Morbid - Episode 655: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

A little past midnight on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, a US Navy cruiser, had just delivered the uranium that would be used in the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan, and was returning to the Philippines when it was struck by a Japanese torpedo. The ship was badly damaged in the attack and within ten minutes it rolled onto its side, dumping 890 crewmen into the pitch-black ocean and dragging the remaining 300 down with the ship.Those who survived the torpedo strike did what they could to grab supplies before abandoning ship, but there were very few life boats or life jackets, so many of the sailors had to float in the water or cling to the few rafts they did manage to take before jumping from the boat. To make matters worse, their mission had been highly confidential and no one in the Navy knew where the Indianapolis was, much less that it had sank. The surviving crew thought things were about as bad as they could get, then the sharks began showing up.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1945. "Indianapolis sunk with 883 killed." Los Angeles Times, August 15: 1.Austin, Daryl. 2021. "How a WWII Japanese sub commander helped exonerate a U.S. Navy captain." Washington Post, June 6.Buckley, Chris. 2017. "Wreckage of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, lost for 72 years, is found in Pacific." New York Times, August 21.Charles B. McVay, III, interview by US Naval History and Heritage Command. 2003. Recollections of Captain Charles B. McVay, III, USN, Commanding Officer of USS Indianapolis (CA-35) which was sunk by Japanese submarine I-58 on 30 July 1945 near the Philippines (April 20).Newcomb, Richard F. 1958. "Court's verdict surprises, irks public." Indianapolis Star, November 30: 22.—. 1958. "Rescue operation put in motion." Indianapolis Star, November 24: 1.—. 1958. "Survivors begin ordeal in sea." Indianapolis Star, November 22: 1.Paridon, Seth. n.d. "Surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis." National World War II Museum. Phillips, Kristine. 2017. "USS Indianapolis survivor recalls four days in shark-filled sea." Washington Post, August 20.1975. Jaws. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Performed by Robert Shaw.US Navy Court of Inquiry. 1945. Summary findings regarding all circumstances connected with the sinking of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), and the delay in reporting the loss of that ship August 13, 1945. Summary, Washington, DC: United States Government.Vincent, Lynn, and Sara Vladic. 2018. Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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in Apple podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Until April 2nd, sky high elegance at dream prices during the Air France rendezvous. It's time to book your rendezvous with Paris, starting at $765, or Madrid, starting at $885 return, from Toronto, tax included. You can enjoy a glass of champagne however you fly, economy included. Elegance is a journey. Air France. Travel from March 17th to June 28th, and from August 24th to November 30th, 2025. See conditions at airfrance.ca. Hey, Weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Alaina. threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Alaina. And this is Morbid. This is Morbid. This is Mor morbid. This is morbid.

This is morbid. Everybody's like, oh my god. Everybody's like, shut the fuck up. This is going to be a long one today. Really? And it's going to be a harrowing one. Long and harrowing. But a little different.

Different. Long, harrowing and different are the themes of today's morbid. Long, harrowing and different. And repeating each other. Yeah. It's going to be very, very intense, but it's not like a straight-up true crime story. We're going to be covering the sinking

of the USS Indianapolis. All right. I don't know if I know this story. It is a story everyone should know. Yeah. Because it's a wild tale of survival, of tragedy, of lots of death. But the survivors here, wild what they endured. Wild.

And then wild what happened after. Oh man. Well, I love US history, so I'm interested. Yeah, this is kind of a US history thing. There's a lot of crazy gnarly shit. If you've ever seen Jaws, you know, straight up New England fair right there, then you have heard Quince's monologue about the USS Indianapolis because he was supposed to be portraying a survivor.

Oh, I haven't seen Jaws in so long. Jaws is iconic. It's not really a movie that like I've ever rewatched I feel like. We used to watch it at my grandparents house so much. I could probably quote that entire movie. I became obsessed with like this like watching all the Jaws movies one summer with my stepmom. It was a very interesting time to start because we were like going to the beach all the time. Yeah, I remember specifically going to a lake and my sister being so fucking terrified of Jaws and me and my brother being like, there's no sharks in the lake, Lauren. But some of those movies are scary. They are.

They're crazy. One of them, the shark is like sentient though. Oh yeah, it gets wily. It's kind of like psychic. Yeah. I've never seen past the first one. Oh, you haven't? No, I just, I'm a purist.

The second one is fun. And the third, I think the third one is when you haven't? No I just I'm a purist. The second one is fun and the third I think the third one is when the shark literally like knows people's movements like oh that makes sense yeah like becomes like way too intelligent for a toga. Bruce there. Bruce is wildin out. So we're gonna get into it pretty quick today because this is a long one there's a lot to talk about so I just want to jump right in. Let's go. So the USS Indianapolis was a Portland-class heavy cruiser, so one of just two of those kind of ships commissioned by the US Navy in 1930. Oh wow. Originally it was designed as a quote light cruiser, which would mean it would be, you know, armed with limited armor and munitions.

Makes sense. Light. But the ship was actually reclassified as a heavy cruiser the following year because it was retrofitted with eight-inch mounted guns capable of hitting a target several miles away. Wow, that's really, that's crazy that in 1930, they had that kind of technology. Oh, this is an impressive vessel, for sure.

For 10 years, the Indianapolis served mainly as a showpiece for the Navy, kind of like, it hosted members of the Roosevelt administration. It was like a flagship vessel for events. It was their crowning glory. And then on December 7th, 1941, which might be a very familiar date to everybody listening, I hope it is, the Japanese military launched a large and unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor. Yeah. And it was on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 people.

At the time of the... I hope they still teach people mostly like about this in school. We learned about Pearl Harbor. Okay, because I was like, this is pretty important. At the time of the attack, the Indianapolis was participating in a military exercise in the nearby Johnston Atoll. I think it's Atoll is how you pronounce it. And because of the proximity there, they were called upon to join the search effort to locate the

Japanese aircraft carriers that had launched the initial attack. So it got brought into the fray. Now the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States obviously into World War II. And as one of the military's most prestigious ships, the Indianapolis was deployed right into the combat. Because again, it had been retrofitted, it's now like ready to go. Over the next four years, the ship provided support during some of the most important battles in the Pacific, like Operation Detachment, where the American military captured the island of Iwo Jima under the command of Captain Charles McVeigh, who becomes a very big part of this whole thing. That name sounds familiar. You might also be thinking of Charles McVeigh, who becomes a very big part of this whole thing.

That name sounds familiar. You might also be thinking of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber. Oh, that might be it. I don't know. Charles McVeigh sounds familiar to me. That's the Charles. I was going to say maybe you do, but McVeigh always makes me think of Timothy McVeigh. Yeah, I see what you mean.

So under the command of Captain Charles McVeigh, the Indianapolis bombarded the Japanese from their position a few thousand yards of shore while infantry men stormed the beach. According to Indianapolis, the true story of the worst sea disaster in US Naval history and the 50 year fight to exonerate an innocent man, which we will get there. It's quote, some men said that when they saw that flag go up,

they thought of home and how it surely wouldn't be long until they could sail back to their moms and sweethearts and the good old USA. Their moms and sweethearts. Yeah. It's very sad. Now during this period, the Indianapolis was very badly damaged when a kamikaze fighter pilot dropped a bomb through the deck and into the mess hall and it exploded in there. It tore a hole in the hull of the ship and to prevent the entire ship from flooding, this is going to like also just show you like the realities of like war is so fucking scary. Because they needed to prevent the whole ship from flooding obviously. So crewmen had to close the hatch leading to the mess hall,

but they trapped nine men inside who eventually drowned in there. Oh my God. But it was literally like a- They just had to. What they had to do, you know, like it's just like, but just knowing that that's just like a decision. Yeah, like a split second decision. Yeah. The ship's bulkheads prevented any major flooding and the Indianapolis was able to return to San Francisco for like major repairs in preparation for what was going

to be its most important mission of the entire war. So it had already had to be repaired. Yeah. While the military fought to overwhelm the Japanese in the Pacific, a huge team of allied scientists and engineers were hard at work in the USA on a very top secret project. You might have heard of it, the Manhattan Project. This was led by nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer. You definitely know his name recently from the... You know, Barbenheimer. You know, Barbenheimer. Barbieheimer, whatever it was.

Barbenheimer? Barbenheimer? Barbyheimer, whatever it was. Barbenheimer? Barbenheimer? Barbyheimer? Oppenbarby? Oppenarby? We're just like free flowing thoughts right now. It's like that when you play that game where you're both trying to get to the same word

and you just yell your conscious thoughts. It's like what we tried to say, ostracized, like a different way. Ostracization. Yeah. Ostracism. And I could not say it. And we just kept saying it. I'm sure people were listening being like, shut the fuck up. Or just screaming the right way to say it.

