Paul Allen finds lost WWII ship USS Indianapolis

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For those that don't know the history of this ship, It was a top secret mission for the first Bomb dropped on Japan. When it sank, nobody knew, so rescue was hindered.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...i-ship-uss-indianapolis/ar-AAql9Fy?li=BBnb7Kz

Paul Allen finds lost WWII ship USS Indianapolis
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USA TODAY
Leigh Hedger 5 hrs ago

© Provided by Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives At the Mare Island Navy Yard after her final overhaul, July 12, 1945. Circles on photo mark recent alterations to the ship. Note stripped Cleveland class light cruiser in the right…

"We've located the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis in Philippine Sea at 5500m below the sea."


That tweet from entrepreneur and billionaire Paul Allen around 12:20 p.m. Saturday confirmed what many have been searching for since the ship was sunk on July 30, 1945.

Allen, who is leading a 13-person team on his 250-foot research ship, the R/V Petrel, said the wreckage was found at a depth of more than 18,000 feet.

The heavy cruiser, carrying 1,197 sailors and Marines, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine while sailing back to the Philippines after delivering components for "Little Boy," the atomic bomb that helped end World War II. It took only 12 minutes to sink.

While 900 crewmen made it through the initial sinking, only 316 survived to be rescued when help arrived five days later on Aug. 2. Many had died of exposure or thirst, drowned or were attacked by sharks.

Families of those aboard the ship found out about the deaths of their loved ones just as the rest of the country was celebrating the conclusion of World War II.

The latest break in the search for the wreckage came in July 2016, when the Naval History and Heritage Command Communication and Outreach Division reported that a sailor had confirmed that a tank landing ship, LST-779, had passed the Indianapolis 11 hours before the torpedo struck. That backed up the testimony of Captain Charles McVay III and was confirmed by deck logs.

That finding narrowed the search — to a 600 square miles of open ocean

“To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role in ending World War II is truly humbling,” Allen said in a statement. “As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the crew for their courage, persistence and sacrifice in the face of horrendous circumstances. While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming.”

Allen’s team is still surveying the site of the wreckage and plans to conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. The crew is working with the Navy and plans to honor the remaining 22 USS Indianapolis crew members and families of crew members.

"Even in the worst defeats and disasters there is valor and sacrifice that deserves to never be forgotten," said Sam Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, in a statement. "They can serve as inspiration to current and future Sailors enduring situations of mortal peril. There are also lessons learned, and in the case of the Indianapolis, lessons re-learned, that need to be preserved and passed on, so the same mistakes can be prevented, and lives saved."

In March 2015, an Allen expedition team discovered the remains of the Japanese battleship Musashi, and this past March his team found the Artigliere, a World War II destroyer.

 

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/‘w...ays-in-shark-filled-sea/ar-AAqpgKe?li=BBnbcA1

‘We knew the ship was doomed’: USS Indianapolis survivor recalls four days in shark-filled sea
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The Washington Post
Kristine Phillips 5 hrs ago




Video by Reuters


It was a sweltering July night, about 110 degrees, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The USS Indianapolis had just completed a top-secret mission to deliver the contents of an atomic bomb to Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands. That bomb, called “Little Boy,” would later be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

That night, the ship was headed west to the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, where she was to join the USS Idaho to prepare to invade Japan. The crew had been traveling 32 knots and had slowed down to 17, Cpl. Edgar Harrell heard his captain say on the speaker. It was about midnight, the end of Harrell’s watch duty. The 20-year-old Marine from Kentucky went below deck, grabbed his blanket and dozed off.

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What he and the others on the ship did not know was that they were being watched. Down below, the Japanese submarine I-58 was about to fire six torpedoes.

Two struck the ship. The first one hit just a few minutes after Harrell fell asleep. The second hit the middle of the ship, near the fuel tank and a powder magazine, Harrell said.

He could hear and feel water flooding below deck. It was mostly dark. The explosion knocked the power out, and the only source of light was the fire. He had no idea what was going on, so he made his way to his commanding officer to get his orders.

“The first 100 yards of the ship was under,” Harrell said. “We knew the ship was doomed. … We knew that our ship was going to leave us, and it’s going to take us with us unless we get off.”

Then he heard his captain’s voice, echoing from a short distance: “Abandon ship! Abandon ship! Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

Harrell made his way to the high side of the ship, grabbed hold of a steel cable, and “looked out into eternity.”

The 610-foot World War II cruiser was divided in pieces. It sank in just 15 minutes, leaving a layer of black oil floating on the surface.

About 800 of the nearly 1,200 crew members made it off the ship before it sank July 30, 1945. The Navy did not know what had happened, so help did not come. For four days, the men, some of whom had life jackets while others did not, floated aimlessly and helplessly in shark-infested waters. Many died of dehydration, starvation and shark attacks. Only 317 were alive by the time a pilot on patrol spotted them by accident.

