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The screams begin even before the sharks appear. This happened shortly after midnight on July 30, 1945. Hundreds of American sailors are scattered across the black waters of the Philippine Sea. Indianapolis had already disappeared. 12 minutes. That's all it took for the huge warship to capsize and disappear underwater. People who were asleep a minute ago are now clinging to the debris in the darkness. Some were burned beyond recognition. Others are bleeding from deep wounds sustained in the explosions. The sea is covered in oil and bodies. At first, the
survivors believe their suffering is almost over. When the ship doesn't arrive, someone will come looking for them. They just need to wait until morning. Then the sun rises. The tropical heat is becoming merciless. The men are nauseous from the fuel and seawater they have swallowed. Salt corrodes their open wounds. And something starts to move beneath them. Sharks. First they feed on the dead. Sailors feel them hitting their feet underwater. People try not to move. They know that active movements will attract them. But suddenly someone shouts.
The sailor suddenly disappears underwater. The water is boiling. People around desperately kick and punch the sharks below them. Sometimes they manage to fight back, sometimes they don't. As hours turn into days, sharks become more than the only threat. Thirst begins to destroy people from the inside. Some finally give up and drink seawater. Soon they begin to delirium. There are fewer and fewer people every morning. And every night the sharks return. And gradually, a terrible realization spreads among the survivors. No one will come because no one is looking. The US Navy does not know that the Indianapolis has sunk. But how could a large American warship simply disappear without anyone noticing its absence? Why did it
take the survivors almost 5 days to finally reach rescue? And why, after everything that went wrong, did the Navy place the blame on the captain who survived? Let's try to find out. Hi, I'm Mike Droberg, a Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker, and we'll try to answer those questions on today's episode of Forgotten History. The beginning of the most difficult 26 days in the history of the Marine Corps. With confidence in our armed forces, the 36th President of the United States died this afternoon. There are children and women here.
You need to stop this. Indianapolis became synonymous with disaster, it was one of the most important warships in the U.S. Navy. Commissioned in November 1932, Indianapolis was a Over 600 feet long and capable of speeds in excess of 30 knots, she was armed with a main battery of nine 8-inch guns and had a crew that later numbered over 1,000 officers and sailors. She also had another feature. The Indianapolis was a presidential ship. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt boarded a cruiser in Charleston, South Carolina, for a diplomatic trip to South America.
Roosevelt used the ship again in 1939, giving Indianapolis a prestige few American warships could boast. But when the United States entered World War II, ceremonial travel ended. Indianapolis went to war. It narrowly escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor because the ship was off base on training exercises when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941. For the next 3.5 years, Indianapolis fought throughout the Pacific. He participated in operations in New Guinea and the Aleutian Islands before becoming flagship of Admiral Raymond Spruance's 5th Fleet. From there, the cruiser participated in some of the most important American campaigns of the Pacific War. Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and others. In the spring of 1945, the war came close to Japan itself. But the closer
the Americans got to the Japanese islands, the more desperate the resistance became. On March 31, 1945, the Indianapolis was operating near Okinawa when a Japanese kamikaze screamed and aimed his plane at the ship. American anti-aircraft guns opened fire. The plane was hit, but it was too late. A Japanese plane crashed into a cruiser. The bomb carried by the plane pierced the deck and exploded beneath it. Nine American sailors died. Another 26 were injured.
