Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Worst Shark Attack in History, the USS Indianapolis Disaster - Part 3: The Rescue and the Trial

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

This is the third and final episode in the horrifying saga of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The bravery and perseverance shown by the men was matched only by the tragic aftermath that many of the men faced long after the ordeal was over. Watch here: https://youtu.be/7mTuvgaNmx0 Cornbread Hemp: Get 30% off at http://cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack with any purchase at http://drinklmnt.com/tooth Rocket Money: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://RocketMoney.com/claw today Hims: Start your free online visit today at http://Hims.com/TOOTH ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Welcome back, everyone. This is Tooth and Claw podcast. This is our last ever episode about sharks. We had a good run. Part three.

I mean, at least for what we have planned. Yeah, sure. This might be our last Oceanic White Tip. Nah, probably not. Hey, Wes. Yeah. If you saw someone do an upside down flipping you off, would you be offended, like their hands upside down?

Like a thumbs down, but flipping you off? I wouldn't be any less offended than like a normal flip off. Right. That makes sense. Would you be equally offended? I would be equally offended, which is very little. really offended because i think if someone did that to me it wouldn't even really register as it just looks so weird i would just think why are they flipping me off like that okay why where's this

coming from uh braxton our editor got mad at me for flipping him off but it was pointed downwards yeah i don't think that matters i just think it's weird i didn't think i was doing anything okay i think you are but well like jeff said we are about to do our last episode of things right there, so maybe you need to clarify. We're not actually about to do our last ever episode on sharks, but we are doing our last episode on the shark attack of the USS Indianapolis. Yeah. And if you're just joining us, yeah, this is your first time listening to Tooth and Claw.

Jeff, what should they do? Go back in time. Okay. And listen to part one right when it comes out. Yeah, you don't actually have to go back in time. Mike, what could they do in real time? They could press stop. Okay.

toggle over to the first or the second episode, preferably the first. Probably start on the first. That's just my personal suggestion. They could start the second episode where we do this same thing. Right. And tell them to stop. And then they can go back to the first. Or maybe they're like a savant and they can listen to them at the same time.

Yeah. Or like start the first one and 10 seconds later start the second one. That work? No. That's a good thought though. I like the way you're thinking. Yeah. All right.

And don't listen to us at a. fast speed because our voices will sound high and whiny. Alvin. So we don't allow that. If you're at 1.2 or something, put it down to 1. That's not that bad. 1.2 is all right. It's what I listen to when I'm doing edits.

And it always makes me kind of like, oh. Really? Yeah. Gives me the ick, you might say. So I stopped doing edits. Yeah. Fair enough. Anyway, we're Tooth and Claw podcast.

We tell stories about animal attacks and we talk about why. they're often the fault of the humans or the people did something to lead the animals to attack them. You're always blaming humans for everything. Oh, the world is too hot because humans. We would have way more sharks if it weren't for humans. Without a doubt, we would. Yes. I do blame humans for most things.

And you know what? I'm complicit in some of it, but I'm doing my best. Oh, you admit it. I'm doing my best to change that. All right. You and all your shark fin boots. I don't have any kind of shark. anything.

Actually, they don't make boots out of shark fins. No. You just gave them the idea. Shoot. Strike that from the record. Your honor. Okay. So if you guys remember in part two, we had left where all the men were in the water,

they were dying at a really fast pace. It had been days since most of them had any water or any food. They were being eaten by sharks. They were killing each other. Things were looking really, really bad. I think we are getting to a point where all of these men were probably going to die, and they were all praying for help. Well, Lieutenant Chuck Gwynn was pretty frustrated in the late morning of August 2nd, 1945.

This is a rancher's son from rural California, and he now is a bomber pilot in the Pacific. And after a lot of flights looking for enemy ships and submarines, he and his flight crew had yet to see any action, kind of like Hashimoto in his sub. Yeah. someone that's gone the entire war without really having any kind of success. He'd just been, yeah, flying around. Yeah, they would not just flying over the blank Pacific. They're based on the small island of Pelleyloo,

and each day they would do patrols at 3,000 feet in a Lockheed PV1 Ventura bomber, and each day they would come back without having shot a single round or dropped a single bomb. They had lots of bombs. They also had death charges. You guys know what death charges are? For submarines, yeah, for submarines, exactly. You're a gun guy, Jeff. Jeff, you're going to know what depth charges.

Yeah, it kind of fits in that Venn diagram of guns. You got some, right? You got some torpedo chambers in your closet. Go to Walmart and say, what kind of depth charges do you have? All right. August 2nd was particularly frustrating because Gwynne was flying a certain plane he didn't especially love or feel comfortable in, and they were using a new antenna that was constantly breaking and needing repairs.

