarines when I was a you know Navigator operations officer in charge of the Radio Room in submarines when we used HF radio it would be a coin toss as to where if if if anywhere the radio station would receive your signal you transmit from middle Pacific it might be Australia it might be Japan it might be

nobody that gets it so doesn’t surprise me in the least there’s no no um cloak and daggers necessary to I’m not surprised at all that the signal wasn’t received by anybody the way you you normally start communicating is you transmit somebody responds then you know somebody’s listening then you transmit your message they didn’t have time for that ship sunk in 12 minutes so he’s transmitting what’s called in the Blind and as far as I can tell based on and no and people have been through with a fine- Toth comb all the radio records

all the logs in all the radio stations in the navy no one received the message now second part of your question is but they were supposed to arrive in latay Airplane CL goes out just as ordered to become an Airborne Target for indianapolis’s anti-air training they go out no Indianopolis there they come back they land hey ship never showed up nobody says a thing okay screw up number two early in the war every time a ship got underway and and every time a ship arrived in Port they would transmit an underway message or an arrival message

okay they there were so many ships thousands of ships that the the traffic was message traffic was clogged up with these underway messages and Ral messages so the order is given to stop doing this it wouldn’t be up to the individual ships to transmit underway and rival it would be up to the port I got five ships underway instead of five messages one message goes okay so on and so forth so the when message ships arrive in Port supposed to report the arrival of the ship well when the ship didn’t arrive in latay the crew that has the ship

estimated time of arrival and late says H isn’t that interesting Indianapolis didn’t arrive well they must have been vectored somewhere else we’ll just take them off the board nobody reported them missing ever never okay if it wasn’t for them being discovered by this Ventura and Wilbur gwin we to this day we would not know what have happened what had happened to the Indianapolis Seth and we we’ll get to that in a second but let’s let’s go back to the water to the scene in the scenes in the water these guys go in there in the

water you know drips and drabs but mainly in large groups right after she’s sunk or right after she’s hit they’re floating in the water they you we’ve done episodes before where we’ve talked about shipwreck survivors or you know Juno comes to mind and and things like that without the proper supplies and of course I’m talking fresh water and food medical supplies and we’ve already said that you know a great many of these guys are wounded burned you know lacerated full of holes whatever you name it they’re they got

it without the proper medical supplies food water shelter they’re going to fade quick and that’s what that’s what starts to happen yeah really almost immediately is it did I come through yeah you did yeah that’s the first night it’s first eight hours or so um most of the people were injured during the torpedo attacks die the rest of them say well we’re going to be we’re supposed to arrive in lay on Tuesday that was Sunday night right when they were torpedoed so we just need to hang out for a couple of days now remember the Juno

was known by everybody right and then that was guys hung out they were rescued after 10 days in the water and that story was known by the veterans not the third of the crew that came aboard at the age of 17 18 19 they didn’t probably know anything about the Juno story but the veterans knew all about the Juno story and so yeah groups I’ll tell you the the largest group I said was 200 300 here’s a group of 19 another group of nine another group group of 20 another group of 120 another group smallest group of only

four another group of you know 10 uh another group of 120 another group of of 200ish another group of you know started with about 400 okay and another group with 140 to 150 so some of these groups are pretty big Seth yeah yeah they are what what is going on as these guys are floating in the water I mean after day after day after day you know as you said that the wounded are dying or are dead and now the living are starting to lose it because they haven’t had water they’re sunburned they’re you know cold at night the Pacific believe

it or not if you’ve never swam in it is damn cold so you know there’s all kinds of things affecting these guys steadily over time and they’re starting to lose it can you get into that yeah I mean as you said even if the water is 80° your body temperature is 96 it sucks heat out of you and and the water is you know somewhere in low 7s to low 80s so yeah they’re they’re burning up baking during the daytime in the Sun and freezing at night you know there was there was some supplies in some of the rafts uh there were people that were

