15-133 Garand Picture of the Day - Mopping up on Tinian

[Mark in Rochester]

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Bob Seijas]

Making room for Enola Gay.

[WarPig1976]

Last port of call for the USS Indianapolis.

[CINDERS]

I see one GI utilizing the ground depression wisely and others in a rather exposed position really good pic when you consider it caught the last bit of powder burn from the Garand

[Bob Seijas]

I caught Captain Quint's telling of the Indy story while watching Jaws over the weekend... yikes "1200 men went into the water, 312 came out, sharks got the rest, July 30, 1945."

[browningautorifle]

That would have been a very bad night...

[Mark in Rochester]

At 12:14 a.m. on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men were still alive

Shortly after midnight the ship was struck by two torpedoes and sank in about twelve minutes.

When the ship failed to arrive at Leyte on Tuesday morning, a series of blunders ensued. First, there was confusion as to which area the Indianapolis was to report when it arrived. Second, there was no directive to report the non-arrival of a combatant ship. And, third, there was no request to retransmit a garbled message which would have clarified the Indianapolis' arrival time. As a result, the surviving crew of the Indianapolis was left floating in shark-infested waters until 11am on Thursday, August 2, when Lt. Wilbur C. Gwinn, the pilot of a Ventura scout-bomber, lost the weight from his navigational antenna trailing behind the plane, a loss which was to save the lives of 316 men.

While crawling back through the fuselage of his plane to repair the thrashing antenna, Gwinn happened to glance down at the sea and noticed a long oil slick. Back in the cockpit, Gwinn dropped down to investigate, spotted men floating in the sea, and radioed for help. At 3:30 that afternoon Lt. R. Adrian Marks, flying a PBY Catalina, was the first to arrive on the scene. Horrified at the sight of sharks attacking men below him, Marks landed his flying boat in the sea, and, pulling a survivor aboard, he was the first to learn of the Indianapolis disaster.


USS Indianapolis CA-35

[CINDERS]

Abandon Ship (Good read) or the other name that was coined The Day of the Sharks - from memory she carried the bomb to Tinian island for the Enola Gay and therefore there was no record of her journey or route for obvious reasons of secrecy so that is why the poor devils were so long in the water and went through hell not only from the sharks but the fuel oil and their kapok life preservers chaffing and the knots not being able to be un-done. Chaps went quite off the rails one dived down to have a drink with his mates just under the surface he never came up the Catalina flying boat was of course overloaded and I think had to stay on the water there with the survivors a real tragedy so often repeated in a war.