Read In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors Online

Authors: Doug Stanton

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (8 page)

As he stood on the bridge, his feet spread wide as the ship rolled beneath him, Captain McVay’s sole concern was to stay the course. He would deliver his crew and ship safely to Leyte, report to Admiral McCormick for gunnery practice, and then get back into the war with Admiral Oldendorf.
McVay lived in a world of absolutes. At the end of the day, at the end of the voyage, and at the end of the war, it
was all about life or death. Ships were sinking constantly in battle, and the possibility haunted McVay. One well-known disaster involved the torpedoing of the escort carrier
Liscombe Bay
by the Japanese in 1943. The ship sank in twenty minutes, and the attack had killed 644 men. The carriers
Yorktown
and
Wasp
had been torpedoed in June and September 1942, respectively, and were total losses. These were the kinds of stories a captain did not enjoy thinking about.
McVay had spent most of the day in the cramped space suspended high above the ship, monitoring the navigation and communications equipment. Per orders, he followed a strict zigzag course. In the “sky aft” and “sky forward” watch towers, boys were posted on the lookout for any sign of enemy planes or submarines. Nothing was in sight.
Shortly before the
Indy
’s departure from Guam, news of her passage down the Peddie route once again had been transmitted to interested parties, notifying them of her expected arrival in Leyte. It was a repetition of the process that had taken place on July 26 when she left Tinian. This time, however, Rear Admiral McCormick, whom McVay was to meet in Leyte for gunnery practice,
did
receive and correctly decode the message alerting him to the
Indy
’s arrival.
But since McCormick hadn’t received the first message, sent two days earlier, he was confused. In the first place, he was uncertain as to why the
Indianapolis
was reporting to him. Further, because she was the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, he assumed she would be diverted north to replace another cruiser, the USS
Portland
, that had recently been taken out of service. McCormick doubted the
Indy
would ever make landfall at Leyte. Her arrival, from his point of view, was a nonissue.
Elsewhere, there were problems with the second message. Admiral Oldendorf, aboard the
Omaha
, did not receive it. The message made it as far as a dispatch station on Okinawa and then disappeared. Oldendorf had received the first
bulletin concerning the
Indy
’s itinerary, but that bulletin had not included the date of her anticipated arrival. Oldendorf knew that Captain McVay would be reporting to him, but he didn’t know
when
to expect him.
The effect of this double error in communication was simple: the two people to whom McVay was to report did not possess enough information to determine if he was late. As he sailed to Leyte, Captain McVay was, essentially, a man headed nowhere.
 