Harrell, who turns 93 in October, is one of a handful who lived long enough to hear that a team of researchers led by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen had found the Indianapolis wreckage, almost 3½ miles below the surface of the Philippine Sea. The discovery was announced Saturday, 72 years after the ship sank.

© Paul G. Allen/EPA An image shot from a remotely operated underwater vehicle shows a feed bell from the USS Indianapolis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in more than 16,000 feet of water.
“It brings closure to the story,” Harrell said. “But the experience that we survived, the trauma that we felt, that still exists.”

Harrell, who had written a book about his harrowing tale of survival, has been traveling the country retelling his story, often with vividly descriptive details.

“I can still see and feel … the trauma of swimming those 4½ days,” he said. “I can still remember today as if it were just yesterday.”

Harrell said he was among about 80 crew members who were near each other after the ship went under. The rest were scattered elsewhere. He remembers seeing several shark fins surround them. He has not forgotten what it was like to see a fellow crew member one day, and to find that same person’s body another day, bobbing in the water, nearly unrecognizable.

Thirsty, dehydrated and desperate, some in that group drank salt water. Many hallucinated and drifted off. Sometimes, out of nowhere, Harrell would hear bloodcurdling screams.

“You look, the kapok [life] jacket goes under,” Harrell said.

A bloodied body, or what’s left of it, surfaced later.

That happened over and over.

The life jackets didn’t have enough buoyancy to keep the men afloat, Harrell said, so they had to keep swimming.

By the third day, when only 17 from Harrell’s group were left, they spotted a small raft. He and a few others decided to use it to try to swim close enough to the Philippines, where they hoped someone would see them. Later that afternoon, Harrell spotted a crate. He swam to it, hoping it had some water and food. He was so dehydrated that his tongue had swollen. Inside the crate were rotten potatoes. He grabbed some, peeling off the rotten parts with his hands and teeth. It was the only food he and the others had.

About 11 a.m. on the fourth day, Lt. Wilbur Gwinn was flying his bomber aircraft on routine patrol when he looked down and spotted something. He dropped closer to investigate and saw men aimlessly floating in the water. He couldn’t land, so he called for assistance. “Many men in the water,” he radioed to his base.

Another pilot, Lt. Adrian Marks, was dispatched to help. On the way, he flew over the destroyer USS Cecil Doyle and alerted the ship’s captain of the rescue mission. The captain shifted course and headed toward where the crew members were found.

Marks arrived hours ahead of the Cecil Doyle and rescued 56 men. Harrell said he was one of them. It was dark by the time the Cecil Doyle arrived to pull the rest of the men out of the water.

“Most everyone was pretty much in my condition. You couldn’t stand up. Even difficult to sit up. You were exhausted, probably lost 20 to 25 pounds,” Harrell said.

He was flown to a hospital in Guam. He was still there when the “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. He made it back to the United States that October, but a perforated appendix kept him hospitalized for several more weeks in San Diego. Doctors gave Harrell 11.8 million units of penicillin, he said.

“I became a pin cushion. They didn’t think it was going to work. But I survived that,” he said.

By Jan. 6, 1946, he was sent to a Marine base in Chicago, where he was discharged from duty.

For years, the crew members did not know who was responsible for the sinking of the Indianapolis and the loss of countless lives. But the blame was placed on the crew’s beloved captain, Charles Butler McVay III, who was also among the survivors. McVay was court-martialed after the war and convicted of failing to steer the ship to avoid the torpedoes. Navy Secretary James Forrestal lifted McVay’s sentence in 1946, citing his bravery, but the conviction remained in his record. He retired three years later.

“It’s not justifiable to put the blame on Capt. McVay,” Harrell said. “They just broke him in more ways than one.”

Harrell said he saw McVay at the survivors’ first reunion in 1960 in Indianapolis, the city for which the warship was named. He had written his captain a letter, inviting him to join. The local paper took a picture of him and McVay shaking hands at the reunion. Harrell still has that picture and the letter from McVay when he wrote back.

But eight years later, in 1968, McVay shot himself with his service weapon, not living long enough to see evidence of his innocence become public.

By the early 1990s, previously classified information revealed that U.S. intelligence was aware that two Japanese submarines, including the one that fired the torpedoes, were in the path of the Indianapolis. McVay and his crew were sent out into the ocean without being informed that danger was ahead.

Years later, under pressure from survivors to clear his name, McVay was posthumously exonerated by Congress and President Bill Clinton.

“Just to have him exonerated meant something, but it didn’t do him any good,” Harrell said. “It certainly did us good.”

Harrell does not know how he managed to stay alive. For years, he couldn’t talk about it, until his son convinced him to write a book. It’s called “Out of the Depths.”

Nineteen survivors, including Harrell, are alive today. They still get together every year.