This antenna had like a sock on it, and the sock would blow off or break. They constantly had to fix it. It was really annoying. Like the Bill and Ted's antenna, where they're like using chewing gum to put it together again? That's kind of what I picture. Yeah. It broke that morning and Gwyn and a few of his crew were doing their best to fix it in the air when Gwynne suddenly saw something strange out of the window down on the water. And I think this is important to know, like, it's because they were fixing this antenna that he had the perspective to look straight down through the plane. Usually they would just kind of be looking out and they're not necessarily looking straight down.

And looking out, they probably wouldn't have seen the darker, slightly darker color of this oil slick. Oh. Like, people have run numbers on the chances of him seeing this oil slick and it was like a million to one chances or something. Really? Yeah. I don't totally know why.

Yeah. Yeah. But he did see the oil slick. Yeah. So they suddenly get really excited because an oil slick like this is mostly coming from a submarine generally. and maybe one that had been damaged. And so they finally had some hope

that they would be able to sink one of the emperor's submarines. Do you think that's what BP oil was hoping people would blame it on up in Alaska? No, that's one of those Japanese subs from like forever. Or they're like hoping that the million to one chance no one would notice it. Yeah.

They got to look straight down. Let's just hope no one looks straight down. BP was the Gulf, right? Yeah. Alaska was Conoco. You're right. Yeah, or Exxon. Exxon mobile.

Let's start the episode over. Yeah, I'll get that. Re-rack it. Bill, re-rack it. Just kidding, Bill, don't come out here. So they're ready to go. They make sure their guns and bombs are ready to go. Depth charges.

Yeah, depth charges. Gwyn takes the plane lower to about 900 feet, which is also very important. And they're following this oil slick. And as they do it, his eyes are just fixed on this water looking for the shape of a submarine just below the surface. But he doesn't see a submarine. What he did see confused him. could just barely make out the figures of a few dozen men in the water, and they're waving and slapping the water trying to get his attention. At this point, he has no idea if these are

Japanese or American soldiers, because no American ship had been reported sunk in the area for weeks, but as they saw more and more men in the water, they realized these survivors had to have come from a big ship and that they needed immediate help. So he told the men in his plane to drop emergency life rafts and this thing called a sonobooi that could be used as like a communication port and as a way for them to get a point to come back to. Meanwhile, many of the men in the water had essentially given up hope. They knew that soon they would either die of thirst, be killed by the sharks, or even their own crewmen, they were starting to lose their minds. And during their time in the water, a lot of planes had actually passed way overhead. Like they'd seen a lot of bombers flying by

and whatnot. But almost all of them were flying at high altitudes. And to see them at like 3,000 feet would be essentially impossible. It's like if you're coming in for a landing over a city and you're still three, 5,000 feet above and you look down, you can't make out a person. It would look like a hair almost. So they just knew they weren't going to get seen by them. They even had some flares and they, like they weren't seen the flares or anything.

I can see all your hairs. Yeah, you can't. But can you see one if I put it on the ground right now? No. Okay. That's what I'm talking about. But there is more than one guy. That's true.

That's a good point. Yeah. It would be like 800 hairs. Also, the sea is like glittery and stuff. Okay. Anyway, they drop. River's hairs. Yeah.

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So these guys are starting to lose their minds. Planes are flying by. They knew that the chance of them seeing was essentially zero. And they'd been floating for four and a half days now. So they knew that a rescue. hadn't been launched. They were expecting a rescue. It would have been in the first few days.

And they had actually floated about 80 miles from the side of the sinking, so rescue crews wouldn't even know where to look. No flares in the provisions, I take it. They did have some flares, but they were like short-range ones and not effective for like these bombers that were way up there. Does that count for like, do you think they can say they swam 80 miles? No. The ones out of the raft?

I don't think so. I mean, they drifted. No. It's not like they didn't go 80 miles in the water. Sure. I'd put an asterisk. Yeah, they're doing it. Yeah.

There's a pretty far to swim. So even as they're, like, even as they're floating there, their prayer starts to become more hopeless. They're praying that their end would be quick and painless, that their families would know how much they love them. But the thought of rescue is very far from most of their minds, especially the guys that were floating. So when some of the men start noticing something in the air on the far horizon, they

immediately assumed it was just like a large bird or maybe a hallucination. But as it got closer and closer, the unmistakable sound of a bomber filled their ears. It was a plane, and it was much, much lower than all of the ones they had seen so far. So they started yelling and splashing, doing their best to get the attention of the pilot. Tragically, this actually led to more shark attacks because they start splashing in the water and stuff, and the sharks came in and started attacking them. And as the plane passed, there was a brief moment where this big, feeling of sadness hit them because the plane flew by them and they thought maybe he hadn't

seen them. But then rafts fell from the plane and Gwyn tipped the wings and wobbled them in a clear message that they had been seen and help was on the way. It's like when Gandalf rides by all the kids and they're like expecting fireworks and he doesn't light him until he's passed. Yeah. It's kind of like that. Yeah. I think that's probably what this squid guy was trying to reference when he did that. That's where Tolkien got his. Yeah, I think got that idea from. I just like to, I mean, they talk about the euphoria they felt when like he rocked the wings back and forth. But it's just like, I think it's a feeling of euphoria and happiness that we like can't experience. You know, it's like.