 
The voyage was going well and the spirits of the crew were high as lines and matériel were made shipshape and remaining provisions were stored. Coxswain Mike Kuryla liked watching the crew chiefs as they stood on the fantail in the morning, drinking coffee from their huge bowls, thumbs tucked inside the rim. Life at sea seemed lively, delightful even. Down in one of the mess halls, McCoy listened to records played by the ship’s onboard disc jockey, a boy from Chicago whose mother always sent him the newest records from the States. Playing lately was Benny Goodman’s “Let’s Dance.” Sometimes, McCoy listened as Tokyo Rose butted in over the mess hall’s speakers, her mysterious voice spooking him all the way from Japan, saying, “We know you’re out there, sailor boy. We know where you are. Don’t you wish you could go home?”
On Sunday morning, July 29, the crew labored through church services in the open air of the main deck, squinting in the glare. The bitter equatorial sun soared straight up from the sea each dawn and dove into the western horizon promptly at six. The neighborly feeling among the boys was strong: first to attend were the Catholics, who then relieved the Protestants from work details so they could attend their
service. Father Conway’s gentle voice led the Catholic services, and his trusted friend Dr. Haynes directed the Protestant members through old hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Amazing Grace.” McCoy attended the Catholic mass and then spent part of the day chipping old paint from the ship’s ladders.
Following church services, the Sunday morning ban on smoking was lifted, and men dispersed to their various divisions to perform deck duties. After a chicken dinner—the best meal of the week, complete with strawberry shortcake—some gathered on the quarterdeck and threw around a medicine ball for exercise. Others jumped rope or sparred at boxing, refereed by Father Conway. Some sat around the quarterdeck splicing decorative lengths of rope as souvenirs, while a few of the boys learned how to crochet pillowcases.
At some point during the early evening, after a brilliant sunset, they passed over the deepest spot in the earth, a place called the Challenger Deep. Mount Everest could be set here with a mile of water still remaining atop it. They were some 300 miles from the nearest landfall, and a gray scrim of clouds draped the horizon. To navigate, the ship’s crew was using a series of position fixes made by an ancient method called dead reckoning. This involved tracking a course by multiplying the time spent traveling by speed. Essentially, it was a way of getting where you needed to go by knowing where you had been. Astro-fixes were made by shooting Venus, Saturn, and Mars, which were visible just before sunrise, with a sextant and finding the set of corresponding codes in a book kept on the navigator’s bridge. In many ways, the dark night the
Indy
was traveling through could have been any night in the nineteenth century. The
Indy
’s surface radar, nicknamed “Sugar George,” was only good for twelve- to fourteen-mile distances, and her air radar, called “Sky Search,” was generally undependable. Sometimes it could pick out a bogey (an unidentified aircraft) 100
miles distant; at other times it didn’t screen anything until the object was within shouting distance.
9
After dark, the boys watched a movie on the starboard hangar deck (the components of Little Boy had occupied the port side hangar). At 9 P.M., “Taps” was sounded by bugle, some boys humming the words:
Day is done
Gone the sun
From the hills
From the lake
From the skies
All is well
Safely rest
God is nigh
.
The chief petty officer patrolled the decks looking for opened portholes leaking light into the night, and the announcement came over the PA that the “smoking lamp is now out topside.” The red glow of cigarettes showed up too clearly at night; submarines could spot them.
And subs were on everyone’s minds. Down in the officers’ wardroom, the navigator had announced earlier that a merchant ship called
Wild Hunter
had spotted on July 28 what she thought was a periscope. A destroyer escort had been launched from Guam to investigate the report, but found nothing. The navigator also remarked that the
Indy
would be passing the spot of the sighting late in the night.
The men joked that surely the
Indy
’s destroyer escort would sink the sub. They laughed and finished their game of bridge.
Sometime between 7:30 and 8 P.M., Captain McVay had given the command to cease zigzagging. His orders explicitly stated that he could do this at his discretion during times of poor visibility. The sea was running rough, with a long ground swell, and the sky was hung with low, heavy clouds, which smothered a thin strip of pale moon. At times, it was so dark that men on the bridge had to announce themselves by name.
McVay’s decision was also supported by the intelligence report, which reassured him that his route along the Peddie corridor was clear of enemy traffic.
Shortly after 10:30 P.M. McVay stepped off the bridge into the humid night air along its walkway. Belowdecks, the ship was an inferno, radiating the heat it had absorbed throughout the day, as the temperature soared well above 95 degrees. In the engine room alone, temperatures regularly exceeded 120 degrees; all hatches and doors had been opened to draw the precious salt breezes inside.
In the crew’s quarters, temperatures were barely more comfortable, and many of the men chose to sleep topside, where the night air hovered in the mid-eighties. They traipsed across the deck with blanket and shoes in hand in search of relief from the humidity and heat. Some of the boys crawled underneath the massive gun turrets, where they curled up against the cool steel sides of the makeshift caves. Trailing behind them was a phosphorescent wake, faintly flickering against the ship’s hull as it sailed through the dark.
The
Indianapolis
was traveling in what was called “yoke-modified” position. The most secure position was known as Zed, which meant that all hatches and doors had been dogged—sealed off—making the compartments impermeable. “Yoke modified” described a more relaxed state of sailing
and was acceptable in waters where there was little perceived threat of enemy attack. It left the ship’s interior spaces dangerously vulnerable. With the hatches opened, the otherwise watertight compartments could be breached in seconds.
At least 300 boys were scattered across the deck in the dark, turning restlessly, searching for sleep. McVay could hear them talking softly, or snoring, or dreaming aloud, set against the steady
shoosh
of the enormous steel bow parting the black sea. He stayed on deck for about fifteen minutes.
By 11 P.M., the ship was buttoned up for the night, cruising in Condition Able. Shortly thereafter, Captain McVay retired to his battle cabin, where he slept during times of combat vigilance. The size of a large garden shed, it was located immediately behind the charthouse on the navigation bridge. If he was needed, he could be summoned either by a quick knock at his door or through what was called a “talking tube.” The tube, which connected him to the bridge, pointed directly toward his ear.
The officer of the deck, in charge of the eight-to-midnight watch, was to respond to any change in their situation. If the weather and visibility improved, he was to resume zigzagging and notify the captain immediately.
In his hot, cramped cabin, McVay stripped naked and climbed into his bed. Beneath him, the ship hummed and throbbed, beating its way west through the murky dark, and soon he was fast asleep.
The Burning Sea
Buddy, you could hear it—it was just a rumble, you [could] just
hear everything blasting. Underneath this deck, it was just like
fireworks. You ever hear fireworks when they
posh … posh
… and
then all of a sudden:
pa, pa, pa!
Everything was
exploding
.
That concussion just ripped that ship from one end to the other.
Those were armor-piercing shells that were going off in there.
Well, how in the world could that ship survive?
—RICHARD STEPHENS, seaman second-class, USS
Indianapolis
The Philippine Sea
About twelve miles from where the USS
Indianapolis
cruised, Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto had been awakened by a subordinate officer, per orders. It was time to begin night maneuvers.
Hashimoto put on his soiled, damp uniform, laced his boots, and walked through the narrow passage of his sub, anxious about what the night might bring. At 11 P.M., he ordered the men to their night-action stations, then raised the night periscope—built specifically to magnify targets in low light—and swung the serpentlike head of the instrument in a sweeping arc. Earlier, the
I-58’
s sonar man had picked up something, which he had finally identified as the sound of rattling dishes. And this rattling was increasing, coming closer.
10
On the surface of the sea, the metal periscope poked through; painted gray, it blended perfectly with the murkiness of the night and choppy dishwater sea. Yet the horizon was empty. Not a ship in sight. Hashimoto ordered the
I-58
topside for a more thorough look. The boat jumped to life.
The crew blew the main ballast, releasing forced air into the tanks and jettisoning the water she had drawn upon diving three and a half hours earlier. The sub drifted silently to
the surface and broke through, tons of water streaming from her gray, bulbous shape.
The crew screwed open the conning tower hatch, and the submarine’s navigator climbed topside to survey the nightscape. Fresh air poured down the opening into the sub, relieving the stifling onboard conditions. The sub’s bridge was built forward on the ship, near the bow. It served as a lookout point whenever she cruised the surface. The crew stood on its metal platform, surrounded by a chest-high shield that protected them from enemy fire. The navigator scoped the horizon silently through binoculars.
Suddenly he yelled, “Bearing red, nine-zero degrees. A possible enemy ship!”
The announcement was a shock. Hashimoto had studied the same horizon but had missed the ship shrouded in darkness. The excited sub captain sprinted up the ladder onto the bridge. But he couldn’t tell what he was looking at. The target was some six miles away. It was just a smudge atop the water. Hashimoto ordered the sub into a dive. The hatch was sealed, the ballast vents were opened, and the tanks began sucking in several tons of water. The sub slipped beneath the surface.
The hunt was on.
Down below, at his periscope, Hashimoto set about the task of working up his firing solution. This involved figuring his distance from the target, its speed, and direction. It was tense, complicated business; each minute that elapsed gave the target more time to escape. The lieutenant commander was looking for an intercept point at which he could aim his torpedoes. As he tracked the target, he kept his eye to the periscope, determined not to lose sight of it. He had no idea if the target was also being followed by a destroyer escort.
At 11:39 P.M., six of the
I-58’
s torpedoes were ordered loaded and ready to fire. One pilot seated himself in a kaiten, while another was ordered to stand by.
Hashimoto crept ahead at a quiet three knots.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
 