I apologize. Listen, you have these moments with your friends too, okay? You do, and we're friends here. So the goal of the project, the Manhattan Project, was to design an atomic bomb, the likes of which had never been seen. If you've seen the movie, you know all about it. Did you see Oppenheimer? I have not yet, actually.

I haven't either. Wildly, because I did want to see it. I really like Killian Murphy. I'd be mad, actually. I haven't either. Wildly, because I did want to see it. I really like Killian Murphy. I'd be glad I get. This was a fascinating and really terrifying and horrifying time in history. No, it is interesting. So it's always really interesting to see how it's done in these things. And I heard great things about it.

But the whole goal of this project was to design a crazy atomic bomb that would give the allies the destructive power they believed they needed to stop the Japanese army and end the war. By the summer of 1945, the Manhattan Project had succeeded. It created two atomic bombs and they nicknamed them Fat Man and Little Boy. The two bombs would eventually be dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, respectively. As we know. In San Francisco, Charles McVeigh had been given the details of the Indianapolis latest mission, but only so many details. They had to transport the components of little boy, including the highly radioactive uranium that would ultimately make the bomb so destructive.

And in addition to the critical mission, McVeigh would be sailing with nearly 300 new crewmen. Many of them were new recruits to the Navy within the last 90 days. Oh, shit. Brand new. Not all the crew was new, but at least. A good chunk of it.

300 of them were brand new. Can you imagine, that's your first working mission? Yeah. Damn. From the moment the plans were made in Washington, D.C., everything about this mission was so highly confidential. Even Captain McVeigh, the literal captain of the Indianapolis, was only given the details necessary to just execute the mission, like execute the delivery, and that's it. Right. Like didn't need to know basis, essentially.

On the morning of July 16th, 1945, the Indianapolis departed San Francisco on the way to Pearl Harbor, where they were gonna drop off any non-essential passengers and refuel. The ship arrived in Hawaii on July 19th and refueled, and then departed for Tinian, a small island in the Northern Mariana Islands, and that's where the bomb was going to be assembled.

On the island? Very complex, yeah. The missions and activities surrounding Fat Man and Little Boy were deemed top secret ultra, which is the highest level of clearance that few in the government or military would ever receive. According to author Lynn Vincent, ultra's dissemination was choke point narrow, closely held and tightly guarded. It seeped out daily to only a tiny group of Pacific fleet commanders. So very, very hush hush. I'm saying this because when the Indianapolis left Pearl Harbor on July 19th, very few people knew the ship was on a mission. They also definitely didn't know where it was

going. And this proved to be a problem later. Oh, yeah. A big problem. Okay. So on July 26, the Indianapolis arrived in Tinian and delivered the cargo, which would be dropped on Hiroshima. It was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan a little over a week later and had a message written on the side that read, greetings to the emperor from the men of the Indianapolis. I remember learning about that in school and just how fucking chilling that is. It's so chilling. It's also just like- It's very chilling.

Is that necessary? It's just very chill. War gets- War gets cray. War gets so wily. Yeah, it's very chilling. Is that necessary? It's just very chill. War gets gray. War gets so wily. Yeah, it's like these are the kind of things. I mean, it's a very surface level thing to say about war we understand. No, but it's just like these kinds of things when you read like that, like a message saying like greetings, you know, greetings to the emperor from the men of the Indianapolis.

It's just like, it's so haunting because it's just like such a casual message written on an atomic bomb, you know, like it's just something about that just like your brain can't connect to it. Took out half your population. Yeah, it's like it's really wild. Yeah. So from Tinney in the Indianapolis traveled to a US base in Guam where several crewmen, having now finished their tour of duty were dropped off and replaced by new sailors.

Even more new sailors. Can't imagine getting onto it at that point. On July 29th, they left Guam and they were on their way to late, an island near the Philippines where they were going to receive training. Throughout much of the day, the Indianapolis traveled, you know, steady pace and they moved in a zigzagging motion to make themselves a difficult target for any enemy fire. Um, any, and especially any enemy submarines that were concealed beneath the surface. That's so scary.

Yeah. Those are the things that you don't think about during war. You don't, you know, like, like as a somebody not as like a civilian, you know, like you just, you don't think about it. Like there, it'll take every once in a while, I'll just look at my dad, cause he was in the submarine service. And I'll look at my dad and just be like,

you were in a submarine. For months and months and months. And what? Sometimes he just didn't know where he was. Yeah, and like my mom didn't know where he was. And like there was no communication. There was a time when they were like five, they were something like five hours away

from like showing up at her door and saying we've lost them, like we think they're gone. Yeah. And then they got communication back again. Like insane. It's just so bonkers. I'm like, I can't. And again, I'm saying like bonkers and shit. And like, I don't know what else to say. It's just inconceivable. I don't have a lot of eloquent language to discuss how fucking terrible war is. No, it's just beyond. It really is beyond my wildest conceptions. Yeah. And I think they like need to teach more about it in school. They do because even I think like we were lucky like Papa told, Papa and like your dad told us a lot about it and he took us to the submarine museum.

Yeah, he's very into history. So you learn so much via that. We didn't learn a ton about all of this in school. Yeah, it's important to learn this kind of thing. You need to know what happens so that it can't happen again. And where you come from. You know how you got here. And to respect what people were dealing with back then too. I think that's something that's very much missing from my generation and the next one. Very lacking. So yeah, so this is they were having to move in a zigzag motion. And at the time, the maneuver was strictly a precaution. They weren't technically worried. They were just doing it to make sure. Yeah, it's just like a default. But unbeknownst to McVeigh and the rest of the crew,

the Indianapolis was being tracked. It was being tracked by an I-58, which is a Japanese submarine, and it was being captained by Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto. The I-58 Sonar, and this really blew my fucking mind how mundane the thing is that was able to be picked up on sonar. Okay. The I-58 sonar picked up on the sound of dishes rattling in the

Indianapolis. Stop. From six miles away. And this is in the 40s. Yep. Six miles away. They could hear dishes rattling. Sonar picked up on dishes rattling. And what do you even, there's no way that you- How do you even fix that? And it's just so- And you'd never think of that. Something about that hit me in the fucking head like a train. Cause I was like, that is the most mundane thing

I can think of. And again, how do you fix that? And why would you even think of it? And six miles away, they could pick up on dishes rattling? I do wonder if they put something, like a precaution into place. Like between the dishes to... Well, and now that they, when they found out that that was how they got tracked, I wonder if now things are done differently.

I wonder. If you're in the Navy at all, write in and let us know, because now I'm so interested. Yeah, because that just... Holy shit. Something about that just shook me to my core. I could not, I was like, I can't wait to tell you what the sonar picked up on. I know she literally said that. So I'm sitting here, I'm like, what is it going to be? What is it? Dishes rattling six miles away. And so they had been silent, and this gives me chills.

They had been silently stalking the ship for miles. Oh. Just trying to get close enough to strike. And they had no idea. So when you're on a ship that's on the surface of the water, obviously, do they have things where they can track if there's submarines that are watching them from a certain distance? They do now. That's like sonar and stuff like that. They have more technology now. I don't know exactly what they had back then to and again They're six miles away. Right like they're six miles away. That's a lot of that's like the Japanese were tracking them But they couldn't track them back. Yeah, that's it's scary crazy. That's so chilling. You're right

So at 1204 a.m So a little past midnight the I-58 finally caught up to the Indianapolis and Hashimoto gave the order to fire six torpedoes into the hull. Two of them hit the mark. McVeigh said, I was thrown from my emergency cabin bunk on the bridge by a very violent explosion, followed shortly thereafter by another explosion. He said I went to the bridge and noticed in my emergency cabin in Chart House that there was quite a bit of acrid white smoke. I couldn't see anything. The first torpedo that

hit the Indianapolis killed dozens of men immediately and sent a violent shockwave through the entire ship and smoke started filling the corridors. When he finally made it onto the bridge, Captain McVeigh learned that the officer on deck had tried to contact the engine room to tell them to cut the engines, but the torpedo blast had taken out the communication system and he couldn't get through. So as the two men are talking on the bridge, the second torpedo struck the side of the ship and it was a little further from the bow than the first torpedo. The first hit had knocked the bow of the massive ship leftward and ripped it at one of the seams, which left a large opening in the hull. The second had kind of like a little bit of the same effect. It tore a large hole in the side

of the ship. Now with the bow of the ship effectively sheared off and the engines still running, the wreck of the Indianapolis is still being driven forward through the water, filling the corridors below deck with water. Anyone who didn't manage to escape from the lower decks would either be burned alive or drown in the flood. So it's just off a screaming, just pain, awful, awful scene. With the entire communication system now out, McVeigh ran back to his room to get clothing on, because it's the middle of the night. And he ran into the damage control officer Casey Moore. Lieutenant Moore had been down to the bow after the first hit and told McVeigh the ship was, quote, going down rapidly by the head sinking bow first. And

he asked whether McVeigh wanted him to give the order to abandon ship. Now at the time, the ship was only listing about three degrees. And thinking back on the last time the Indianapolis was attacked in Okinawa, McVeigh thought they would be, you know, they could still steer the ship safely, because they

were able to do that before. So he told Moore, hold off for a second on giving that order. A few minutes later though, Commander Joseph Flynn, the second in command, told McVeigh, we are definitely going down and I suggest that we abandon ship. And McVeigh has said he had complete faith in Flynn's judgment and abilities. So he said, abandon ship. Holy shit. We all have routines that bring us calm in a chaotic and often scary world.

