The Secret Cargo, the Doomed Voyage: 1,196 Men, Only a Few Hundred Survived
Built in 1931, the heavy cruiser Indianapolis was one of the U.S. Navy’s most formidable warships. On a summer night in 1945, it carried a top‑secret cargo so sensitive that even its captain did not know what it was or where it would go, learning its destination only as the voyage began — to deliver the bomb’s core components to the island of Tinian for the war’s most infamous weapon, the Fat Man bomb. The mission then took a turn: the ship was ordered to Guam, and then to Leyte. The plan required a precise track to avoid enemy submarines. But Captain Charles Butler McVay chose to improvise, hoping luck would hold, because there was no information about submarine activity in the area — though a submarine lay in wait.
In This Article:
A Captain’s Gamble and the Torpedo That Doomed the Ship
Around 11:00 p.m. on July 29, 1945, the Japanese submarine I-58 fired a torpedo from four miles away. In a little over a minute, a powerful blast ripped into the Indianapolis, destroying the engine room and crippling the ship. With the power and radio knocked out, the crew could not send a proper distress signal. Some SOS messages were picked up by other American stations, but they were ignored or misinterpreted as enemy deception. Captain McVay gave the order to abandon ship; twelve minutes after the torpedo hit, the Indianapolis slipped beneath the waves, taking roughly three hundred sailors with it.
Three Days Adrift: The Sea, the Sun, and the Sharks
Survivors were scattered across an ocean spanning more than 250 square kilometers. Only some men wore life jackets, and a few managed to cling to rafts or debris. During the first night, many died from dehydration, exposure, or delirium after swallowing fuel-contaminated water. The next day brought blistering sun and a new, closer threat: hungry sharks circling the drifting sailors. In one group of about 80 men, by morning only 17 were still alive.
Rescue, Ruin, and the Wreck Found After 72 Years
The distress signal went largely unheard as the ship sank, leaving the crew to fend for themselves. On August 2, a US Navy PV-1 Ventura patrol plane spotted the survivors, and a hydroplane and rescue ships were dispatched to the area. In the end, 321 sailors were rescued alive; five died aboard the rescue vessels, and 883 died from dehydration, wounds, exposure, or even shark attacks. The Indianapolis rested at the bottom of the Philippine Sea until August 2017, when it was found on the sea floor—72 years after its tragedy.