Due to damage, the Indianapolis was out of action. It crossed the Pacific Ocean and returned to the naval shipyard on Mare Island near San Francisco for repairs. To the crew, this must have seemed like extraordinary luck. They survived the years of war. And now, while other Americans continued to fight and die around Okinawa, the Indianapolis had safely returned to California. By the summer of 1945, Nazi Germany had surrendered. Japan found itself increasingly isolated. American bombers were destroying Japanese cities, and preparations were underway for an invasion of the Japanese home islands, which military planners feared would be one of the bloodiest campaigns of the entire war. But in complete secrecy,
something else was happening. For many years, the United States has been developing weapons unlike anything the world has ever seen. And on July 16, 1945, this weapon was tested for the first time in the New Mexico desert. The Trinity test proved that the atomic bomb worked. That same day, hundreds of miles away, on Mer Island, the Indianapolis' repairs were completed. Captain Charles Butler McVeigh III was preparing to return his cruiser to war. McVeigh was a career naval officer from a prominent naval family. His father was an admiral, and McVeigh himself already had significant combat experience in the Pacific. Neither McVeigh nor his crew yet knew that the Indianapolis
had received the most important assignment in the ship's history. A wooden box was brought on board under heavy security. A cylindrical container was brought with it. The contents were so secret that almost no one on board was told what they were carrying. And Captain McVeigh received special instructions. If the ship is attacked, the mysterious cargo must receive extraordinary protection. And if the Indianapolis sank, the people guarding the cargo were allegedly ordered to save it before saving themselves. Inside were important components and uranium for the world's first combat atomic bomb. The bomb that will soon be dropped on Hiroshima. On July 16, 1945, the USS Indianapolis departed San Francisco. The order was simple: get to the Pacific
island of Tinian. And do it as quickly as possible. The cruiser crossed the route from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor in approximately 74 and a half hours, setting a speed record for that route. After a short stop, the ship continued westward. 10 days after leaving California, the Indianapolis arrived at Tinian. The secret cargo was unloaded. The mission was completed without incident. Four days later, the components of the atomic bomb delivered on the Indianapolis will be assembled into a weapon called "The Kid." And on August 6, 1945, this weapon would destroy Hiroshima. But the Indianapolis crew will. Because after
delivering the cargo, the cruiser was ordered to head to Guam and then to Leyte in the Philippines. There, the crew was to begin preparations for the invasion of Japan. On July 28, 1945, the Indianapolis departed for Guam. Leyte in the Philippines was more than 1,000 miles to the west. The journey was expected to take several days. Captain McVeigh was requesting information about the threat from Japanese submarines along his route. He had been informed of known submarine activity, but important data on recent attacks in the area did not give him a full picture of the danger ahead.
Just a few days earlier, the escort destroyer USS Underhill had been sunk by a Japanese submarine during an operation in the Philippine Sea. This information was not provided to McVeigh before he went to sea. Although the Indianapolis-class cruiser was heavily armed, it was not designed to hunt submarines. This duty fell to destroyers and escort ships specially equipped and trained for anti-submarine defense. So McVeigh was leading a large warship through potentially hostile waters without a protective screen that could help detect an enemy lurking beneath the surface. He had one defensive option-to zigzag. By constantly
changing course at irregular intervals, the ship could make it difficult for the submarine to calculate its attack trajectory. But the zigzag movement was not mandatory at any time. McVeigh's orders allowed him to abort the maneuver when visibility was poor. During July 29, visibility became very low. Eventually, McVeigh ordered the ship to stop zigzagging. The cruiser continued to move west at a speed of approximately 17 knots.
Most of the men who were not on guard were asleep. They had no idea that somewhere ahead of them in the darkness was another ship moving. Japanese submarine. I-58 was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto. Hashimoto was 35 years old and an experienced submarine officer. His boat was a large Japanese B3-type submarine, over 350 feet long, armed with six bow torpedo tubes. Shortly before midnight on July 29, an observer aboard I-58 noticed a large ship approaching. Hashimoto went on the attack. Through the darkness, he studied the target and began to calculate its course and speed. The American cruiser continued to move forward. No one on board the Indianapolis discovered the submarine. Hashimoto ordered I-58 to dive.
The submarine took up position. In the torpedo bay, Japanese sailors prepared six Type 95 torpedoes. Each of them carried hundreds of pounds of explosives and moved through the water at tremendous speed. Now Hashimoto had what every submarine commander aspired to. A large enemy warship, unaware of his presence, confidently crossed his line of fire. At approximately 00:02, Hashimoto gave the order. Six torpedoes were fired. They raced to the USS Indianapolis. The first hit the starboard side of the bow. The explosion was colossal. The bow of the ship caught fire. The blast wave tore off a significant part of the nose. A few seconds later, another
torpedo hit the cruiser amidships. This explosion was catastrophic. He knocked out the power supply. The fuel tanks ruptured, and water began to flood the ship. The people sleeping below deck woke up in complete darkness. Some never managed to escape. Others fought their way through flooded compartments and mangled steel, desperately searching for a ladder or hatch leading upwards. On deck, the sailors tried to understand what had happened. Then a clear order was given: " Abandon ship." Indianapolis moved forward with massive hull damage, causing water to fill the damaged compartments. He began to list heavily. The men rushed to their life jackets.