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advance fees may apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Late payments may negatively impact your credit score. Results may vary. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. Now, Captain McVeigh's hesitancy to give the order to abandon ship would later become a matter of great debate. But at the time, McVeigh had yet to fully comprehend the damage that the Indianapolis had sustained. You also have to think this man literally just woke up to a giant fucking explosion. Exactly. That's the thing. It's like there was no way for

him to completely assess the damage of the entire ship in that one second. So he is listening and trying to lean on his officers to tell him, like one of them tells them, I think we're going to need to abandon ship. And he's like, okay, hold on a second. Let me take a minute. And you can understand why that's not the first thing that you wanna do. That's not what you wanna do. That's drastic. And then another officer who he has even more faith in is saying, we gotta get out of here.

So now you got two people saying it. Yeah, and he said immediately he did it. The I-58 that hit them was outfitted with Japanese type 95 torpedoes, which were designed to deliver a massive explosive and then had a secondary effect like that they tacked onto it, which would apply a huge amount of pressure when it happened to basically buckle whatever the targets target was, its internal framing. So it was made to cause severe structural damage.

When the torpedoes hit the side of the Indianapolis, they not only ripped a hole in the side of the ship, but they really compromised its structural integrity like right away. It was taking on a shit ton of water. At the same time, the explosion from the blast had ignited the ship's fuel stores, which caused a massive fire that, quote, incinerated or severely burned anyone below deck in the forward part of the ship. So there's just men on fire. Everywhere.

This section included the sick bay, a large section of sleeping quarters, and the area occupied by the stewards, that whole section. So tons of them died immediately in an awful ways. Now to make matters worse, the fire was rapidly making its way to the decks above, risking the lives of anyone in that area too. By the time the order to abandon ship had started to make its way around the ship, because they also don't have a communication system right now, it's cut out.

McVeigh had managed to send out a distress signal, but with the ship's entire electrical system again, having just been taken out, he had no way of knowing whether it had even successfully been sent out. Oh, God. But he just, he did it as best as he could. Given that they were on a highly classified mission, the entire crew of the Indianapolis would be abandoning ship, not knowing whether they would be rescued and without knowing how close the Japanese submarine was and whether it was still hunting them. That's the thing that you think of like,

okay, now they're just abandoning ship and going into like life rafts. Sitting ducks in the middle of the water. That's so scary. And that and so abandoning ship under those circumstances was only slightly less risky than being on board a burning ship. Yeah. Like there was really no good option here. It's just the lesser of two evils. And by barely. Yeah, like a fraction. Now, McVeigh had just climbed onto the ladder that led to the bridge when the ship suddenly

shifted violently about 25 degrees to the right. And the jolt caused many of the crewmen on deck to fall off the side of the deck and into the water below. Oh my God. A few seconds later when he reached the bridge, McVeigh said the ship shifted again, this time about in a 45 degree angle. And that sent more crewmen flying into the water. And these guys don't have life jackets on. Right, no they're not. Like they're trying to grab life jackets, but many of them are just being shot into

the water. When McVeigh finally reached the communication deck, the ship appeared to have settled at a 60 degree angle. Uh, and what he recalled, he said, there were some youngsters there that were jumping over the side. And I got to the lifeline on the communications deck and yelled at those boys to not jump over the side unless they had life jackets. Oh, so he's trying to save these kids. Like, oh, now at the time McVeigh was trying to unsecure the lifeboats and make sure as

many crewmen had life preservers on before jumping. But a few seconds later the Indianapolis shifted hard to the right yet again, leaving the ship at a 90 degree angle. McVeigh was making his way to the end point of the deck at this point and the bow of the ship snapped off and dropped into the water. Oh fuck. Now the impact of such a large section of the ship

hitting the ocean caused a wave that swept up onto the ship and sent McVeigh and many others tumbling from the ship into the water now. Like they got swept off in a wave. Also think about the fact that this was so many people's first mission. Literally. Like and these are 18 and 19 year olds. Who just enlisted or were drafted. Yeah, this is like a bunch of like teenagers.

My god. Yeah. And McVeigh, as soon as he went off the side, McVeigh said, I immediately thought, well this is the end of me. And I turned around and immediately swam away from the Indianapolis. Now McVeigh and several others had only been swimming for a few seconds when they felt a rush of heat against their backs and then a swell of hot oily water. When they turned to see what happened they saw that the remains of the USS Indianapolis got sucked down into the black water. Oh god I can't even imagine that in my fucking head never mind seeing it in front of you it churns my

Like the water literally just swallows the boat that you were just on and the I should not say the boat the fucking ship like Dude, and if you look up a picture of the USS Indianapolis, it'll just give you even more of like a huge, right? Oh my god and watching that thing just get sucked down into the depths must have been... Oh, I just got chills. Yeah. Like, it is huge. Wow. And they watched this thing just go right under the ocean. My God. This is a massive ship.

right under the ocean. My God, this is a massive ship. Massive. Now, the explosions on the Indianapolis had dumped countless gallons of oil and debris into the water. And when the ship sank, it churned up the waters. So that makes it even worse. And it was well after midnight. So pitch black, like pitch black. So McVeigh couldn't see anything, but all he could hear around him was screaming. And some of them were, I mean, some people were just screaming because of what just happened. And some of them were screaming because they were horrifically injured.

Out of the darkness, he ended up seeing a large vegetable crate float by. So he climbed on top of it to get out of the water. Smart. And he said a few minutes later, two of the life rafts likely released from the ship as it went down floated by. So he grabbed both of those and the wood lattice

that would stabilize the bottoms of the rafts had gone. And there was no oars, but he said, it's better than nothing. Yeah, you got to do what you got to do. He got inside one and he said, he called out to anyone around him trying to collect the nearest survivors and get them on the rafts. And with the help of the quartermaster Vincent, Vincent Allard, Captain McVeigh lashed the two rafts together

so they wouldn't get separated by the current. Now, in another part of this disaster, Glen Morgan, another crewman spotted an spotted one of the sea planes that had come loose from the ship when it sank. Cause the ship was so massive, it had sea planes attached to it. It was 610 feet long. Yeah, massive.

Now, miraculously, the plane appeared to have survived the explosion, it was in an upright position. Wow. So he swam towards it thinking, holy shit, this might be the only way for us to get out of here. But when he reached the plane, he saw that it was badly damaged and it was slowly sinking. His disappointment was only slightly tempered by the fact that

just underneath the plane's tail was one of the wooden life rafts. So he acted real quickly because this thing was sinking. And taking the life raft down with him. Grabbed the raft before it was sucked down with the plane. Once he was on board, he took a look around and spotted another raft nearby and started paddling towards that with his hands. So these men are like getting the idea

that we need to like start lashing these together and stay together. But they're in the pitch fucking black in the middle of the goddamn ocean. And horrifically injured. At that point, Morgan couldn't see any other survivors, he could just hear people screaming. So he started lashing the two rafts together just hoping he could get more people on them. And as he was working to get the rafts secured to one another, he said heads began

popping up out of the darkness several feet away. And he said one after the other, he just saw heads popping out of the ocean, completely covered in oil, and completely unrecognizable. Morgan paddled the rafts to the men and they climbed aboard, exhausted, but okay, covered in oil. By dawn, the reality of what had happened became very apparent. The Indianapolis had gone down hundreds of miles from land and there was nothing but water in every direction. Oh my god. To make matters worse, when many of the rafts fell into the water, they had landed upside down, dumping any unsecured contents like rations and blankets into the water.

Oh no. So the men on McBey's rafts managed to flip a lot of the boats and found that some of them still contained oars and a canvas bag containing one flare gun and 12 cartridges. But that's nothing. No. Things were more encouraging on Morgan's rafts because they did find some, quote, meager rations, flares, fishing supplies, and some flashlights. The flashlights and flares could have been valuable in finding other crewmen and signaling

passing ships and planes, but they also were risky. Flashlights and flares could have been valuable in finding other crewmen and signaling passing ships and planes, but they also were risky. According to Vincent and Vladek, the authors of that book that I mentioned up ahead and will link in the show notes, Japanese submarines had been known to lurk at a sinking site and machine gun any survivors. Oh my God. Again, war. And they're in enemy waters.