dying in the rafts and guys would pull them off and Scuttle aboard there’s one inen I’m not going to name name Seth who was not shy about saying that he thought he was an officer he’s brand new he’ been on the ship two three weeks he thought he was an officer and he should have a spot in the raft before those enlisted Riff Raff so there’s some of that kind of stuff going on right but the thing that was killing him was the dehydration Seth so some guys would say I can’t take it anymore and they they would drink the sea water and what that

does is it sucks the salt out of your body and it causes you to hallucinate and so some people said hey there there’s a root beer float stand right there’s a root beer float stand I can see it I’m going to go to the stand other guy said hey the ship’s just under the surface 5T I went down and I drank some cold water in the scuttlebutt scuttlebutt stands for water Farm by the way not for rubers um and so people would dive down and and drink drink sea water they said the sea water wasn’t salty if you got deep enough so some people drank sea

water that way some people hallucinated that they saw an island and they would swim out way to the island and you know and as I said some people fought over what little supplies did exist or what little spots existed on the rafts and some of those fights ended up in Murder Seth so these guys are dwindling bill how many guys go in the water do you know off top of your head at ballpark yeah somewhere around 880 went in the water and 36 were rescued actually 320 were rescued four died after rescue but before they got to the hospital gotcha

so what was her compliment what was Indy’s full compliment you know 1196 or so all right so just say just say 12200 guys and and and 800 800ish go into the water so I mean the math is pretty heavy and so this is what day five when they’re no day four is when they’re cited is it not day three they’re cited right there’s there’s a delay before the the rescues so well let’s talk about how they get cited what goes on what’s Happening so um yeah Wilbur Gwyn whose granddaughter is a great friend or whose daughter is a

great friend um wi Wilbur is you know on an anti-submarine Warfare Patrol in his ventur and he has a HF whip in ten it’s about 100 150 ft long it Trails out the back of the airplane and there’s a hyro electric reel it reels it in reels it out but the this aerial antenna would sometimes kind of get tangled in the Reel and this happens so Wilbur goes back from the Pilot’s seat he’s in the pilot and command seat and left seat he goes back to try to untangle this HF antenna in the back of the airplane and he’s he’s actually able to see the

surface of the ocean as he’s back there fumbling with this antenna and he sees an oil slick now diesel submarines often keep diesel fuel in B tanks that have that that have basically can be used as B tanks so they’re free flood on the bottom what that means is that the diesel fuel will sometimes leak out of the free flood areas and cause oil slicks you see it all the time uh with these old diesel submarines so he says an oil stick it’s got to be a submarine so he leaves his antenna races back up to the cockpit Dives

down and sees this oil slick but then begins to see these uh basketball size shapes in the water remember the light jackets are gray this is daytime but but they blend in with the gray of the oil slick and the heads are covered with fuel oil with bunker oil so the heads are black as well covered with this oil but he realizes those are human beings those are people who’s what the heck anybody get a report that a ship was sunk no so he starts wait you know flying around not knowing this is friendly en me and he decides to do a brave thing which is

report in the clear and the message he gives is ducks on the pond that’s not too clever code word for I see human beings in the water right and so he basically says send rescue ships ducks on the pond so that’s and he circles around until he can’t stay any longer I can’t remember I think he took off of out of pelo so going back to our episodes where we say there was no reason no no strategic reason to take pelo well pelo plays in a big time in the rescue of the Indianapolis survivors so they like pelu an awful lot Seth bet

they Doo so what from from the from the wat’s point of view Waters point of view survivors point of view in the water they see this bird come winging over and I mean that’s got to be a jolt of electricity because at that point they they’re they’ve got to be thinking thank you Jesus our our ordeal is almost over but it ain’t and and by the way I know that was that’s a um a slogan or saying thank you Jesus but I got to tell you a whole bunch of them who weren’t religious before this event got real religious during and they