 
On board the
Indy
, the boys were playing craps and poker, reading paperback novels, making coffee, sleeping, and writing letters home. Father Conway, meeting with a sailor in his makeshift confessional in the ship’s library, ordered the boy to write his mother. “I got a letter from her, and she said you weren’t writing,” he admonished. “You’re gonna write her right now. We’ll mail it from Leyte.” The usually gentle priest, who liked spending time with enlisted men more than officers, handed the boy paper and pencil. The kid complied and bent to his missive as the ship rocked through the steaming tropical night.
The boys confided in Father Conway. During the battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, most of them had been scared out of their wits, suffering from stomach ailments and bad cases of nerves. As the kamikazes dove at the ships, the boys cried out from their battle stations for the kind priest. He had moved from gun mount to gun mount, reassuring each sailor. Most of the time, the boys wanted on-the-spot absolution for their sins. “Jeez, Father,” they’d say. “My last liberty didn’t go too well, if you know what I mean. And I think I gotta couple things to get off my chest.”
“Yes, son. Go ahead.” And then, as the firing guns rocked the ship, the sailor would confess his sins of drinking or fornication or stealing.
Conway, thirty-seven, was relentless and fearless in his duty. Once, while saying mass, battle stations had been called suddenly, and the astute father shouted out, “Bless us all, boys! And give ’em hell!” The boys loved him for this. He was a priest, it was true, but he was a priest with grit. He wasn’t what the boys called “namby pamby.” The guy had real backbone.
 