Yeah, they're just like sitting ducks. Now the men in McVeigh and Morgan's groups had been lucky, all things considered. And while they were all exhausted and covered in oil, they had managed to avoid suffering any serious physical harm at them. Like a lot of them were like pretty much with it. Many of the others though were less fortunate.

Many of those not killed in the blast or dragged down with the ship suffered serious flash burns from the explosions. Many of them would die within hours of being in the water. But think of those grueling hours that it took to die. Pure suffering. And those who did manage to find each like other survivors, a lot of them found, now this wasn't always the case, but there was patches of this. Some of them would find that the camaraderie that they had on the ship did not extend to the crisis in the sea.

After the ship went down, Harpo Saleya found himself stranded without a raft or a life jacket. And he was so happy to spot some other survivors. But when he got to the raft and tried to pull himself on board, they pushed him off the raft and pushed the raft away. What the fuck? If there's room, why not? Like what the fuck, dude? And the same thing happened when he spotted a second raft. It's happened to him twice. Yeah. So he grabbed onto a rope trailing behind the raft and clung to it so he wouldn't get separated from everyone.

What about no man left behind? Isn't that like a fucking pledge? Like what the fuck? And again, these were small pockets of behavior. Yeah, it wasn't everywhere. For the most part, these men were working together and trying to help each other. But damn. But you're always gonna get some dicks in the bunch.

Now, the instances, again, of selfishness and cruelty, very disheartening, but again, uncommon. For the most part, whenever any of the rafts would spot a survivor floating in the water, they would do their best to get to them and drag them on board. Once they were in full daylight, the men on the raft started paddling around their immediate area, looking for any supplies. Anything that was heavy and not lashed to the boats had sunk with the rest of the ship.

But they did manage to find some cans of Spam and other tinned foods, along with some medical supplies, most of which were waterlogged and kind of useless. The one thing they didn't find, which they would desperately need, was fresh water. At one point early that morning, McVeigh found a three gallon jug of water, but he said immediately he found out it had been tainted. He said it apparently had been cracked because I tasted the water and it was unpalatable.

It was salty. Oh no. Now of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. The most injured were pulled onto the handful of life rafts, but most were floating in the

water beside the rafts, some with life jackets, but many without. Just treading water. And just holding onto a raft. Getting the group together in this way, 400 men, took nearly all their first day in the water and expended almost all of their energy. They were exhausted. They only had one or two paddles on board and it took hours to travel just a few hundred yards. The task was made even more arduous by the tide because it was always working against them. They were just going against

the tide at all times. On the first day, the survivors had drifted nearly five miles from where the sight of the thinking was, and the rolling waves constantly threatened to pull them apart in different directions. For the first day or so, the men in the thinking was. Wow. And the rolling waves constantly threatened to pull them apart in different directions. For the first day or so, the men in the main group got along pretty well, despite being exhausted and in pain and horribly terrified. In addition to whatever injuries they had suffered when they abandoned the ship, most of the men were covered in fuel, which had also gotten in their eyes and caused excruciating burning sensations.

And then you're just flushing it out with salt water. Also, many had unintentionally swallowed large amounts of sea water and fuel, causing them to become violently ill for much of the first day. Oh God. Yeah. Despite all of this, they still managed to work together

to locate supplies, care for the wounded, and make hats from the canvas to block out the worst of the sun. That's insane that they were able to do that. The human spirit, man. At night they would occasionally see a plane fly overhead and would fire one of the flares, but the pilots never acknowledged them. And also you don't know, that must have been so scary because you don't know if that's your plane.

You don't know if it's your plane. Yeah. McVeigh later said, we knew now that these eight or nine planes that we saw, and that we either during the daytime flash these signal mirrors, the emergency signal mirror at, nobody ever saw the mirror, us or any of the flares that they were shooting up. At their altitude, it was impossible for the pilots to see even a large group of men in the water below. And the survivors didn't know at the time that nobody even knew where the Indianapolis was. So they weren't looking for them.

These planes were not search planes. They were just going overhead. Now as the men worked throughout the day on Monday, they were so preoccupied with what was on the surface of the ocean that it didn't occur to them that there was probably some shit below them as well. Oh no. This is something that a lot of people, if you've read or heard about the Indianapolis, which definitely read further into it, it's very fascinating.

It is. And some of these interviews with these survivors later, very interesting. This is something that a lot of people know about is the sharks. Yeah. Throughout the day, many of the sailors had to kick and splash to fend off, you know, barracuda that would swim up next to them. Oh my God. But otherwise, their biggest concern besides that was the sun and, you know, the Japanese, the enemy. Then late that afternoon, Seaman's second class, Curtis Pace saw from the corner of his eye something moving below him. He glanced down to get a better look and he said he saw a shark

whip its tail once and its silhouette blended in with dozens of others just like it. Now the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean that they were in is home to a variety of shark species including the hammerhead, tiger shark, and the notoriously aggressive and pissy oceanic white tip. Oh God. Oh, like you just described that shark as pissy. Very pissy. Such a pissy fucking shark.

Very pissy and very opportunistic, I will say. They're very lazy and opportunistic because they tend to be solitary in their behavior. White tips. Maybe that's why they're so pissy. They're very opportunistic, I will say. They're very lazy and opportunistic because they tend to be solitary in their behavior. Maybe that's why they're so pissy. They're pissy. They don't want to deal with anybody else. But they will put away their pissiness and pettiness if they see that there's a large food source that they can congregate together for. Oh, great.

So they'll congregate for something. But they're scavengers. And like I said, they're opportunistic. They don't really want to expend much energy to hunt. They like it when it's just plopped in front of them. Which it was. Oh boy, was this just plopped right in front of them. So they were like, shit, dinner.

They were literally like, wow, this is like a banquet. Are you going to tell me that people are eaten by sharks in these waters? Yes. Often. Sharks of all species, like if you know anything about sharks, they've evolved over time to be very sensitive to sound. They can detect noises miles away. Yeah. Sharks are fascinating. Yeah, they really are. I fucking love sharks. I do too. Shark Week is my shit. Big in my home. They really are. I fucking love sharks.

I do too. Shark Week is my shit. This ability allows them to locate prey and also makes them really good at identifying when prey might be in distress and an easy meal. Because sharks, again, pretty lazy, love fast food like the rest of us. So they're like, if it can just be dropped in front

of me, why not? Like that's what sharks really look at. They're like, it's got to be easy. Yeah, it's right there. And if it seems like it's in distress, then it's really not going to put up that much of a fight, and I can get my meal and peace out and go on my way. But when the Indianapolis went down, it churned up the sea, causing a large commotion in the water, which you know sharks all over the place were like, what the fuck's up with that? And also there was a lot of splashing from the men and the blood from the injured and dying would have sent a strong signal to nearby sharks. I mean, this was like a homing beacon to sharks who

would have followed the scent and at least come to investigate what was going on. So throughout the day, Curtis Page and the others watched as the group of white tips below grew larger and larger. They just kept on congregating. And they're just circling. Just circling. And for the time being, they were just circling,

lazily kind of going. And then all of a sudden they said they would like go below all of them and then sometimes would grow bold and investigate. But then crewmen would like splash and kick at them and they'd kind of retreat away. But it's like, you don't have the energy to keep doing that. No.

Then the sun went down. And they said it was as though they got more emboldened by the sun going down. Kozel Smith was laying on one of the floating nets with several other men. This is so scary. So it was a floating net and he was laying on there with a few other men when one of the white tips shot up from below at like a high speed. Because that's what they do. And grabbed Smith's hand in its mouth and he screamed screamed, high-pitched shriek, everybody said they heard in the middle of the fucking night. The shark dragged Smith off the raft, pulled him 10

feet below the surface and whipped its head back and forth with his arm in its jaws. And he's 10 feet in the ocean in the pitch black. So even if he's opening his eyes, he's seeing pitch blackness and just being thrown. I need you to fully comprehend that. How could you ever? Because you hear that and you're like, oh my God, that's awful. And then you really think of every single component of this and you go, oh my God, that is like hell on earth. Yep. I can't think of what, you're laying down.

After a shipwreck. And you survived a shipwreck. Like a insane military attack. Yes, two torpedoes hitting your ship. You get dragged beneath the surface from a shark into the pitch black depths of the ocean where you are looking around at nothing. But you also know that multiple other sharks have been surrounding you all day. And then they might be descending. So even if this one doesn't get you, there's however

many more. And are they just descending upon me? Am I about to just be torn from limb from limb? And this one is tearing a limb off of me? Well, this guy survives? He survives. What the fuck? Because Smith managed to hold his breath, by the way, because you got it, you're 10 feet below the surface, and is punching and poking at the shark's snout, because that's what you're supposed to do. That's supposed to work.