were they were doing daily prayers they were doing the Lord’s Prayer over and over again and and um and many of them you know became extremely uh religious after rescue but yes um they were saying exactly that and they were heartbroken when the sun was setting and the airplane had to fly away but they were pretty sure this is the end of day three that they had been cited so again the next morning at pelo again Adrien Marx I can’t remember is it evening and afternoon day three Adrien Marx is sortied out of pelo in his

pby and again one of the miss the rumors that the Indianapolis survivors sted themselves was that Adrian was the first man to ever land a pby in open ocean we know Seth from the Juno story that that’s not true and Adrian knew that other PB had landed on open ocean it was Brave for him to do this don’t get me wrong but he was a long there was long way be away from being the first one to ever do this so he flies around drops supplies and then realizes he says he saw sharks attacking whether it was CS attacking

cadavers a lot of that was happening and cadavers are later um rescued is a poor um choice of words covered with shark bites in them but he saw sharks and decided to he needed to land his airplane and start picking survivors as best he could so he does end of day five he’s on the water he ends up picking up over 50 survivors in it texing around in his pby um so there’s that and then that night the the surface ships start to converge for their portion of the rescue set and it’s it was several surf several surface ships was it not yeah I think

close to a dozen are involved before this is over there are really fiveish that made a big contribution in um in the rescue and one of the first to come on the scene was the C so Doyle commanded by Graham clater again you can’t make this stuff up Graham clater was Secretary of the Navy who signed my commission said he was Skipper of the Cil Doyle another thing you can’t make up he’s mcvey’s wife’s cousin significantly history throughout so yeah here he is and he’s the guy who shines the spotlight straight up into the

clouds to to cause the survivors not to give up hope right and again Really Brave thing to do because by this point it’s suspected there must have been a submarine in the area to um to be rescu to to have sunk this ship so that that Spotlight did give these guys hope that that that rescue was on the way but but again other ships it’s that’s um showed up was the ringness the ringness is this sip that actually picked up mcvey’s group one of the last group McVey was on a raft with about 10 other people one of the last grou groups to pick up they

also picked up the Morgan The Glenn Morgan group what we call the Outland group um and there was the let’s see the register picked up some the defil ho picked up some the Basset picked up some and some of the uh the most glorious Rescue Stories of swimmers from the basket jumping in the water to rescue uh survivors there just some wonderful stories off of the Basset and of course the Cecil doy who picked up actually the largest number of survivors the the the group the largest groups were picked up by the doyle so uh but other ships

converged later after all the survivors have been picked up and they started picking up um the cadavers and identifying the cadavers uh not being certain whether they were dead or alive suspecting they were dead because a lot of them were bloated and they would try to find if there’s any identifying material on them uh so they can notify people and then they would give them Burial at Sea but these there’s some harrowing stories of that as well Seth yeah the um how how quickly I’m assuming it’s the PB when they’re picking these guys up how

quickly did word spread to this is Indianapolis well certainly the the guys that got picked up by the um pby identified themselves the guys on the Cecil Doyle identified themselves so so word was getting out and of course the ringness on the ringness when McVey was rescued despite being very weak right not having eaten they had some spam some cans of ham some Saltines but not not enough to to keep 10 men alive right um McVey insisted on being delivered to his uh to the commanding officer of the ringness where he reported that he was

commanding officer of the Indianapolis and he suspected that they had been sunk by a submarine he wanted to make sure that message went out cuz he believed that the submarine was still about and he wanted to do do whatever he could to protect other ships from that submarine so you know there there’s no footage of of the sinking obviously you know there’s very few pictures of Indie from that time period I’m talking obviously before she sunk and all that stuff but there is some footage which I’ll show here of some of these guys

being fished out of the water and and and there’s scenes of you know like a raft with like one or two guys on it or a couple of rafts that are quite obviously lashed together and nobody’s on them you know these guys are in terrible terrible condition bill they they I mean they are another couple of days and there may not have been very many there weren’t very many to begin with but another couple of days and there may not have been very many survivors at all if any but these D yeah yeah I think one night they would have