Life nets were thrown overboard. The crew tried to lower the lifeboats because the ship was sinking too quickly. Some boats could not be freed. There simply wasn't enough time. The sailors began to jump. Some fell from a height of dozens of feet into the sea. Others hesitated at the sides, looking out at the water, covered in burning fuel and debris. Then the deck beneath them began to disappear. Captain McVeigh abandoned ship. Around him, over a thousand men were desperately trying to escape. " Indianapolis" survived years of fighting in the Pacific. He survived the kamikaze attack. He delivered atomic bomb components halfway across the Pacific
Ocean. Now, about 12 minutes after the first torpedo hit, the cruiser capsized and disappeared underwater. Of the nearly 1,200 people on board, hundreds went down with the ship. Approximately 800 ended up in the water alive. They survived the shipwreck. Now they had to survive in the ocean. In the darkness, the sailors desperately searched for each other. Some found life rafts. Others climbed onto the nets or grabbed onto the debris. Many had only a life jacket to keep their heads above water. Some of the men were terribly burned. Others had fractures or cuts from fragments of steel or debris. Fuel from the ship coated their bodies, corroding their eyes and getting into their
mouths. The men were coughing and vomiting, trying to breathe. Those who could swim began to gather. They knew it was safer together. They also believed that their suffering would be short-lived. The Indianapolis was on its scheduled route to Leyte. The Navy knew when the ship was due to arrive. Of course, as soon as the ship loses contact, planes and ships will be sent to search for them For now, they just needed to survive. Then the sun rose. The darkness that had hidden the horror around them had disappeared. The survivors finally saw what was left of their ship.
Nothing. " Indianapolis" disappeared. The Philippine Sea stretched to the horizon. As the tropical sun rose higher, thirst became an immediate enemy. There was almost no fresh water. Some emergency supplies survived on the rafts, but they were not enough for hundreds of people. The sailors were surrounded by billions of gallons of undrinkable water. Officers and experienced sailors repeatedly warned others: " Do not drink seawater. " But thirst can cloud the mind. As desperation grew, some men started drinking it anyway. The salt water only accelerated their extinction. Your body needs extra water to flush out excess salt. Instead of quenching their thirst, the seawater only dehydrated
them further. Then hallucinations and delusions appeared. Men began to see things that were not really there. Some claimed to see islands in the distance. Others believed they saw ships coming to help. Some became convinced that the Indianapolis had not actually sunk. He was under them. They believed they could dive into the ship, enter the mess hall, and find food and fresh water. Some dived underwater in search of the ship. They never returned. Then another threat appeared. Initially, sharks were attracted to the bodies of the dead. There were hundreds of corpses in the water. The explosions and flooding left a huge trail of blood and body remains. The sharks began to feast.
Sailors saw dorsal fins cutting the surface of the water. They felt the creatures touching their feet. The men tried to hold together. Those on the edges of the groups were the most vulnerable. Whenever possible, they pushed the wounded into the center. Then the sharks began to attack the living. The sailors fought off the animals with their feet. They beat them with their hands. Some had knives with them and were stabbing everything they could reach underwater. Sometimes the sharks released their prey. Sometimes not. The exact number of men killed by sharks will never be known. Despite the legends that later arose around the disaster, sharks were just one of many killers in the water. People were exhausted physically and psychologically. Some
became paranoid. Others attacked the sailors around them. Men suffering from hallucinations accused their comrades of trying to harm them. In some groups, maintaining order has become almost impossible. The strongest of the survivors tried to keep everyone together. They prayed. They supported each other. And, most importantly, they tried to prevent the men from surrendering. A sailor, exhausted to the point of exhaustion, could simply stop rowing. His life jacket could have slipped off. And eventually, he disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Then another night came. Without the scorching sun, the temperature dropped. People who had spent the day roasting in the tropical heat were
now shivering in the water. Some life jackets were becoming heavier with water. Others were damaged during the flooding. The survivors listened to the men's screams in the darkness. Sometimes there would be a scream, and then silence. It's morning again. There are fewer men. Those who survived looked up at the sky. Nothing. Another day has passed, but still nothing. The men began to ask the obvious question. Where is the fleet? The disappearance of the Indianapolis should have been reported. Search planes should have been flying over them. But the men dying
in the Philippine Sea had no idea that something terrible had happened. No rescue operation was carried out. No fleet searched for them. In fact, several American naval stations were receiving signals that something might be happening on the Indianapolis' route. However, this information was never collected in time to save them. Now they were dying because of a failure that had nothing to do with the enemy. To understand how hundreds of American sailors could disappear for days without the US Navy even realizing what had happened, we have to leave people in the water and follow up on
reports that never brought anyone to their aid. While hundreds of men fought for their lives in the Philippine Sea, the US Navy continued to wage war. Thousands of sailors were performing their normal duties, and almost no one noticed that one of the fleet's main battleships was missing. The failure began aboard the Indianapolis itself. Within minutes of the torpedo attack, Captain McVeigh realized that his ship was in mortal danger. At approximately 12:08 a.m., he ordered a distress signal to be transmitted. The message was simple. They were hit by two torpedoes and were sinking quickly. They needed immediate help, but the explosions had destroyed the ship's electrical and communications systems. One radio room was
without power. Another tried to transmit an SOS signal using auxiliary power. The radio operators believed that the transmission was taking place. For years, rumors circulated that several American stations had actually received distress signals from the Indianapolis and ignored them. This became one of the most shameful parts of this story. But surviving Navy records do not support this. The terrible reality turned out to be simpler. The signals never arrived. So when the Indianapolis disappeared underwater, there was no distress call to alert the Navy to what had happened. But that still doesn't explain why no one noticed the ship disappearing.