 
Down in the sleeping compartment that contained the brig, Private McCoy was guarding two prisoners. He had come on duty early; it had been too hot to sleep in his own compartment, where the other marines were bunked. The space was solid steel, painted gray, and it had felt like a tomb. Rather than lie there in the heat, McCoy had thought, What the hell—he’d do the poor sailor doing guard in the brig a favor and relieve him early. McCoy had gone to one of the mess halls, where he poured a cup of coffee, and then continued on to the brig. The coffee was so hot it made his eyes sting. But he needed something to stay awake.
The narrow compartment stank of sweaty men and dirty socks and occupied the last eighteen feet of the fantail, with bunks stacked four high on opposing walls. At the forward end stood a ladder that led topside, the only way in and out of the place. To the left of the ladder were the two jail cells.
McCoy stepped quietly across the metal deck, careful not to wake the boys, mainly the ship’s green hands, who had to sleep here. This place was even hotter and stickier than his own compartment. McCoy tried to look on the bright side, as his mother had often told him to do; he figured that at least the misery of heat would keep him awake during the four boring hours of his guard duty.
McCoy watched the sailors he was supposed to keep an eye on turn restlessly in their bunks. He felt sorry for the two cooks he’d guarded since the ship’s departure from San Francisco. They were serving a two-week sentence, ostensibly living on a diet of bread and water. But their buddies from the kitchen were always bringing them sandwiches and pie. McCoy generally looked the other way. He didn’t think he had to be a hardhead. These were pretty good fellows: they’d just had too much to drink. In McCoy’s mind, the only bad guys were the Japanese.
Swish ping, swish ping
, came the relentless pounding of the sea against the hull. McCoy hoped to hell he made it out of this war alive. He had another two years in his hitch to go.
Around his neck he wore a string of rosary beads given to him by his mom.
He shone the light on the cooks, checking to make sure they hadn’t hung themselves out of boredom. One stirred.
“Hey, marine,” he said. “Could you turn that vent this way?” The air vent snaked through the ship from the deck, providing scant, but precious, relief.
“No problem, sailor,” said McCoy, turning the swivel toward the prisoner. He could feel a faint blast himself as he leaned up against a bunk. On the other side of the bulkhead he could hear the steady thrum of the ship’s propellers. He and the boys in the brig were at the waterline, baking in a damn floating oven.
When he got off duty at 4 A.M., he would have two hours to call his own. He planned to chuck down more coffee to stay awake for dawn calisthenics. At 8 A.M., he’d be back down in the brig, on duty again.
 