been gone one of those guys in the video that you’re probably showing right about now Seth his name is John Spinelli and he came to my decommissioning in 1998 he had cancer and was dying at the time but at a time I didn’t know that that was that him in the video I was familiar with the video but but to meet that guy was just absolutely and there’s there part of the video actually of him after they pull him out of the off that life wraft with him and another guy sitting with their backs against a a vertical structure on the ship the rescue ship

and they just got this big old grin on their face yeah um I think another one of the guys was um oh I’m failing with the name but but but those some some of the stories is they’re just absolutely remarkable no I’m sorry Spinelli was with McVey the guy I’m thinking of is is uh uh is somebody else the name will come to me later when I’m not trying to think of it but yeah these guys were on their last legs in every case they say can you stand saor they say I think so or can you climb the the Jacobs Ladder sailor I

think so and they’ll every one of them Falls flat on their face none of them are able to do it I mean they hadn’t had food or enough food or water in five days now or maybe even a little bit more than that you know depending on one eight last aboard ship so and the the name I was thinking of is Troy Nunley I got it Troy sorry go ahead Spinelli did come to my decommissioning in in Pearl Harbor but tne lley was the guy sitting on that deck in that video go ahead so in your estimation another day another 24 hours maybe 36 at most and

these guys would have been gone correct yeah I think every one of them to a name say that says that so so their Discovery by the Ventura and then by Marx and then the The Ships coming out I mean you can almost say that was providential at that point because of the fact that their time is limited I got to I’ve got to refer to you on my YouTube channel not our not our uh podcast YouTube channel I have a video of a of the man who flew the PB his name was Adrien Marx and he had he was a smoker late in life throughout his life most of these

guys were but he’s one of these guys who didn’t quit smoking and sadly he died late 80 ‘ 80s early 90s I think of lung cancer but he had this John Houston gr voice and he went around he became a lawyer and he went around the country and gave this speech called I have seen greatness in my time and in this speech he goes through the math of the probability of an airplane a Ventura not his airplane but the Ventura tuck Quinn’s airplane flying at altitude citing a human head okay at altitude and he goes through the math

it’s a riveting speech it’s on my personal YouTube channel maybe we can report it to the podcast Channel um or we can include a link to it but he he goes through that math and he and him and Chuck when by both say with certainty Provident God brought them to that point ocean there’s no way they stumbled on it they they were drawn to it they were brought to it it was not a random act couldn’t have possibly have been the ocean’s too big this area of survivors is too small it would not have happened through a random act and so and

the survivors all believe that they called Adrian marks I’m sorry they called Chuck Gwyn their angel because they believed that God’s hand was in the steering of that airplane set yeah hard to hard to U argue against that point absolutely so Indie syncing is announced if you will by the US Navy and it’s made public on a very specific date and it wasn’t done like it wasn’t done in my opinion it was not done on on this date on purpose it just it just happened like that can you elaborate on that real quick yeah in fact McVey says this

himself after he was rescued the first thing that happens is they tie him up with this court of inquiry and gu in the meantime you know there were some of the survivors in prop pelu some were brought to late they were all kind of aggregated they were doing muster rolls right who’s alive who’s not they wanted him see if they could find any other survivors that search lasted another 5 days or so so now we’re in the August 6 7th timeline okay McVey in parallel is making sure that names are ticked off at lost at sea

there’s 879 names of next of kin that have to be notified before they’re going to announce to the world that the ship was sunk okay these guys were going as fast as they could so so yes it took until VJ Day to get all that done so you know big headline at the top of the paper big you know Japan surrenders little substory Indianapolis sunk 100% casualties yes that’s the right number cuz those that went in the survivors were casualties injured too right Pur Purple Heart recipients as well and so there was no Mal maliciousness to the

timing of it McVey was getting this out as quickly as he could given that he was having to answer a court of inquiry and being ex ex you know accused of crimes that he did not do that he did not do exactly so we we we won’t get into the the whole exoneration of McVey and mcvey’s trial Because You released well we released a video that you had done oh heck I don’t know what a month ago or so so and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes Here in case anybody can’t find it why you couldn’t I don’t know but I’ll

