I don't know how I missed the history on this ship. Watched a documentary on it on Youtube and then the movie with Nicolas Cage on Tubi. Pretty good movie. They delivered the bomb to be dropped on Japan. Then got ambushed on the way back home. Ship sank and those that survived made it over 4 days and didn't become shark food. Then they laid he blame on the Captain who couldn't deal with all that. Think we are going to go to the museum here pretty soon. God bless those dang tough men!

Yep. Skipper eventually committed suicide. Helluva story.

You ever see the movie Jaws?

What is the name of the movie on Netflix? I’d like to watch it.

Jaws

I made a mistake the documentary was on Youtube. The movie was free on Tubi. Name of the move was USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage. It is on Netflix too just not free.

Farewell adieu ladies of Spain.

That incident changed the way the Navy operated. Ships had to send a position report every four hours. I would guess with gps now it is totally automated and the fleet commanders have instant knowledge.

I read the book years ago. No telling how many men were left in that ocean. A lot of flyers left the carriers and simply never came back. I had a cousin lost like that during Vietnam. I think they knew generally where he went down but they never found him.

When I worked part time at Chelsea Fire, one of the crews ran a call on an Indianapolis survivor. He wasn't in great health. As soon as he was out of the hospital they invited him to a dinner at the fire station and let him tell his story.

Those men may have had the worst thing happen to them during the entire war. There were lots of atrocities committed in that war, but 4 days floating in shark infested water, never knowing what's beneath you? That terrifies me.

If I remember correctly, the Skipper wasn't doing the required zig zag maneuvers when the torpedo hit them.

True. But no one knew they had been sunk for like four days when they did not show up to port. In the mid 90’s if you didn’t send your position report in you would be contacted shortly by the chain of command. And that usually led to the Officer of the deck, quartermaster of the watch, and a radio man getting their hind end chewed out by the captain.

This only applied while we were underway. And I only have knowledge of surface activities.

Wasn't there a reason he didn't do the zig-zag maneuvers?

I recall it was because they had to slow way down to do them.

If I remember correctly there was dense fog that night and the skipper was sure they were safe in the cover but a sub got real close and spotted them.

Got off of wiki - In July 1945, Indianapolis completed a top-secret high-speed trip to deliver uranium and other components for "Little Boy", the first of two nuclear weapons ever used in combat, to the Tinian Naval Base, and subsequently departed for the Philippines on training duty. At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.[4] The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. A PBY seaplane (which the USN had at the time) crew landed to save those in the water. Only 316 survived.[4]

The sharks remind me of another good book titled Unbroken. Was later made into a movie. It's the true story about a WW2 soldier that endured 47 days on a raft before being caputred by the Japs.

Reading Unbroken will bring you to tears and make you mad enough to kill somebody.
Reading Ghost Soldiers will alleviate any reservations you might have about Hiroshima.

Quint will never wear a life vest again. Fair well and ado to you Spanish ladies........

Interesting note: At the court martial trial of the American captain, they brought in the Japanese sub captain that sunk the Indianapolis. He testified that it would not have mattered if the US captain had zig-zagged or not because he was prepared to launch his manned Kaiten kamakazi torpedos!
If the kaitens missed the men inside could steer them and come around again. They were doomed. There was another older movie filmed in Mobile on the USS Alabama about the Indianapolis called "Mission of the Shark".