The Navy knew that the Indianapolis was heading from Guam to Leyte. And the expected arrival date was July 31, 1945. That date passed, and the Indianapolis did not appear. However, the alarm was never declared. The reason lies in a bureaucratic system known as the Movement Reporting System. During the Pacific War, American warships were constantly rerouted. Orders changed, ships arrived late, and were redirected to new missions. And because the Japanese were actively trying to intercept American radio communications, the Navy deliberately limited the transmission of information about the movements of warships. According to existing procedures, port authorities were not required to report the arrival of warships. The system was created to
reduce unnecessary radio traffic and ensure operational safety. But it contained a catastrophic vulnerability. When Indianapolis failed to arrive at Leyte, personnel on site assumed that the cruiser had simply been redirected elsewhere. A state of emergency was not declared, the situation was even worse. The commander of the fleet at Leyte, which was supposed to meet the Indianapolis, did not even know that the cruiser was coming. The message about the ship's arrival was garbled during transmission. Instead of requesting a retransmission, the communications staff simply ignored it. So, one part of the Navy knew that the Indianapolis had left Guam. The rest were waiting for
him in Leyte, but those who might have realized something was wrong didn't have all the information. The system assumed that if something important happened, someone else would know about it. But no one knew. Meanwhile, the survivors remained in the water. People continued to die. Then, on the evening of July 31, a U.S. Air Force C-54 transport plane flew over the region on its way from Manila to Guam. At approximately 7:00 PM, the crew noticed signs of naval activity below. Lights, flares, and possibly tracer shots. The sightings were reported upon arrival in Guam, but the report went nowhere.
The assumption was simple. If the US fleet is operating in that area, the Navy should already know about it. Hundreds of people were calling for help. An American plane saw them, but no one came to their aid. By the morning of August 2, people had been in the water for over three days. Most were reaching the limits of human endurance. The rescue operation has not yet begun. Then, at 10:25 that morning, an People were to be found purely by chance. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., Second Lieutenant Wilbur Gwin was conducting a routine patrol flight in a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura. During the flight, Gwin went to the tail of the plane to check for a problem with the antenna. He happened to look down. Far below, a
large oil slick was spreading. At first, Gwin assumed he had found traces of a damaged Japanese submarine or ship. He leaned down to take a closer look. Then he saw something in the water. Heads. Dozens of goals. Gwin accidentally found survivors of the approximately 11:25 a.m., he transmitted an emergency message about approximately 30 people in the water. As he continued to circle, he realized the scale of what he had seen. There were many more than thirty people. They were scattered for miles around in the ocean. Gwin dropped the life raft, equipment, and called for immediate help. For the first time since the sinking of the US Navy cruiser, hundreds of people were known to be
dying in the Philippine Sea. Planes were sent. The ships were ordered to head to the scene. But there were still hours left before the survivors could be rescued. That same afternoon, a Lieutenant Adrian Marks was at the helm. What Marx saw beneath him was horrifying. People waved desperately towards his plane. Others seemed too weak to react at all. Marx and his crew began dumping everything they could. Life rafts, equipment and supplies. But from the air they also saw sharks among people. Now Marx was faced with a choice. The PBY Catalina could land on water, but the ocean below was not a safe harbor.