put it in there anyway and you want to go and listen to that but but Bill over the years well actually well over the years since I’ve known you but throughout this episode you have named occurrences and we just talked about you know the the survivors being found was providential I believe that you being in the position that you were in and are still to this day as a representative of the crew and McVey and everybody else that that was providential but you have a very personal connection to this ship much like I have a personal connection to the

war you knew guys a lot of them you know I knew a handful of Indie survivors and I knew hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of World War II veterans but this is special to you and this is how you became even further intertwined probably more than you ever could have imagined or maybe even ever wanted to yeah tell us about some of this stuff guys tell us about guys I’m sorry yeah when they asked me and it was it was Glenn Morgan and and Paul Murphy at my ship’s decommissioning and I told that story separately asked me to Y York

submarine Captain another Indianapolis Captain you know need to they guilted me into getting involved uh I wish I could say that I I went into it you know you know with gusto I was afraid to get involved because you know I was afraid that I was going to tell them that you know McVey was guilty of hazarding a ship uh because I understood the responsibility command so if you’re an infantry battalion Commander you’ve got a certain level of responsibility for your troops in that infantry battalion if you’re a sip Captain You’ve Got A Way

larger level of responsibility for that Navy warship than the infantry battalion Commander does and it’s established by law Seth and it’s in title 10 of United States code that you’re responsible for everything even if you’re not culpable right now those two words are very specific words that means you can be prosecuted for anything that happens under your Comm even if you didn’t cause it to happen that’s not true for an infantry battalion Commander it is true for Navy ship captain so in my view it didn’t matter

whether he should have been zigging zagging or not if zigzagging would have helped he should have been he should have been doing it and I was afraid to tell them that only by running the math right only by doing the modeling did I convince myself it actually didn’t hazardous ship there’s nothing he could have done he wasn’t guilty that that I said okay I’m going to I’m going to get involved in this with gusto so whether it’s Providence or not there’s a whole bunch of times in my life Seth I said even when I was in a Christian I

said what is why am I here why why am I doing this what causes what what random act has put me in this place at this time and and now I do believe it it it you know God is involved in everything he wants to be involved in including what I’m doing including where I was but but you know so many of the guys I just don’t want them to be forgotten Glenn Morgan I knew over a 100 of them initially back in 1999 when they asked me to be their keynote speaker after we did after while I was still a captain of the submarine well when he did the

modeling after I did the modeling to prove mcvey’s innocence and I was the keynote speaker there was over a thousand people at that keynote dinner survivors and family members that’s incredible right in those days over a thousand now there’s one Survivor left as we’re recording this uh Seth so Glenn Morgan and his son Tom great friend Glenn was a bugler he was on the bridge with McVey all the time Paul Murphy was a fire controlman who was chairman of the Survivor organization he and Glenn came to my decommissioning he those are the two

guys that button hold me as the expression the old old school expression saying boom bill you need to do this Jean Morgan who came to my retirement ceremony along with Paul Murphy and dick thielen dick Thelen who granddaughter and grandkids and Sons and Daughters heck I know the sons and daughters dick and I were on the PBS documentary several of them together including the one where they where we discovered the ship right in 2017 and he was a truck driver such a great friend big old guy what a great guy he was LD Cox Texan I

visited him in his on his Ranch in Texas several times um he came when I was living in Dallas and we went to the Fort Worth Stock Show together several times and and both us wearing our cowboy hats and when he was dying flew down to Texas Karen and I flew down to Texas and visit him in hospice and and he just had me read Psalm 23 to him over and over and over again and I can’t read Psalm 23 anymore without thinking of LD harand twible the guy you mentioned earlier we would do these tag team radio interiew interviews together Harlin was

