Further reading for The USS Indianapolis
War is hell, man. And the war at sea is a particularly nightmarish scene since you’re only safe for as long as your ship stays afloat. Once that becomes an uncertainty, your lifespan takes a sharp turn from years to minutes. Though we’re apex predators on land, once we enter water deep enough to swim in, we slide straight to the bottom of the food chain in the face of predators far better suited for the environment and no wartime horror story illustrated this better than the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
The Indianapolis was a state-of-the-art heavy cruiser deployed in 1939 which saw heavy use in the Pacific during World War 2 as the US Navy pushed toward the shores of Japan. The Japanese Navy exhausted most of its resources against the United States in these final days of the war and, facing certain defeat, resorted to suicide attacks from the sky with kamikaze pilots to make the advance deadly and costly. One after another, these pilots would slam their planes, often launched with the specific mission to crash and die on the decks of American warships. Sometimes these planes were outfitted with armaments specifically chosen to cause the most damage on the impact, with little consideration given to what might be needed were the pilot to encounter resistance.
Though, a significant number of these kamikaze attacks amounted to nothing more than a waste of human life, the USS Indianapolis is an unfortunate success story for the Japanese strategy of throwing bodies at a problem. The Indianapolis came under attack just after midnight in the middle of a secret mission on July 30th, 1945. It was struck twice by torpedoes and was fully submerged in 12 minutes. Of the nearly 1200 crewmembers on board, a full quarter of them died in the impact and sinking, alone. Of the remaining 800 men that went into the water, 316 would come out alive when they were finally rescued four days later. In those four days, the sailors fell victim to repeat attacks from sharks and many turned on one another in their desperation to stay alive.
Episode: 461
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