The lore of the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser assigned to Task Force 54, began when the gray lady saw extensive action before the invasion of Okinawa during March 1945 that resulted in the downing of thousands of Japanese aircraft and the deaths of more than 200,000 combatants from both sides.
The pre-invasion bombardment and assault on the small Japanese island became one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific during the latter stages of World War II. A bomb dropped from a Japanese Nakajima Ki-43 fighter, though, causing considerable damage to the cruiser that also resulted in the death of nine crewmen.
As a result of the damage caused near Okinawa, the Indianapolis sailed under her own power to Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo, California, for repairs.
Although the Indianapolis lacked the glamor associated with the storied aircraft carriers and battleships of the war, the cruiser earned a coveted spot in naval history during the last three months of the Pacific operation. After repairs were completed at Mare Island, the Navy assigned the Indianapolis with a top-secret mission to deliver material for the Little Boy atomic bomb unit to Tinian Island, one of three major islands in the Western Pacific’s Northern Marianas.
From there, a B-29 bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan on Aug. 6, 1945, and then the following week on Aug. 14. Fighting in the Pacific came to a halt except for some pockets of resistance, mostly on the smaller islands dotted across the western part of the vast ocean.
Departing from the San Francisco Bay, the Indianapolis traveled southwest across the Pacific Ocean, reaching Pearl Harbor in three days and then to its final destination at Tinian by July 26. After unloading its top-secret cargo at Tinian, the Indianapolis began another leg of its mission to Guam and then to Okinawa to Joint Task Force 95.
The Indianapolis, though, never reached its final destination.
Shortly after midnight on July 30, 1945, a Japanese submarine released two torpedoes, one of which hit the bow that caused considerable damage. According to eyewitness accounts, the cruiser rolled over and then her stern rose. The ship sank with 300 crewmen out of 1,195.
Ensign Harlan Twible knew the ship was in trouble as bodies floated near the top while survivors swam away from the cruiser.
“And the bodies came in so fast, it was unbelievable,” he recollected years after the sinking. “And we swam away from the ship. But everybody was scared to death. These were all 18- and 19-year-old kids.”
Yet, the ship’s sinking became secondary to the threat facing the surviving sailors: sharks.
As the sharks swam closer to the panicked sailors, Twible said the men would kick and scream and do things they thought would drive the sharks away. He said the actions worked, but sharks only attacked the sailors who were by themselves and had no protection,
“But the sharks were in and they attacked in groups, and when they (sailors) died, I just cut them loose from the group. I didn’t want the bodies around. My fear was really for the men and myself,” Twible said. “I never felt for myself, never feared for myself the whole time.”
Twible, who died in 2018, said days after the attack, airplanes flew over the cruiser and struggling sailors and then notified the Navy. One airplane flew over the survivors, and the search crew took another pass and notified the Navy. Rescue ships were dispatched 18 hours later.
USS Indianapolis Memorial in Indianapolis. Public domain
Harold Bray, now 98 years old, was a sailor who had reported to the Indianapolis several months before it departed Mare Island. He said the initial cruise from the West Coast to Pearl Harbor and then to Tinian Island went smoothly.
“The ship left Mare Island carrying a secret weapon, the most secret weapon of all, the first atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy,” Bray recalled. The cargo was delivered safely, but it’s what happened afterwards that people remember the Indianapolis for, all thanks to a gripping scene in the movie Jaws. A Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief, and 1,100 men went into the water. The vessel went down in 12 minutes. I don’t know how I was so lucky.”
Bray said he swam away from the ship.
“Then I hollered for you guys,” he interjected. “I just happened to find a raft. And I was, I got aboard. Eighteen guys on my raft. The guys were fighting each other for a room on a raft.”
Sharks swam by the sailors, and Bray said the men formed themselves into large, tight groups. He figured at least 100 sailors died because of the sharks.
“I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men, the average six an hour,” he estimated of those killed. “It’s a bad experience, that wasn’t good about it. Every time you look around, somebody was gone. The sharks, were over there. That was a terrible scene.”
What complicated the mission was its secret status. Bray said no signal was sent, and the men languished in the sea for five days before the first airplane spotted them. Many were rescued and taken to a hospital on Guam.