the only Naval Academy graduate I knew of of the survivors right John Wilston was an MIT graduate also a Naval Academy graduate one of the few guys I’m sorry John Wilson went to MIT not the Naval Academy but he was one of the few guys who stayed in the Navy after rescue and retired as a captain in fact he worked on submarine design including the skipjack class of submarine um and he’s also in this 27 documentary to us he retired to Hawaii where I wanted to retired to but every time I would go back to Hawaii I would visit with John

where he’s he’s buried there Giles McCoy was one of the Marines later became a chiropractor and became the chairman of the survivors organization before Paul Murphy great guy Edgar Harold also one that you knew Seth he was a marine as well one of those guys who who guarded the wooden crate in the port Hangar we did tag team speeches about the Indianapolis including one in Mayport Florida a few years ago on the commissioning of the leral combat ship Indianapolis by the way he was promoted way late to Sergeant in the year

20120 and I got to be with him at the awarding of the Congressional gold medal to the crew of the Indianapolis where I was a speaker up in Indianapolis with Edgar what a great guy what a great Christian wrote a great book and a whole bunch of guys guys who died before I knew them very well I no sorry both mcvey’s son I knew Kimo who is a promoter in Hawaii a talent promoter remember the guy Don Ho who Sayang Tiny Bubbles wine singer Kimo was his promoter mcvey’s son and Charles Butler McVey ivth Quattro for short he was a

great friend lived in DC when I knew him and Quattro is the guy I got to award mcvey’s bronze star to because McVey was awarded a bronze star for the Battle of okanawa but it wasn’t approved until December 1945 when McVey was being court marshaled and I found an entry in mcvey’s service record when I was entering exoneration language into his service record in the year 2001 May 2001 and enter McVey service record said Captain McVey awarded the bond bronze store for services at the Battle of okanawa unable to locate service member

metal return to stock the date of that service record entry was December 1945 was which was in McVey was being Court marshaled it was front page news in every paper in the country the Navy just didn’t want to give mcvea a medal in the middle of his court Marshal exactly so rather than doing that they pretended they couldn’t find him and so I was able to give Quattro mcvey’s bronze star in May of 2001 ship’s dentist who was was lost at sea Earl Henry his son Earl Henry Jr great friend the the sailor who was killed in the kamakazi the kamakazi

attack Earl prokai his son Elco great friend the daughter of the ventur pilot Chuck Quinn her her his daughter great friend you mentioned Jim beler whose dad James beler was another one of the people who stayed in the Navy after rescue he was number one promoted to chief petty officer number two state in sasbo Japan which is the Home Port of i58 number three married a Japanese girl who is training with spear to fight those vicious Americans during the invasion of the Americans so he James and uh his Japanese wife gave birth to

another great friend Jim beler Jr who were friends with to this day I can go on and on and on set but I know I’m going to miss someone and we don’t have enough time I do such great I understand I truly I truly you yeah you and your thousands of friends yes I I understand you know before we were before I sat down to record this um just a little while ago Tommy Lofton and I who’s been he did our master show with us he and I were talking and and and because he asked me what are youall recording today I said we’re doing indie and he said ‘

oh he said yeah Bill’s going to Bill’s going to be be all up for this one I said oh yeah I said you know because and then we started talking about guys we knew Edgar Harold D being another Paul Murphy people like him and uh what you said earlier I firmly believe is that people are put on this Earth to do a very specific thing um whether you know it or not whether you realize it or not you are put here to do something special and it’s up to you whether or not you do it or not but you were put here to do something special I I firmly believe I

was put on this planet aside from being a father and a husband to document the history of the people that I came to know yes you were no different you were put here to do yeah you were put here to do the very same thing no for sure I agree with you father and husband first but this has been number two in my life uh my Lord Jesus Christ I should say that but but you know there’s one person who in the water who’s story I want to make sure we kind of close with because it it kind of wraps everything up in a bow the story and he was a marine