Sure is. It didn't. No. He was unwilling to let go of Smith. So he managed to sink his other hand into the shark's gills and pushed as hard as he could. And finally the shark let go and he was able to shoot back up to the surface. Green Chef is the number one meal kit for clean eating, delivering pre-portioned and prepped quality whole foods with limited processed ingredients. Green Chef sends organic, fresh produce, responsibly sourced proteins, and chef-designed recipes in every box for satisfying, nourishing,

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out of 10 recommend. It was absolutely iconic. Thrive all year with clean easy meals from Green Chef. Go to greenchef.com slash morbid free and use code morbid free to get started with free salads for two months plus 50% off your first box. Again, that is greenchef.com slash morbid free and use code morbid free to get started with free salads for two months Plus 50% off your first box the number one meal kit for eating well Hey weirdos. I'm Mike Corey and like you I'm drawn to true crime Creepy history and all things spooky if you particularly enjoyed ash and elena's coverage of the USS Indianapolis If you particularly enjoyed Ash and Elena's coverage of the USS Indianapolis, where 900 sailors battled rough seas, sharks, dehydration and madness in the open ocean, you need to check out

my podcast, Against the Odds. We dive deep into this survival story across four full episodes, revealing details you haven't heard yet. Each week on Against the Odds, we put you in the shoes of real survivors. From the Thai Cave Rescue to Somali pirate hostages to the Donner Party. These aren't just headlines. They're incredible stories of human endurance. Follow Against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds and Morbid early and ad-free. Start your free trial in the Wondery app subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds and Morbid early and ad-free. Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. He frantically swarmed towards the net.

He swam as fast as he could towards the nets. His hand was shredded by the shark, by the way. Yeah, cause they got teeth on teeth on teeth on teeth. Teeth on teeth on teeth. It gets worse. No. Because when he gets to the, he gets up, survives this, gets to the raft.

It gets him again. And his crewmates shouted at him to get away from the boat. Oh, fuck them. Because the shark was gonna come back and pull more of them down because he's now bleeding everywhere. Fuck them. What the fuck? And they're kicking and pushing him away.

And in that moment though, he said, fuck y'all. He had so much adrenaline that he pulled himself onto the raft anyways. Good. You can make a fucking tourniquet. They kicked him off again. Oh no, one of the men started slashing at Smith with a knife. Why?

And he succeeded in forcing him off of the boat. And now he is bleeding from slashes on his arms and he shredded a hand. What the fuck? So he slid back into the water and we were literally about to sacrifice, not even about to, they were sacrificing. They were like, get out of here, die. And they, so he gets away from the raft because he's like, fuck y'all, like I'm not going there, and is without a life jacket and is bleeding profusely. And there's just sharks everywhere.

By then the sharks had started attacking other groups of crewmen because once they saw this happen, the sharks were like, let's go. And they just started going crazy, darting up from below now and just grabbing injured people, grabbing dead bodies. Like they're just jumping up and grabbing people down the PTSD that these survivors must have had unfathomable. How do you even treat that level of PTSD? Truly. The trauma. Yeah.

Just seeing multiple of your friends, like your crew members and friends, be in multiple sharks shooting up through the surface. Well, and to show you how horrifying this ordeal was, like they're hearing, there's terrorized screams just echoing in the night in the middle of the ocean. Men just screaming, crying, begging for mercy. Oh, that's heartbreaking. And so, and this other crew member, seaman James King, he was like a young man. He was wounded by the blast already. And he was so terrorized by this whole thing

that he removed his life jacket and tried to swim down into the water and just die. But he was quickly retrieved by his friend. And this is what shows you like the very ends of humanity here. His spectrum, yeah. His friend, Denny Price, pulled him back up And this is what shows you like the very ends of humanity here. His friend Denny Price pulled him back up and he said he did it several times and Denny kept pulling him back up.

And when he was asked why he kept rescuing him during his multiple attempts to end his life, Price later said, it's just the right thing to do. That's a G right there. That's a human. That's a fucking friend. Because he was like, we're gonna get out of this. Like, I know you're terrorized right now, but we're gonna get out of this. You got to keep a circle around you that you know, after a sink a sinking, you go down with the sinking ship, you survive that there's sharks attacking

you everywhere and you are at your wits motherfucking end. You better surround yourself with friends that will rescue you every goddamn time. Every time you give up. And you should never doubt that your friends will do that for you. Yeah. And if you doubt that, drop them. Get new friends. Drop them.

Yeah, get new friends. Now, until the sharks began attacking, the survivors had been keeping, you know, the dead men that they had that were growing in numbers each day. They kept them secured to a raft and the hope was that they could return their bodies to their loved ones once they were rescued. So they were really trying to like, you know, have some honor here for them. When the attacks started though, those in positions of authority like Ensign Harlan Twible started cutting away the bodies and allowing them to sink because they were like, they're just going

to keep attacking us. like we can't. Well, and like you were just saying, the sharks can literally smell. They were like, we're just kind of drawing them to us right now. So and most of them were grabbed by the sharks before they could sink very far. Twibble said everybody was scared to death. These were all 18 and 19 year old kids. There wasn't any fighting any turmoil, but everyone was scared. And then you're just watching sharks eat your sinking friends. all 18 and 19 year old kids. There wasn't any fighting, any turmoil, but everyone was scared. And then you're just watching sharks eat your sinking friends.

For an extended period of time, the survivors were more or less helpless and could do nothing more than listen to the screams and cries of their brothers essentially, one by one as they were dragged off by white tips. Like... How do you even disassociate from that? Like, that, like, right next to you, you're... the guy who you have been serving with and who you survived with gets dragged off screaming and you can't help them. That's so fucked.

And then you just watch as they get mauled by a shark. Like, that's the kind of thing that you, these are the kinds of things, like we didn't talk about this in school. They need to make it clear. These are the kinds of things they need to tell you about. Yeah. Now by Tuesday morning,

most of the groups had set up shark watches and worked in shifts to keep an eye out for anything on or just below the surface. Once the large group of white tips had picked off many of the dead and dying, and faced the resistance from the injured and, you know, any of the able bodied that could fight back. The attacks did begin to slow in frequency, but they remained a terrifying reality through the entire ordeal until the very end. Like it never let up.

No, of course not. McVeigh later said, the kids who were in the rafts by themselves on this one raft were scared to death of this shark because he kept swimming underneath the raft. You could see his big dorsal fin and it was white, almost as white as a sheet of paper. Apparently the shark spent most of his time on the surface and his fin had bleached out so he didn't blend in with the surface at all. And I was like, that sounds like the super villain of sharks and I don't like that. Now in the decades that followed, the tragedy of the super villain of sharks and I don't like that. Now, in the decades that followed, the tragedy of the Indianapolis would become synonymous with

shark attacks. That's something that a lot of people know about it. And one of the things that really made it synonymous with it was a large soliloquy given by the character Quint in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws. Quint was played by Robert Shaw, played wonderfully by Robert Shaw. I love Quint. He's awesome. I love Quint. And he was played as a gruff shark hunter whose hatred of sharks stemmed from his experiences surviving the USS Indianapolis. Which now carries so much more weight. It certainly does. I want to read his soliloquy because it's very real. They really pulled from the actual thing.

Well, now you know what it actually is. All the harrowing details. So he said, Japanese submarines slammed two torpedoes into her side sheaf. We was coming back from the island of Tinian to late. We just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb. 1100 men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half hour. Tiger, 13 footer. You know how you know that in the water chief?

You can tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. After first light chief, sharks come cruising by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, by the end of that first dawn lost a hundred men. didn't even list us overdue for a week. After first light chief, sharks come cruising by. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday morning chief, I bumped into a friend of mine,

Herbie Robinson from Cleveland, baseball player, Bozen's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up and down in the water. He was kind of like a top, up-ended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. God. And this is like real shit. Like he just explained a very real scenario that happened. Like picture a thousand sharks.

I can't. Picture one motherfucking thousand sharks. I can't. Picture one motherfucking thousand sharks. And then you're just a sitting duck in the water. I can't even picture 20 sharks without shitting myself. I can't imagine being on a boat and seeing a shark. No. I would be scared to see a shark in the water from a boat. Absolutely.

Because like you said, they just, they go to the fucking depths of the ocean and then they shoot all the way up. And they powerhouse up to the surface. Oh, it's so scary. I'm never getting on a boat again. Fuck that. No, it's real fucking scary. And what's even worse is like, that wasn't even the most of their problems. The sharks were like high on the list of problems. What was worse? There's a lot of shit that's going down. The bigger issue was they had a complete lack of water to drink. I literally forgot that. Yeah, of course, because why would you even?

There's so many things. I was focused on the thousands of sharks personally. In general, a person can survive without water for about three days. But the effects of dehydration though, can set in fast. You can survive, but at what cost? But barely. They set in fast and they range from really strong thirst and headaches to confusion and hallucinations. Eventually the body will go into complete shock and unconsciousness before it just shuts

down systematically. Slowly. Now, some of the rafts in the main group had managed to scavenge some of the water jugs that hadn't floated away, but that was really barely anything and definitely not enough to meet the needs of all the survivors.