“I wasn’t hurt at all except for memories,” Bray said, adding he helped the men in the water who were hurt.
After the war, Bray became a police officer in Benicia, California, a community located southeast of the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. When the movie Jaws debuted in 1975, he remembers the other police officers discussing the movie when the shark hunter Quint relived the Indianapolis and its sinking. Bray interrupted, and then told his fellow cops he was on the ship.
Bray remains as the sole survivor of the Indianapolis, and his heroism aboard the ship hasn’t been forgotten by his Benicia community which has thanked him numerous times for his service to his city and country. He doesn’t think of himself as a hero.
“I helped a lot of guys, but that was the thing to do. You live with them. And, I didn’t do anything spectacular,” he said.
Richard “Dick” Thelen, died in 2021 in his native Michigan. He was 18 years old when he first sailed aboard the cruiser in 1945.
“How I got through this I really don’t know,” he said. “I guess damn lucky, that’s all I was doing.”
Thelen said diesel fuel covered him and others, and he floated in the water for four days and five nights watching as sharks killed the other sailors.
“Twice, a shark was poking me in my life jacket,” Thelen said, recalling he was eyeball to eyeball with the shark. “He looked me over and swam away. Two times that happened. They used to tease me where I used to work.”
Thelen said sailors who weren’t eaten alive hallucinated.
“They imagined they were going below deck to get a drink of water. You go out of your mind,” he said.
Thelen said the sinking resulted in the worst loss of life in U.S. naval history. Sharing the story was easier for him to tell at reunions until he died almost five years ago.
Harrell died in 2021, but until that time, he shared his story aboard the Indianapolis to honor those who were killed. He never ceased giving thanks that he survived the sinking of the Indianapolis. Four years before his death, though, the cruiser’s remains were discovered at a depth of 19,000 in the North Philippine Sea.
After many years of searching for the ship, a group funded by the co-founder of Microsoft discovered the cruiser’s remains in August 2017. Paul Allen led the search after a number of failed attempts.
Retired Rear Adm. Sam Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, summarized the heroics of the USS Indianapolis crew in an Aug. 24, 2017, article.
“The first sighting of survivors was a sheer fluke, but once the U.S. Navy commands grasped that Indianapolis was missing, things happened very fast, and multiple aircraft and ships took great risks to save as many Indianapolis Sailors as possible,” he pointed out. “According to the Navy, only 316 survived, while the Indianapolis survivor’s organization believes that number is actually 317. Either way the loss of life was staggering.”
Cox said the lessons from the ship’s sinking on July 30, 1945, continue to impact today’s U.S. Navy operations.
“Procedures for sharing extremely sensitive intelligence so that it is operationally useful, as well as communications improvements and procedures for scheduling, routing, escorting and routing ships are still in effect today and are a result of the Indianapolis story,” he added.
Cox said the fallout from the ship’s sinking also affected the captain.
“Capt. Charles B. McVay, who was court-martialed and convicted of ‘hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag,’ thereby becoming the only U.S. Navy ship captain to be court-martialed for losing his ship as a result of enemy action. The court itself recognized the unfairness of the Navy’s action and immediately after convicting him, recommended the sentence be remitted, and it was. But the remittance could not erase the stigma of blame, which McVay bore until he took his own life in 1968.”
INDIANA WAR MEMORIAL
A national memorial dedicated to the USS Indianapolis was constructed at the north end of Canal Walk, which is part of the Indiana War Memorial. The memorial is an outdoor site and engraved on the monument’s south face are the names of the ship’s crew and one passenger who made up her final crew.
Inside the Indiana War Memorial Museum, which consists of three floors, are exhibits from the 1800s, the American Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam.
Like Nevadans who revere the USS Nevada, Hoosiers have a special place in their hearts for the USS Indianapolis, which endured one of the worst fates for a ship and her crew on July 30, 1945.
SOURCES
Interviews
• Edgar Harrell, Memoirs of WWII, Nov. 11, 2021
• Harold Bray, KPIX-TV interview, San Francisco, 2024
• Richard Thelen, positivelymichigan.net. Jan. 20, 2019
• Sam Cox, The Sextant, Aug. 24, 2017
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