Text 34664, 135 rader
Skriven 2009-07-31 13:42:27 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
  Kommentar till text 34659 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854.1)
Ärende: July 30th, 1945
=======================
31 Jul 09 09:51, Ward Dossche wrote to Roy Witt:


 RW>> During WW2, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis, which had just
 RW>> delivered components for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on
 RW>> Hiroshima, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine: only 316 out of
 RW>> 1,200 men survived the sinking and shark-infested waters.

 WD> ... mainly due to bad American procedures. It took days to figure out
 WD> the ship actually was overdue.

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.

 WD> Nearly everyone survived the sinking, with better procedures most
 WD> would have been rescued.

Only 900 of the 1196 on board made it safely off ship during the 12
minutes it took for her to sink.

 WD> Interesting detail ... the same sub that torpedoed the Indianapolis
 WD> also sighted it on its outbound voyage but failed to sink it then ...
 WD> What if?

Plan B...

 WD> The captain of the Indianapolis was courtmartialed. It was the
 WD> testimony of the Jap subcommander that US avoidance tactics were
 WD> insufficient and the ship would have been sunk anyway which saved his
 WD> behind.

That wan't his testimony. "At Captain McVay's court-martial which was held
at the Washington Navy Yard, Hashimoto implied in pretrial statements that
zigzagging would not have saved the Indianapolis."

"I believe this whole ordeal about the sinking and especially the outcome
of the court-martial was and is a black mark on the Navy and not the
Captain."

From statement submitted at September 1999 Senate hearing by Lyle M.
Pasket, USS Indianapolis survivor

It was at Guam that the seeds for the destruction of the Indianapolis were
laid. Hostilities in this part of the Pacific had long since ceased. The
Japanese surface fleet no longer existed as a threat, and 1,000 miles to
the north preparations were underway for the invasion of the Japanese
mainland. These conditions resulted in a relaxed state of alert on the
part of those who were to route the Indianapolis across the Philippine
Sea.

#  Although naval authorities at Guam knew that on July 24, four days
before the Indianapolis departed for Leyte, the destroyer escort USS
Underhill had been sunk by a Japanese submarine within range of his path,
McVay was not told.

# Although a code-breaking system called ULTRA had alerted naval
intelligence that a Japanese submarine (the I-58 by name which ultimately
sank the Indianapolis) was operating in his path, McVay was not told.
(Classified as top secret until the early 1990s, this intelligence -- and
the fact it was withheld from McVay before he sailed from Guam -- was not
disclosed during his subsequent court-martial.)

# Although no capital ship (unequipped with antisubmarine detection
devices such as the Indianapolis) had made the transit between Guam and
the Philippines without a destroyer escort throughout World War II,
McVay's request for such an escort was denied.

# Although the routing officer at Guam was aware of dangers in the ship's
path, he said a destroyer escort for the Indianapolis was "not necessary"
(and, unbelievably, testified at McVay's subsequent court-martial that the
risk of submarine attack along the Indianapolis's route "was very
slight").

# Although McVay was told of "submarine sightings" along his path, none
had been confirmed. Such sightings were commonplace throughout the war and
were generally ignored by navy commanders unless confirmed.

Thus, the Indianapolis set sail for Leyte on July 26, 1945, sent into
harm's way with its captain unaware of dangers which shore-based naval
personnel knew were in his path.

A Remarkable Parallel to the Story of Captain McVay
http://www.lusitania.net

Charles Butler McVay III is not the only sea captain to be blamed by
authorities for a disaster beyond his control. There is another officer,
Captain William Thomas Turner of the Lusitania, whose experience was
remarkably similar following the 1915 sinking of his ship off the southern
coast of Ireland with the loss of more than 1,200 civilians and crew.

It was a disaster often given as the reason for the entrance two years
later of the United States into World War I.

As was the case with Captain McVay, Captain Turner's ship was sunk by
torpedoes, and he survived only to be summoned before a British Admiralty
board of inquiry anxious to find a scapegoat for such a tragedy.

I guess the Brits use "bad procedures" too.

 WD> And ... the Indianapolis was NOT a battlecruiser. As a matter of fact
 WD> the US did not have any during WW2.

Indianapolis was a "treaty cruiser". That is, she was built observing of
the strictures laid down by the 1921-'22 Washington Conference Treaty
following the First World War. Under that treaty, the United States
eventually built eighteen heavy cruisers, (Designated CA under the U.S.
Navy System adopted in 1918), in four classes. None of these was to be
commissioned until 1930 or later.

If there's anything else I can bring you up to date on, just let me know.

                R\%/itt

Joy lives in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in
the victory itself.

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