Yeah, like hundreds of them. By Tuesday, those injured who hadn't been taken by sharks began to give up hope or just lose consciousness and simply would float away. Like they would literally fall into unconsciousness and they would just float off, which is just really haunting to think. And a lot of them who were floating off would just remove their life jackets and let themselves drown. Like that happened a lot because they just didn't want to prolong it anymore. Now, Ensign Twible later said, we tried to keep the men thinking

that they would be saved, but there was no way in God's green earth that I knew we were going to be saved. By the third night in the water, many among the crew had become delirious, suffering from heat stroke in the day or hypothermia at night or dehydration all the time. Or all three. In McVeigh's group, a large number of men had tied themselves together using a length of rope secured to one of the rafts. He later said, some of them lived through the period, but those who went out of their head earlier than say 48 to 60 hours didn't last. The people that were down in that group just gave up hope. So they feel that people just slipped out of their

life jackets and just decided that they didn't want to face it any longer. Oh my God. In Twibble's group, the effects of dehydration and madness had begun to affect many of the men around him. Lieutenant Richard Redmayne, once one of the strongest among them, had been steadily declining over the course of the third day and was frequently heard crying out, I need to get to the engine room before trying to throw himself over the side of the raft. So he's just like hallucinating fully. Others were in a similarly hallucinatory state, muttering about seeing a water fountain down below, then diving beneath the surface, and some of them wouldn't come back up. I found an account by survivor Woody Eugene, and he said on that third

day, this is his quote, he said, the sun did, uh, the sun finally did rise and it got warmed up again. Some of the guys had been drinking salt water by now and they were going berserk. They tell you big stories about the Indianapolis is not sunk. It's just right there beneath the surface. I was just down there and had to drink a water out of the drinking fountain and the key dunk is still open. The keyunk being the commissary where you buy ice cream, cigarettes, candy, what have you. It's still open, they'd tell you. Come on, we'll get a drink of water. And then three or four guys would believe this story and go with them. Oh, that's horrible.

Which just like, That's heartbreaking. My heart like shattered in my chest reading. Because you're just thinking like they're all just like, let's go get water and candy. Like, oh, it's just like, and these are like 18 and 19 year olds. So like, oh, it makes you want to cry. I just like want to hug their parents. Um, among the last of the injured to voluntarily give up

his life was commander Stan Lipsky. This is just so sad. He was the Indianapolis gunnery officer. He had suffered serious burns in the explosion after the first torpedo strike. And by the time he hit the water, the flesh on his hands had been burned down to the tendons and his eyes were burned close. Oh my God. Yeah. Despite having remained in the water since abandoning ship, he had managed to avoid the sharks and hold out longer than most of the others who'd been gravely injured.

He was still there on the third day. Then on the afternoon of August 1st, he looked to his friend, Lewis Dockhaines, and said, I'm going now, Lou. Tell my wife I love her and I want to marry her again. Oh, I know. That one like really got me. No, no, no. I almost just cried saying that. Oh my god. Fuck. You just ruined me. I know. Tell my wife I want to marry her again. Like, no, fuck, fuck, hold on. I know that like really got me. Like, that's awful. And just your friend looking at you and being like, I'm going now.

Like, it's just like, for you to, and he looked at his friend because he was like, please remove my life jacket. Like he couldn't, because his hands were burned down to the tendons. Oh, fuck dude. So Haynes said he knew, he's like, he was in pain, like he was miserable.

It would be awful to stop him at that point. His eyes were burned closed. And so he said he removed his friend's life jacket and allowed his body to slip under the surface of the water. Imagine being his fucking wife and hearing that. And like, thank goodness Haynes was later able to relay that message, that like, tell my wife I love her and I wanna marry her again.

Stop saying that. I know, every time I say it, I get a lump in my throat. I know fuck that literally brought tears to my eyes Now throughout their four-day ordeal on the open ocean The survivors had seen several planes fly overhead like I mentioned and they made strong efforts to get the attention of the pilots But obviously to no avail In fact by the last day any fears of being captured by the Japanese had left most of their minds, to be honest. Yeah, it's the least of their worries.

Yeah, and all that mattered at this point was getting the fuck out of the water. The Indianapolis was expected to arrive back in the Philippines on Tuesday, July 31st, but when it failed to arrive, no one sounded the alarm. After all, they'd been on a top secret mission and there were many reasons why they could have been delayed. So the few who were aware of their existence sought no reason to be concerned. Dear God.

Also, the control offices in Guam and the Philippines had been charting the Indianapolis's travel each day using their last known coordinates and their speed to approximate the location. Now, in truth, the US Navy had no idea where they were or that it had sank. It's just the truth of the matter. By that time, the wreckage had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, which was nearly 10,000 feet deep in that area. Jesus Christ. I was looking up some of the pictures of when they eventually found it. Yeah. So there wouldn't have been anything to indicate that the ship had ever even been there on the surface.

And even if there was evidence of a ship being attacked in that location, that would have been very little help to the survivors of the Indianapolis because by the time the Navy had become alarmed about the crew's failure to return, the survivors had drifted anywhere between 60 and 200 miles from the site of the attack. They were nowhere near where that happened. So a search of the area wouldn't have really led to their rescue really. That the crew of the Indianapolis were rescued at all had more to do with luck and coincidence than it really did military policy and tracking ability.

So I think you're wondering how they were found. On the morning of August 2nd, Wilbur Chuck Gwyn was flying over the Philippine Sea in his PV-1 Ventura bomber conducting a sweep for enemy vessels. The morning of August 2nd, Wilbur Chuck Gwyn was flying over the Philippine Sea in his PV-1 Ventura bomber, conducting a sweep for enemy vessels. A new antenna had been installed on the bomber that morning and it had snapped off a few minutes into the flight, so he had been told to come back to base so they could replace it, so he ended up being like an hour behind schedule. And a little past 11am, he was about 350 miles north of Palau

at the tip of the Philippines, cruising at roughly 3000 feet. Because he had fallen behind schedule, his trajectory had him facing directly into the sun at that time of the day, but he could still see about 20 miles in every direction. He hadn't been out very long when the second antenna snapped. Oh, man. And it was only replaced like 10 minutes earlier. Damn. He hadn't been out very long when the second antenna snapped.

And it was only replaced like 10 minutes earlier. And it snapped off and the radio men suggested he return and get a replacement for the replacement. So after turning the controls over to his co-pilot, Warren Colwell, he, Gwyn, ducked into the belly of the plane and he was trying to secure the antenna wire to the plane to keep it from like damaging the tail. So he grabbed a long length of rubber hose and then opened a small hatch to start reeling the wire back into the plane. When he looked down though, he saw something and he jumped to his feet and ran back to his co-pilot and he yelled to him, he said, look down. And when he looked down, it appeared to be an enemy submarine. Now at that time of day

the sun had reflected really hard off the surface of the ocean so it made it impossible to see like anything but like a general shape in the water. He had said it's like glass down there you can't see a thing. Assuming that what he was seeing was an enemy vessel, Gwyn ordered his co-pilot to open the bomb bay doors and prepare to release one of the depth charges. Shut the fuck up. But the Ventura got descended and got into position, so it had to descend a little. And Gwyn realized he was not seeing an enemy ship. Thank goodness he realized.

Yeah. But he's seeing a few hundred men floating in the water on rafts or some most he said were just bobbing on the surface alongside the lifeboats. Can you imagine if they survived all of that and then got bombed by their own men? Accidentally bombed by their own men. Fuck. That would have been, I mean, I can't even. Now by the fourth day in the water, the survivors had begun to accept that rescue wasn't likely

going to come and they were going to die. Then late Thursday morning, Kenley Lanter, one of the men in Glenn Morgan's group, spotted something in the air coming in their direction. So Lanter called out, hey Morgan, look, and he said, jerking his head in the direction of it, he said, do you see it? And Morgan and the other men- He probably thought he was going nuts. Yeah, well, and he was probably just like, look, another plane that's gonna fly by us

and not do anything. And so the other men on the wrap looked up and they saw it and they were like, yeah, I see it. And at first he said, is it a bird? Because he was like, I couldn't really, like my eyes were so blurry and everything, I couldn't see, he's like, is it a bird? And they all squinted and they couldn't really make it out.

And Morgan had just opened up his mouth to be like, yeah, it's a bird. When Lantern interrupted him and said, that's a fucking plane. Hey, weirdos. If you guys know one thing about us, it's that we love a deep dive. Well, if you're looking for a limited series that will completely consume you, we've got you covered. Those sketchy texts you're always getting? Sometimes there's something way darker behind them.

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Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. ["Wonderful Music"] Now, all the men in the rafts and many more in the water started shouting because they're not giving up. Like, if they see something, they're going to try. Of course.

