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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "GRIPPING...THIS YARN HAS IT ALL." -- USA Today * "A WONDERFUL BOOK." -- Christian Science Monitor * "ENTHRALLING." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * "A MUST-READ." -- Booklist (starred review)
A human drama unlike any other--the riveting and definitive full story of the worst sea disaster in United States naval history.
Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, days after delivering the components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands in the most highly classified naval mission of the war, USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she is struck by two Japanese torpedoes. The ship is instantly transformed into a fiery cauldron and sinks within minutes. Some 300 men go down with the ship. Nearly 900 make it into the water alive. For the next five nights and four days, almost three hundred miles from the nearest land, the men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 will survive.
For the better part of a century, the story of USS Indianapolis has been understood as a sinking tale. The reality, however, is far more complicated--and compelling. Now, for the first time, thanks to a decade of original research and interviews with 107 survivors and eyewitnesses, Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic tell the complete story of the ship, her crew, and their final mission to save one of their own.
It begins in 1932, when Indianapolis is christened and launched as the ship of state for President Franklin Roosevelt. After Pearl Harbor, Indianapolis leads the charge to the Pacific Islands, notching an unbroken string of victories in an uncharted theater of war. Then, under orders from President Harry Truman, the ship takes aboard a superspy and embarks on her final world-changing mission: delivering the core of the atomic bomb to the Pacific for the strike on Hiroshima. Vincent and Vladic provide a visceral, moment-by-moment account of the disaster that unfolds days later after the Japanese torpedo attack, from the chaos on board the sinking ship to the first moments of shock as the crew plunge into the remote waters of the Philippine Sea, to the long days and nights during which terror and hunger morph into delusion and desperation, and the men must band together to survive.
Then, for the first time, the authors go beyond the men's rescue to chronicle Indianapolis 's extraordinary final mission: the survivors' fifty-year fight for justice on behalf of their skipper, Captain Charles McVay III, who is wrongly court-martialed for the sinking. What follows is a captivating courtroom drama that weaves through generations of American presidents, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, and forever entwines the lives of three captains--McVay, whose life and career are never the same after the scandal; Mochitsura Hashimoto, the Japanese sub commander who sinks Indianapolis but later joins the battle to exonerate McVay; and William Toti, the captain of the modern-day submarine Indianapolis , who helps the survivors fight to vindicate their captain.
A sweeping saga of survival, sacrifice, justice, and love, Indianapolis stands as both groundbreaking naval history and spellbinding narrative--and brings the ship and her heroic crew back to full, vivid, unforgettable life. It is the definitive account of one of the most remarkable episodes in American history.
Author Notes
Lynn Vincent, a US Navy veteran, is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and coauthor of eleven nonfiction books with more than sixteen million copies in print, including Indianapolis , Same of Kind of Different as Me (with Ron Hall and Denver Moore) and Heaven Is for Real (with Todd Burpo). A veteran journalist and author of more than 1,000 articles, her investigative pieces have been cited before Congress and the US Supreme Court. She lives in the mountains east of San Diego with her husband and their three Labrador retrievers.
Sara Vladic, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, is one of the world's leading experts on the USS Indianapolis , having become obsessed with the story at the age of thirteen. Over the next two decades, Vladic met and interviewed 108 of the ship's survivors, and in 2016 she released an award-winning documentary film on the disaster, USS Indianapolis: The Legacy. She has published new research on Indianapolis in Proceedings , the official journal of the US Navy, and appeared as an expert commentator on PBS's USS Indianapolis: Live from the Deep , which explored the ship's wreckage. She and her husband, Ben, live in San Marcos, California.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestselling author and Navy veteran Vincent (Same Kind of Different as Me) and filmmaker and Indianapolis expert Vladic collaborate on a work that is simultaneously a gripping narrative, a convincing analysis, and a pitiless exposure of institutional mendacity. In 1945 the Indianapolis, alone, was torpedoed by one of the few Japanese submarines still operational and sank. Almost 900 men survived, but the ship had slipped off the Navy's tracking system, and it took four days before they were spotted, too late for more than 600 men who died from thirst and exposure or were eaten by sharks. Vincent and Vladic juxtapose the crew's harrowing ordeal with the Navy's desperate efforts to discover what had gone wrong and cover it up. The designated culprit was the ship's captain: court-martialed on skimpy evidence, found guilty of endangering the vessel, and eventually driven to suicide. A subsequent investigation led to his exoneration, but the systemic oversights and misjudgments that enabled this tragedy remained obscure until this investigation, which drew upon new sources clarifying how the file was amended. This exposé will be valuable for scholars and general readers alike. Agent: Rick Christian, Alive Communications. