Civilian researchers say they have located the wreck of the USS Indianapolis. The World War II cruiser played a role in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima before being struck by Japanese torpedoes.
The sinking of the Indianapolis remains the Navy’s single worst loss at sea. The fate of its crew was one of the Pacific war’s more horrible tales. Nearly 900 were killed—many by sharks—and just 316 survived.
The crew of Research Vessel Petrel says it located the wreckage of the Indianapolis on the floor of the North Pacific Ocean. It lay more than 18,000 feet below the surface, the U.S. Navy says.
The Indianapolis had a role in ending World War II. Its task was delivering key components of what would become an atomic bomb to the island of Tinian. That was the take-off point for the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. After delivering those components, the Indianapolis, with 1,196 crew on board, was sailing the Philippine Sea when two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine struck it. It sank in just 12 minutes. Survivors were left in the water, most of them with only life jackets.
There was no time to send a distress signal. Four days passed before a bomber on routine patrol spotted survivors in the water. Only one-fourth of the ship’s original number were rescued. The others died from a combination of exposure, dehydration, drowning, and shark attacks.
The Navy said the 13-person expedition team on the Petrel surveyed an area of 600 square miles in search of the wreckage. The wreck will be treated as a military grave. Under law, it is not to be disturbed, so that the lives lost are honored and sancitifed. The ship’s exact location remains both confidential and restricted, the Navy said.
(Photo courtesy of Paul G. Allen, via AP: A labeled spare parts box from the USS Indianapolis lies on the floor of the Pacific Ocean at the undisclosed site of the ship’s wreckage.)