And they're all, and it's like, their voices must have been so strained and harsh and like... They've had no water. Just cotton mouths and dry throats and just like, have been screaming for four days essentially. They're all waving their hands in the air. And as Gwyn's plane descended further, he could see them in the water. And he said they were covered in oil. And he said, and what surrounded them was a huge miles long oil slick. Wow.

The amount of oil and the size of the crew in the water suggested to him that his ship had gone down, but Gwynn hadn't heard of any ship sinking because nobody knew. So he was like, this doesn't make sense. But he was like, regardless of how they got there, they were clearly in trouble. So he ordered the bay doors opened again and he started dropping the life raft and every life jacket they had on the plane and a buoy and all the buoys they had on board down to them to at least start the process. Like here, here's what we have. And I need more manpower, but at least here's this. When he'd done that, he ran back to the cockpit and got on the radio to report many men in the water at that, at those coordinates. Now his antenna is broken, remember?

Uh-huh. at those coordinates. Now, his antenna is broken, remember? So his message back to base came through really badly garbled, sounding like encircling life raft, but that's all that technicians could really make out. Fortunately, the closer they got, the more Gwyn and the flight crew began to understand the scope of what they were seeing, and he returned to the radio to make additional reports, which were better received, luckily.. But at first it was like are you kidding me? The communications staff moved quickly to set the rescue operation in motion and they launched amphibian rescue vessels that if they made good time could reach the men in about three hours. But then they're also still in enemy water and those can be hit by torpedoes. Exactly. I'm fucking terrified. And now a lot of

attention is being put on this scene so they're getting even scarier. At that time, the Cecil J. Doyle, a US Navy destroyer escort, was cruising about 50 miles off the coast of Palau. As one of the vessels dispatched from command base flew over the Doyle, the pilot, Adrian Marks, radioed to the ship below and alerted them to what was happening. They had not received any official orders to assist in the emergency. The ship's captain though, Graham Clader, knew it would be hours before a rescue team would reach those men in the water. So he made the decision without even being ordered to, to change course and go aid the men from

the Indianapolis, which is like a badass decision. Hell yeah. Although the official order came through to the crew of the Doyle an hour and a half later, according to one report, it is not possible to say how many lives Clayton's stolen 90 minutes saved. Wow. So like good on him. For real.

For several hours that morning. Seaman first class Dick Thelen, who gives some interviews too that you can watch and they're very fascinating. He had been drifting away from the larger group in the water and then in late morning he heard the sound of what he would later learn was Mark's plane flying overhead. Thielen watched with absolute astonishment as the cargo bay doors opened and the plane dropped a lifeboat about 50 yards from where he was floating. He said he called out

to the three other men nearby and they all started swimming towards the raft and were probably, I can't imagine the elation. And just probably sitting there questioning if this is real. Yeah, like are we being tricked? What's happening? Are we hallucinating? Well, that's the thing. They probably thought they were. By the time Thielen made it to the raft, two of the other men had already climbed in, but there was still no sign of his friend, Robert Terry. Thielen looked back and spotted Robert Terry a few yards behind him, and he said he had stopped swimming and was clutching his chest. And he said

his face was twisted in like a grimace. Oh no. And Thielen thought Terry might be having a heart attack. And then all of a sudden he just disappeared completely under the water. Did a fucking shark get him? And he said a few seconds later he appeared again above the water and he was now swimming towards the raft. And Thielen called out to him encouraging him being like, you're going to make it, you're going to make it, come on. And even got into the water to help him. And he had just lowered himself into the water when he turned to see a large white tip bolt out of the water and grab Robert Terry, dragging him under the water. And he was gone. He was that close to that close to rescue that motherfucking shark. That shark is a fucking

asshole. I love sharks. I do too. That sharks a fucking asshole. That particular shark I hate because that was a bitch move. That was like that. That's bitchy. Are you kidding? You've had a feast for days, you piece of shit. And he was that close. And he was so close. And for Thelen to watch his friend and be encouraging him, being like, come on,

we're almost there and getting into the water to help him. And then watch him be dragged under by a shark. Oh my God. And you can't even properly celebrate that you're being rescued because you just watched your friend get eaten. And it's like, how do you ever get over that? And Thelen said, he said that he was in complete shock and he just sat in the water for a second in complete shock. I couldn't overcome it. And he's like, and obviously I had to, and I managed to get myself back on the raft.

Yeah, before another short-cut. Because he's like, I can't let myself get dragged under. Now, Mark's plane was just the first of many to arrive at the scene. For the rest of the afternoon, a steady stream of planes flew overhead, dropping rafts, life jackets, other supplies, just making sure they could survive in the time before they could get them out. Knowing the rescue ships were still a ways off and that time was of the essence, Marx made a decision that would likely save

a ton of people's lives. He decided, so to land a seaplane of that size on the open ocean and in such a small window to be like accessible to stranded survivors was very, very risky. It's just not something you can do. But Marx decided that he was gonna do it. That he was gonna try it.

So he descended to the lowest point he could and put the plane into a power stall, which is an aviation phenomenon that causes the plane to lose lift. And he brought the plane down on the surface of the ocean with three hard bounces. And he said to his astonishment, the plane suffered only minor damage.

And once he got the bay's doors open, Marx and the other crew members began loading in the most vulnerable men from the Indianapolis. So he like put himself at risk to make sure he could get at least the most vulnerable on. Damn. This is what I mean when you see like, you really see like the opposite ends of the

spectrum of like humans being humans here. People shoving people off of life rafts but then risking their own lives for each other. Wow. Now the Doyle was the first ship to reach the survivors a little after 9 30 p.m. Given the size of the destroyer and the extent to which the men were scattered across the water, Clader and the crew of the Doyle had to be extremely careful to not churn up the water and set them adrift or run them down because it was night. But that wasn't the only problem. Clader had also received warnings of Japanese submarines patrolling the area, putting the pressure on them to get the men of the Indianapolis out of the fucking water as quickly as possible. Other ships arrived a short time later and working with only the light from the doil because they didn't want to draw attention they worked diligently to pull every survivor out of the water.

Wow. Corporal Edgar Harrell said, most everyone was pretty much in my condition. You couldn't stand up, even difficult to sit up. You were exhausted, probably lost 20 to 25 pounds. In four days. Yeah. Captain McVeigh's group never saw the planes fly overhead, but that evening, the USS Ringness, a high-speed transport boat, spotted the group on their radar and slowly made their way over to them. McVeigh heard one of the men say, my God, look at this. There are two destroyers bearing down on us. Why why they're almost on top of us. And he said when he turned, the ship was pulling up aside them and lowering the rescue equipment. And he said it was just like a view I can't even describe. On the on board the ring this

the injured were tended to by the ship's doctors and other men ate and drank to excess. They hadn't eaten in four days. Right. The USS Indianapolis went down at around 12.15 a.m. on July 30th, 1945, taking with it roughly 300 men. The remaining 890 crewmen spent four days and five nights in the water. By the time the rescue crew arrived on August 2nd, only 317 men had survived. 890 went into the water. 317 survived. Wow. In total, the rescue operation took nearly 24 hours. Years later during an interview, Harlan Twible said, I saw some great heroism and I saw some great fright and I saw some things I wouldn't ever want to talk about. And I can't imagine.

Now on August 6, 1945, the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which was followed by the bombing of Nagasaki three days later. Although the Japanese wouldn't officially surrender for nearly a month, this basically effectively ended World War II. In all the enthusiasm over the end of the war, a few people really gave a lot of thought about the missing men on the USS Indianapolis. The survivors were taken to hospitals on the closest islands, including the military base at Guam, where they started the long road to physical recovery. Meanwhile, the US Navy went into damage control mode, developing a strategy to deal with what was obviously a very botched mission.

Yeah. A big old misstep. Yeah. Among other things, those in positions of authority had denied McVeigh the military escort he'd requested when they set out from Hawaii, ignored the distress signals received by the Indianapolis at the time it began sinking, and failed to recognize the reports from late when the ship didn't arrive as expected.

So they did send out successful distress signals? In simple terms, my jaw is wide open. The entire situation made the Navy brass look incompetent at best and at worst, liable for the deaths of hundreds of sailors. That kind of scandal and the fallout from any investigations not only reflected badly on the military, but also threatened to overshadow the enthusiasm over the US

victory in the Pacific. In fact, in Washington, high ranking military officials had already begun demanding answers and scheduling a hearing to determine the cause of sinking. A few days earlier on August 13, Captain Charles McVeigh found himself before the Court of Inquiry in Guam, where he was intensely questioned as to the cause of the disaster. During the hearing, a lot of the surviving crew members, who were well enough to appear, testified as to their experience during and after the

whole thing. When the hearing concluded, a few of the communications officers were lightly punished for failing to recognize the Indianapolis' absence when it didn't return. So like they really just got like a... Oh, like they didn't return on time and you didn't say anything? Like, who do you? But it was McVeigh who the court really went after.