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, commanded by Captain Charles McVay III, was sunk by a Japanese submarine. Most of the ship's 1,195 crew members survived the initial attack, but many would perish during the four days it took the U.S. Navy to rescue survivors. Most of this work by Vincent (coauthor, Same of Kind of Different as Me) and filmmaker and historian Vladic covers events leading up to and including the attack. Later chapters deal with the immediate investigations, Congressional hearings, and the exoneration of McVay, who was originally court-martialed. In many ways this work is similar to Dan Kurzman's Fatal Voyage, but it provides updated information on hearings that occurred after Kurzman's publication. While mostly a balanced account, attending to both the American and Japanese sides of the story, with particular focus on Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, the narrative tends to get caught up in minutiae and unnecessary anecdotes and sensationalism, offering a decent update to Kurzman's work. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in the final days of World War II, particularly naval activity in the Pacific theater, and anyone curious about McVay and his vessel.-Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Indianapolis PROLOGUE THE SHIP SHE WAS BORN FROM soil as American as the men who sailed her. Ore mined near the Great Lakes and in the Tennessee Valley. Transported by barge and train to steel mills in Detroit and Pittsburgh. Machined and welded and hammered together in Camden, New Jersey, by tradesmen from across the forty-eight states. From her keel--forged red-hot and laid in 1930--she rose amid clang and clamor and showering sparks, unfolding bow to stern in 147 bands of high-strength steel, her superstructure climbing toward the sun until, in 1932, she parted water for the first time and was christened USS Indianapolis. Indy was grand but svelte. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made her his ship of state and invited world leaders and royalty to dance under the stars on her polished teak decks. When war came, many of the sailors she carried into battle were still teenagers. They slept in bunks three high, went to chapel on Sunday mornings, and shot dice on the fantail on Sunday afternoons. They danced to Glenn Miller and sang along with the Andrews Sisters. They referred to Indy as their first love and the Queen. At least one of their wives called her "the other woman." Indianapolis was the flagship of the World War II Pacific fleet--the largest naval fleet in the history of the modern world. Along her centerline she carried three 250-ton turrets, each hefting three eight-inch guns that could reach out eighteen miles to rake beaches, destroy pillboxes, and punch through the armor of enemy ships. Her hull bristled with two dozen 40 mm Bofors guns, some radar-aimed for lethal precision, along with thirty-two machine guns that could cloak a mile-wide circle around her in a hail of 20 mm rounds. From her decks, Fifth Fleet commander Admiral Raymond Spruance would build an island bridge that stretched west from Pearl Harbor to Japan and was mortared in the blood of nations. By the summer of 1945, the Pacific war was churning toward its fiery climax. A new weapon had been born, a "destroyer of worlds." During the last week of July, under the command of Captain Charles B. McVay III, Indianapolis delivered the core of this weapon to its launch point, completing the most highly classified naval mission of the war. Four days later, just after midnight, a Japanese submarine spotted Indy and struck her with two torpedoes. Three hundred men went down with the ship. As Indy sank into the yawning underwater canyons of the Philippine Sea, nearly nine hundred men made it into the water alive. Only 316 survived. The sinking of Indianapolis was the greatest sea disaster in the history of the American Navy. It was also a national scandal that would bridge two centuries. There would be a controversial court-martial. An enemy witness. Lies and machinations by men of high rank. Broken lives. Suicides. Decade after decade, the survivors would fight for their captain, battling to correct a vulgar injustice. As Indy's story rolled forward, spanning thirteen presidents, from FDR to George W. Bush, it would inspire a filmmaker named Spielberg, an eleven-year-old boy named Hunter Scott, a maverick lawmaker named Bob Smith, and Captain William Toti, skipper of her namesake submarine. Men fought over her for decades, and no victor emerged for fifty years. Indianapolis is a war grave now. But don't think of her that way. Roll the film backward. Watch her rise. Excerpted from Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U. S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man by Lynn Vincent, Sara Vladic All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Prologue: The Ship | p. 1 |
| Book 1 The Kamikaze | p. 3 |
| Book 2 The Mission | p. 87 |
| Book 3 The Deep | p. 183 |
| Book 4 Trial and Scandal | p. 295 |
| Book 5 An Innocent Man | p. 395 |
| Final Log Entry: August 19, 2017 | p. 441 |
| Final Sailing List | p. 449 |
| Appendix A Rescue Ships | p. 465 |
| Appendix B Journey with Indianapolis | p. 467 |
| Methodology | p. 471 |
| Notes | p. 475 |
| Bibliography | p. 519 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 541 |
| Index | p. 553 |