Landing in such conditions could damage or destroy the aircraft. He decided to take a chance. Marx landed the Catalina in the Philippine Sea. The impact damaged the plane, but Marx got his way. The Catalina now sailed among the survivors, and from that moment on became a rescue ship. Marx and his crew maneuvered through the wreckage, pulling the most seriously injured from the water. When there was no more room inside the plane they began placing people on the wings and securing them there. In the end, 56 people crammed inside the
Catalina or clung to its wings. It was impossible to take off again. Marx and his crew simply remained in the ocean with the rescued people, waiting for the Navy ships to arrive. The escort destroyer USS Cecil J. Doyle was the first to rush to them. Its commander, Lieutenant Commander W. Graham Claytor Jr., was heading toward the scene at maximum speed. With the onset of darkness, Claytor faced a new problem. Finding scattered people in the dark ocean was extremely difficult. Therefore, he made a decision that carried its own risks. He ordered the ship's searchlight to be pointed into the sky. The bright beam could reveal the destroyer's position to
any nearby Japanese submarine. But Claytor believed the risk was justified. The light became a beacon. For people who recently believed they had been forgotten, hope has finally appeared on the horizon. Ship. When Cecil J. Doyle arrived on scene, the crew began pulling survivors from the water. They also took on board people rescued by Marx and his crew. Other American ships soon arrived in the area. The planes remained in the air, directing ships to groups of survivors. The rescue operation lasted all night and the next day. Captain McVeigh was still alive. He spent this time with a small group of people on a raft. Currents and wind scattered the survivors into separate groups across miles of open ocean. This left McVeigh isolated from
larger crowds. For all McVeigh knew, they might have been the only survivors. On August 3, rescuers finally reached his group. All 10 men on McVeigh's raft survived. The Navy continued to search the vast area of wreckage. But the final numbers were horrific. There were 1,196 people on board the USS Indianapolis. died. The survivors were finally safe. For many of them, the nightmare is over. But for Captain McVeigh, it was just beginning. Because the US Navy now had to answer an uncomfortable question.
How did nearly 1,200 American sailors disappear and no one noticed? And instead of blaming the system that lost the Indianapolis, the Navy turned its attention to the man who commanded it. The survivors of the Indianapolis returned home to a country celebrating victory. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. The Second World War is over. But for the fleet, the loss of the Indianapolis became a problem. McVeigh survived the disaster, but now he was accused of his own decisions leading to the ship's demise. In November 1945, the Navy ordered McVeigh to stand trial before a military tribunal. He was charged with two counts. The first accused McVeigh of failing to give the order to abandon ship in time. The second accused him of
negligently exposing the Indianapolis to danger by abandoning a zigzag course. The first accusation was difficult to prove. The cruiser suffered catastrophic damage and sank in about 12 minutes. McVeigh ordered the ship abandoned as soon as it became clear that it could not be saved. He was acquitted on this count. The second accusation was different. McVeigh stopped his zigzag movement before the attack. This was true, but orders allowed McVeigh to stop zigzagging when visibility was poor. And on the night of the flooding, visibility was poor. There was another problem with the fleet. The man who actually sank the Indianapolis didn't believe that zigzagging would have saved him.
His name was Motitsura Hashimoto, the commander of a Japanese submarine. The war was over, and Hashimoto was now in Allied custody. In an extraordinary move, the US Navy brought a former enemy officer to Washington to testify against an American captain. Imagine this scene. Captain McVeigh sits in a U.S. Navy courtroom. Opposite him is the commander of the Japanese submarine, who fired the torpedoes that destroyed his ship. zigzagging would change anything. His response undermines the Hashimoto explains that he has already taken a great shooting position. Indianapolis was right around the corner. The geometry of the attack was in his favor.