Sorry, what? Oh, his story is horrifically sad, but they do get justice for him later. Why did they go after him? In their letter to the Judge Advocate General, which is the JAG, military officials wrote, full justification for ordering the trial springs from the fact that this case is of vital interest not only to the families of those who lost their lives, but also to the public at large.

But when it came time to making their lives, but also to the public at large. But when it came time to making their case, officials in Washington failed to mention the myriad ways in which they contributed to the tragedy themselves, choosing instead to lay blame completely at the feet of Captain McVeigh. I don't understand how. In their summary report, the JAG wrote,

the court is of the opinion that a contributory responsibility for loss Indianapolis rests upon Captain Charles B. McVeigh III, U.S. Navy, for failure to order zigzag courses to be steered and that a contributory responsibility rests upon Captain Charles B. McVeigh III, U.S. Navy, for delay in connection with reporting the loss of that ship due to failure to send out a distress message. But both of those things are incorrect. Mm-hmm. But a media blackout delay in connection with reporting the loss of that ship due to failure to send out a distress message. Both of those things are incorrect. But a media blackout went into effect with only the most basic information about the disaster being released by the military. On August 15th 1945 an

Associated Press article went out on the wire announcing that the Indianapolis had sunk in the Pacific and a few days earlier the military reported a hundred percent casualties and gave a version of events that directly contradicted the statements released a few days later. So it was just mayhem. Like things were being released that was completely not true. Like full falsehoods. So the Navy worked very hard to make the charge of failing to send out a distress signal stick, but it soon became apparent that they couldn't do that without implicating themselves. So instead, they went after him for failing to properly execute the zigzag

maneuver. He was doing a zigzag maneuver before that, but he wasn't at the time of the attack. That's what they're hinging this on. Okay. And like I said before, it was precautionary what he was doing before. It wasn't even ordered. It wasn't necessary. In support of the charge, the government subpoenaed Commander Mochisura Hashimoto. The guy who ordered the torpedoes into the boats. The captain of the submarine that fired on the Indianapolis. We're going to trust that guy?

Oh, get ready. In his testimony, Hashimoto acknowledged that McVeigh hadn't engaged the zigzag maneuver, but then said zigzagging would have made no change in the way he fired the torpedoes and that he would have sunk the defenseless ship either way. He's going to come back later. Now, given this heavy censorship and the media blackout, the military was able to effectively control the narrative. That's not good. They pin the institutional failures on McVeigh.

To have that man man his crew the way he did and survive all of that? Good. His crew comes out for him. In November 1958, McVeigh was found guilty of negligence, shocking everyone familiar with the situation. They just scapegoated him completely. Reporter Paul McGee wrote, the verdict came as complete surprise. The evidence in the case was believed by most to have indicated that instead of McVeigh's being negligent, his ship was efficiently, it was an efficiently

run vessel. And it was. The decision to court-martial Charles McVeigh pissed off the survivors of the Indianapolis, who all believed, generally all believed him to be a very strong leader and had no fault whatsoever for what happened. Twibble recalled, once the captain was court-martialed, my first thought was, how can we get these guys for doing this? Good. And name all, all the men started writing letters to Congress and speaking out publicly on McVeigh's behalf, eventually finding an ally in New Hampshire Senator Robert

Smith, who called the court-martial morally unsustainable. Unfortunately, Smith's attempts to overturn the verdict were unsuccessful and the decision stood. It literally forever marred McVeigh's military record, and in the wake of the decision, McVeigh began receiving an endless stream of angry letters from the public and civilians who blamed him for the tragedy now. And author Doug Stanton wrote, he read every letter he received and took them all personally. Eventually, and this is very tragic, eventually the burden and shame unfairly thrust upon him, Charles McVeigh became too much to bear. I can't imagine. On November 6, 1968, Captain Charles

McVeigh shot himself at his home in Connecticut. Oh, that's so sad. He had lost his wife to cancer several years earlier, and those who knew him best believed after she passed, he had nothing left to go on for. Oh, God, that's awful. Now, there is more after this. That is an awful, awful tragedy. But something does come out of it. Now, as was common of this era and that generation, the men who survived the sinking of the Indianapolis never spoke publicly about their appearance, for the most part at first.

And they never talked about the effects of the trauma that they had endured. But after McVeigh's death and the passage of time, it inspired many of them to come forward and tell the world what really happened because they were like, fuck that. Well, yeah, he died in vain. Edgar Harrell said, it's not justifiable to put the blame on Captain McVeigh. They just broke him in more ways than one. That's so fucked up. Harrell was among several crewmen who after over the later decades of the 20th century told their stories through books, television interviews, oral history projects. He said,

I can still see and feel the trauma of swimming those four days. I can still remember today as if it were just yesterday. As early as 1960, the survivors began getting together every year for a union and to remember those that they'd lost. Eventually, their group once again rallied to exonerate Charles McVeigh. And they finally succeeded in 2000 with the help of the most unlikely source you can imagine. You said that guy was coming back. 54 years after he'd testified at Charles McVeigh's court martial, Mochitsura Hashimoto was again before the United States government, this time in order to help restore McVeigh's name and reputation. Let me just say that's a full karmic circle. That's a

wild circle. In his testimony, Hashimoto said he wanted to join the brave men who survived the sinking of the Indianapolis in urging that your national legislature clear their captain's name. Our people have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences. Perhaps it's time your people forgave Captain McVeigh for the humiliation of his unjust conviction. Wow.

This is the man who essentially is responsible for sinking. Yeah, he ordered the torpedoes. Which he had to. It's war. Like, that's what it's awful. I can't even. This is the man who ordered the torpedoes and he is coming forward. Full circle. And saying to the US, to Congress, he's saying, maybe it's time your people forgive Captain McVeigh for the humiliation of his unjust conviction. That's a mouthful. Yeah, it is. This time, the US military was willing to listen and moved by the testimony, Congress voted on October 12th, 2000 to exonerate Captain Charles McVeigh.

You just wish that he was there to experience that. Exactly. 13 days later, Mochitsura Hashimoto passed away. That is on some life shit that you just can't explain. That's the last thing you had to do that. You had to clear that. I just feel like you got to believe in something. There's something. I don't know what it is. Exactly. I don't know what, but that makes gotta believe in something. There's something. I don't know what it is. Like, I don't know exactly. I don't know what, but that makes you believe in something. But holy shit. Harrell later said just to have him exonerated meant something,

but it didn't do him any good. And then he said, it certainly did us good. That's good that like his crew got to see that happen. Like the remaining members. Wherever he is, hopefully he saw it happen. I know. That's so sad that he lived the rest of his life being blamed for something that was not shouldering it. Yeah. Reading every letter to the remaining survivors of the Indianapolis exonerating McKay was literally the last chapter of the Indianapolis story.

But 17 years later, the story got a kind of epilogue that no one was expecting. Seventeen years later, the story got a kind of epilogue that no one was expecting. In the summer of 2017, a dive team led by Microsoft founder Paul Allen announced they had found unmistakable wreckage of the Indianapolis, more than 18,000 feet down in the Philippine Sea. He said in a statement, while our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming. By that time, only 19 of the original survivors remained.

And most were too frail and too, you know, past the point of being able to make an appearance or comment on it. But instead, Captain William Toady, a spokesperson for the survivors, released a statement on their behalf. For more than two decades, I've been working with the survivors. To a man they have longed for the survivors released a statement on their behalf. For more than two decades, I've been working with the survivors to a man they have longed for the day when their ship would be found solving their final mystery. They all know this is now a war

memorial. Wow. I just sent chills down my back. And that is the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. What a story from beginning to end. And thank you to Dave for such amazing help with this research because this is a ship in and of itself of a research pile and it's, there's so much to this. And so many different rabbit holes you can go down on shore. And I'm sure a lot of, like of like you don't really I never learned about Captain Charles McVeigh and the and what had happened after that and what he went through and that it was Hashimoto who was the one who moved the US military to exonerate him. Like that's the story of the story. If you wrote that people would be like that's wild and like too fictitious to to have. Yeah. Like that's a that's a story. Seriously. Blew my mind. I'm absolutely mind-boggling right now. Blew my mind. I feel like I'm just gonna dive into like a hole. I know. I just I want to go like find out even more. Yeah, because listen to these like survivors interviews and stuff and read their stuff. It's fascinating what they went through. And to hear all the different perspectives. I can just like hear the history channel playing in our house. Yeah. Papa always loves the history or watches the history channel.

I feel maybe that's why Charles McVeigh's name sounded familiar to me. It probably did. Yeah. Yeah. So go dive into the history channel. Go research this guys. It's fascinating. Wow. I'm like shocked. Yeah. That's a crazy tale. Truly harrowing. I don't even properly know how to end this. So I guess I'll just say we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. Be cool to one another. Yeah. I'm sorry. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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