 
In the forward part of the ship, Dr. Lewis Haynes stood in a doorway to the wardroom, watching a lively game of bridge. Haynes was exhausted. He’d given 1,000 cholera inoculations to the crew that day in preparation for the coming invasion. There was no telling what diseases the wounded prisoners coming off the beach might bring to the ship.
Haynes knew some of the boys were nervous about the future. They talked to him about lots of things. Mostly, they chatted about problems at home with girl friends or fiancées. A boy could be wrecked by a “green banana” from his sweetheart telling him she was seeing another guy. And aboard ship, there was no way to get rid of the hurt. Or the longing.
One of the card players looked up to ask if Haynes wanted to be dealt in. Haynes thought a moment, then responded: “Naw, you men go ahead. I’m a damn lousy card
player.” Then he turned away and continued down the passageway to his cabin.
Next door to Haynes was the ship’s dentist, Dr. Earl Henry, who was already asleep. Back in his native Tennessee, Henry was renowned for his bird portraits. Haynes had bought several of the paintings and had them shipped back to his wife. At the Friday night talent shows that Father Conway organized, Dr. Henry did bird calls in between skits where the boys performed in drag or sang barbershop quartet tunes.
Haynes drew the curtain to his berth, stripped, and pulled on white cotton pajama pants. Tomorrow would be a busy day. He would be up at reveille to inspect the mess halls and the crew’s living quarters with the captain. Then he’d attend to the sick crew, half of whom weren’t really sick; they only wanted to be excused from deck duty. When Haynes found a boy who was goldbricking, he’d bark, “Don’t give me that shit!” and send him back to work. Still, he couldn’t help but smile at the ingenuity of some of the boys’ imagined stomachaches and muscle sprains.
Earlier in the voyage, Haynes had performed an emergency appendectomy on a stout young sailor named Harold Schechterle, who definitely was not a goldbricker. With just a local anesthetic, the procedure had gone beautifully. When it was over, Lew had jokingly told the boy, “Okay, Schechterle, you’re all set. Now get your ass back on duty.”
The kid had leapt off the table, new stitches and all, and was about to run through the door. Haynes was horrified. “Schechterle! I was just kidding! Now you take it easy, son. You’re going to heal up fine.”
Alone in his berth, recalling the incident, Haynes laughed to himself. Then, his day finally done, he slid beneath the sheets and fell asleep almost instantly.
 
 
In sky aft, Ensign Harlan Twible, twenty-three, just two weeks out of the Naval Academy, stood in the elevated metal crow’s nest eighty feet off the main deck, watching the night sky. Heavy clouds scudded across the moon. It was what the boys called a “peekaboo night”; right now Twible couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
Twible was standing watch with Leland Clinton. The two had gotten friendly during the past two weeks. Clinton was a farmer’s son from the Midwest; Twible’s parents were Irish mill workers from Massachusetts. Getting into the academy had been a dream come true for Twible. As an ensign, he was at the bottom of the officer ratings, but he was determined to work his way up.
Using a telephone, he could communicate with the bridge. If he spotted a plane or torpedo, he could quickly ring the news through, and the general alarm for battle stations would be called. But now he saw nothing but a confused sea, with long, deep swells rolling across the ocean from the northeast. Since July 27, a typhoon had been moving southwest from Okinawa, and it was gathering strength.
About twenty men were stationed around the ship in similar positions of vigilance, each overlooking a separate quadrant of the ship’s horizon. There were four officers on duty on the bridge. The officer of the deck, Lieutenant John Orr, was in charge of communication with Captain McVay if any changes were needed in the ship’s maneuvers. McVay was especially reliant on Lieutenant Orr’s command, and as OOD, Orr was eager to continue proving himself to the captain. He had also been battle hardened, having survived a torpedoing while serving aboard a destroyer in Ormoc Bay off Leyte.
The supervisor of the night’s watch, thirty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Commander K. C. Moore, was charged with keeping an overall eye on both Orr and the operation of the bridge and engine rooms. Moore checked the night watches and lookouts about the ship and found all of them alert.
 
 
Three miles away and closing in on the
Indy
, Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto studied the blurred outline of the ship through the periscope. Hashimoto racked his brain trying to accurately identify the vessel. It was crucial. Lying open on a table near the periscope was a book of U.S. warship silhouettes that provided intelligence necessary to correctly identify battleships, carriers, and cruisers. The book also presented important information about each ship’s speed and capabilities.
Hashimoto knew the ship wasn’t friendly, because he’d been kept apprised of Japanese naval movement through coded dispatches. It had to be enemy, but what kind? He studied the approaching shape through the periscope. Destroyer? Battleship? Why was it headed straight at him? He wondered if it was a destroyer hunting him.
He ordered his sub on a new course heading to port, or to his left. Through the periscope, the bridge and superstructure of the ship became more clearly visible as a triangle shape. Now the ID could be made. Hashimoto surmised that this target was of the battleship class. He announced this as the sub’s sonar man tuned in to the sound of the approaching ship’s engine revolutions. Hashimoto counted the revolutions for one minute, calculating the target’s speed

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