Even if McVeigh had zigzagged, Hashimoto believed he could still successfully attack the cruiser. The accusation took the man who sank the ship halfway around the world. And even he didn't blame McVeigh. There was also a question about the submarine intelligence McVeigh received before leaving Guam. McVeigh asked about enemy submarine activity along his route, but he did n't know everything. Just a few days earlier, a Japanese submarine had sunk the escort destroyer Underhill in the same region. This information was not provided to McVeigh. He was also not informed that American intelligence had information about Japanese submarines on or near his route. McVeigh was accused of failing to avoid a
threat, the full extent of which he was never informed of. Then there was the question of escort. " Indianapolis" was going alone. McVeigh was not provided with an escort destroyer equipped for anti-submarine defense. But none of the officers responsible for plotting the cruiser's route, tracking its movements, or noticing its failure to arrive were tried with it. On December 19, 1945, the court issued its decision. McVeigh was found guilty of negligently endangering the ship by failing to zigzag. The sentence included the loss of seniority in the temporary rank. But even the Navy felt discomfort over this verdict. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz believed that McVeigh should not have been convicted. In early 1946, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal commuted
the sentence and returned McVeigh to active duty. McVeigh continued to serve. Eventually, upon his retirement in 1949, he was awarded the rank of rear admiral. Officially, his naval career continued, but his criminal record remained. Over the following years, letters arrived at his address Some of them were from the families of the fallen sailors. They blamed him. One parent who lost his son wrote that Christmas would have been a more joyful event if McVeigh were dead. Others accused him of killing their sons. McVeigh kept many of these letters. And despite the Navy's own failures, Hashimoto's testimony, and the fact that McVeigh's conviction had already been overturned, Charles McVeigh remained the only captain in US Navy history to be tried
for the loss of his ship in combat. He lived with this burden for over 20 years. Then, on November 6, 1968, McVeigh stepped onto the porch of his Connecticut home with a revolver. At the age of 70, he took his own life. The captain of the Indianapolis was dead. But the dispute about his responsibility for the disaster-no. Captain McVeigh died convinced that the stain of shame of the USS Indianapolis would forever remain on his name. But the men who served under his command did not stop fighting for their captain. For decades, survivors have argued that McVeigh was made a scapegoat. They knew that the miscalculations associated with the death of the Indianapolis went far beyond a single decision made by one captain one night. Then,
more than 50 years after the flood, history found an unexpected defender. An 11-year-old boy named Hunter Scott. Scott first became interested in Indianapolis after watching a famous scene in the movie Jaws, where the character Quint describes his survival in that disaster. Scott began to investigate what really happened. He contacted the survivors and interviewed them. What started as a school project later turned into something much more. Scott joined survivors and their supporters in efforts to clear McVeigh's name. And they had another extraordinary ally -Mochitsura Hashimoto. Hashimoto testified back in 1945 that a zigzag course would not have prevented him from attacking McVeigh's ship. More than half a century later, he said it again. In
1999, Hashimoto wrote to the U.S. Senate supporting McVeigh's acquittal. The man who actually fired the torpedoes believed that the American captain was unfairly blamed for failing to avoid them. Years earlier, Hashimoto had also met with survivors of the Indianapolis. By then they were no longer enemies fighting in the Pacific. They were elderly men who were honoring the memory of the dead. Hashimoto expressed his sorrow for the sailors who lost their lives and, together with the survivors, honored their memory. There was another cruel irony that bound them together. Indianapolis carried out a secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components to Tinian. A few days later, Hashimoto sank the ship. And upon returning to Japan after the war,
Hashimoto learned that members of his own family had died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The war took something from each of them. In October 2000, Congress passed a resolution requiring Captain Charles McVeigh's military record to indicate that he was acquitted in the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The following year, the Navy added this wording to official documents. McVeigh had been dead for over 30 years at that time. He did not live to see his name cleared. Just like Shiro Hashimoto, he did not live to see justice finally restored. He died in Japan in October 2000, just days before the Congressional resolution became law. More than half a century after the Indianapolis disappeared in the waters of the Philippine Sea, the conviction against its
captain has finally been overturned. But no act of Congress could change what happened in the water. There were 1,196 people on board the USS Indianapolis. Approximately 800 people survived the flooding. The other day they drifted under the Pacific sun. When help finally arrived only 316 men remained alive. The USS Indianapolis is remembered for the atomic bomb. She is remembered for her sharks. And she is remembered for the controversy surrounding Captain McVeigh. But perhaps the most impressive part of this story is much simpler. Hundreds of American sailors survived the destruction of their ship. They endured injury, thirst, madness, and predators in the open ocean. And for over 3 days they waited for rescue, which was never sent.
Not because the navy couldn't find them, but because the navy didn't know they were missing. More than 70 years after the Indianapolis disappeared in the Philippine Sea, its final resting place has been found. In August 2017, an expedition led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered debris nearly 18,000 feet below the surface. The ship was found mostly intact in the cold darkness of the ocean depths. With the bow separated from the main hull and debris scattered across the seabed. This discovery brought some relief regarding one of the worst maritime disasters in American history. Today, the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis remains intact on the ocean floor. A military burial-a memorial to the hundreds of sailors and marines who never
returned home. Share your thoughts on the USS Indianapolis in the comments below. Thank you for watching "Forgotten History." Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or ideas for new releases, we would love to hear them. Thank you again.