Captain by the name of Park P Edward Park p a r ke he said first of all he was a veteran of the battle of guad canal Seth and he suffered PTSD from that battle and he was put in charge of the ship’s Marine contingent on the cruiser Indianapolis kind of as a reward I I don’t know if that’s the way to say it kind of as a yeah yeah as a decompression Tour of Duty for him um because he’d been in combat um so drastically and he survey Sur he saved dozens perhaps scores of people in the water him and his Marine voice

rounding people up Gathering them together keeping them from doing stupid things he was a marine Captain same as a Navy Lieutenant there were Lieutenant commanders and commanders in the water as well they all obeyed Marine Captain Park some of them didn’t survive some of the Navy senior officers didn’t survive um some some like lipsky were injured when they went and the the water didn’t survive very long but Captain Park did was a hero among heroes in the water and everybody points to him and just after several days this Seth he

just couldn’t do it anymore he just ran out of energy um knew he was going to he was dying himself and just swam off and no nobody ever saw him again rather than be one of those guys who hallucinate hallucinated he probably saw hallucinating and killing somebody or trying to kill somebody rather than being one of those guys he swam off and died so that closes that chapter in the water I also need to say that after Rescue of the 316 survivors over a dozen that I know of over the course of the next 15 years committed

suicide we talk about that all the time and I see and I deal I’m dealing with that with more modern veterans today in my other job with working with veterans um so over dozen committed suicide they didn’t want to see each other Seth they didn’t they didn’t want to think about it the most of them drank themselves into Oblivion the the ones who didn’t kill themselves when they did that first reunion 1960 15 years after they invited McVey to come to it this is about the time when they finally decided maybe I can tolerate thinking

about it talking about it again McVey initially didn’t want to come cuz he assumed because of the Court Marshal and all these hate all this hate mail he was getting from the losted sea families that blamed him for the sinking he assumed the survivors blamed him too so he didn’t want to come they had to twist his arm to come and he gave a speech it’s a pretty remarkable speech of that reunion and I’m going to repeat that speech Seth I’m going to give the McVey speech again I’m going to try to do it word for word I’ve

spoken a dozen times at survivors reunions in the past since 199 on 1999 on in this July I think it’s July 28th through 30th the Legacy organization is going to get together in the city of Indianapolis for what’s called a reunion remembrance family members and the general Public’s going to be invited and I’m going to repeat mcvey’s 1960 speech to the survivors I got to do it a dozen or so times before I get up there and do it Seth because I’m going to have a hard time getting through it but if you want to learn about this reunion timing and

if our viewers listeners want to come it’s open to the public USS indianapolis.com is where you’ll be able to sign up for it and learn I don’t think the details are up yet but it’s going to be it’s a sein hotel in Indianapolis Indiana let me see if I got the date right uh July 28 is so somewhere around that time pencil it in Seth I hope you can make it too I’ll do my damnest I’m definitely gonna try and do that to to hook up with the last one that we did together yeah well bill is there anyone anything you want to add to this before

we close her out I’m exhausted Seth between my lung disease and and uh going through all these memories it just take uh just wiped me out so I think it’s a good time to quit it takes a lot out of you I I can attest to that well my friend I’ve been looking forward to doing this one with you for a long time and and um I would imagine a lot of our viewers or listeners were waiting to hear this story well just to finish what I started there is you know I think a lot of people have been looking forward to hearing this

story you most people know the story Andy but there’s no one who could tell it better than you and I it was a this is one that I didn’t do a lot of talking and I was very very grateful for that not because I didn’t feel like it but because I can’t you can’t you got to learn as an interviewer and as as a historian when to shut up and uh let somebody else talk this was certainly one of those times and this was awesome this was awesome so with that we want to thank you very much for listening and or watching our in on our conversation

please subscribe to the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast or you receive your podcast if you’re not watching this video please do so at our YouTube channel called the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast if you got a question or comment send us an email at unauthorized Pacific podcast gmail.

com so once again my name is Seth per and I want to thank you very much for listening and or watching Bill bring us home we’ll see you again next week [Music]