I mean, we could. We could. But like. If like the exact same scenario happened to us. Yeah. It just seemed like they had resigned themselves to like violent deaths. And then suddenly they were pulled out of that. Yeah.

And it's hard to even. and put into words what that must have felt like. Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. I think, yeah, that's it. That's exactly what I was looking for. All right. One of the groups that Gwyn had seen was the group that Dr. Haynes was in, the group of floaters.

He was still barely clinging to life and his sanity, but his group of 400 men had been whittled down to about 100. Oh, man. Yeah. Most of the men had found life jackets, but at this point, they're so waterlogged that they almost were more of a hindrance than they were a help. So they were actually pulling men under water. And they were fighting to keep their chins above water. Bad life jackets. Yeah, they're old ones.

They just, like, get waterlogged. So they would also, like, take them off. But they talked about how they were getting kind of melted by the seawater at this point. So when they would take off the life jackets, like skin and flesh would go with them. Yeah. So even as this, as Gwyn is circling above these men, men are giving up and drowning. Like, there are people that drowned while he was circling. But life jackets and rafts are raining down from the heavens,

and for those that were able to rally a little bit of last strength, they finally had hope again. Okay, this next part is a little crazy. I'm going to do my best to explain it concisely. I would do want to just shout out my sources again. I really enjoyed these books, but I used In Harms Way, The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis,

The Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton, Indianapolis, the true story of the worst sea disaster in U.S. Naval History and the 50-year fight to exonerate an innocent man by Lynn Vincent and Sarah Vlatic. And then the last one was Left for Dead, a Young Man Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis by Pete Nelson. Those were my main sources. And I wanted to say those now because I kind of have to condense a bit of this. And I just want to say that I do think these books are worth reading. They're very interesting. There's a lot of stories that I couldn't really put into this three-part series. So check them out. Okay, basically, Gwyn's plane didn't have enough fuel

to keep circling. So he managed to get a fix when he fixes this antenna. He gets a point for where these guys are. He radios it into command and tells them there was at least 150 people in the water and that they need to send some ships. So again, this is going to kind of talk. That one guy's Like, I already tried to. They won't let me. The Navy kind of messes up here again. Oh, no. So one of the guys that gets this message immediately wants to send some amphibious planes that were used to pick up people at sea.

Usually they're used for planes that went down, not ships. But he didn't have any authority to actually make this call. And when he tries, he gets shut down by his high-ranking official that didn't really know anything about the rescue mission yet. That's crazy. Yeah. So he, like they say, no, you can't send those planes. Did the guys say like it's a rescue mission? Yeah, but like it hadn't gotten up to like high command yet.

Only these guys that immediately heard the message were saying anything. Yeah. And they're like, no, we need like authorization. That's crazy. Yeah. So instead, what he did have authorization to do was send out another one of these little bombers to circle so Gwyn could come back. Meanwhile, the message finally does trickle into the lapse of some high command. And luckily, one of them does take it seriously.

and he dispatches two destroyers to the area, and he tells them to, like, haul ass. He says, get there as quick as you can. We're going to talk about what happens when they show up. But one of the craziest things is that not long after Gwynn spotted the oil slick, and amphibious PBM5 does show up in the area. This was exactly the type of plane the other guy had wanted to send, but he wouldn't be able to get permission. So this PBM5 drops altitude, they see the men in the water,

and they drop their life rafts, their life jackets, provisions. But as they're circling, they see something that just chills them to the core. As they're circling these men, they also see hundreds of sharks circling them. And right before their eyes, they watch as men who were happily splashing in the water to draw their attention, were ripped to shreds by sharks. Jeez. Yeah. So they actually saw people being killed by sharks,

and they had to kind of watch the happiest moment of these men's lives turned to a nightmare. So the people weren't making up the shark stories. They weren't. No. Like there is a second. That's verified. Yeah. So this is kind of a cool story.

Adrian Marks was the pilot of this PBM5, which was affectionately called a Dumbo. And he had actually heard the message from Gwynn. And he just took his plane off with this crew immediately without getting authorization. Wow. He was just like, we have the right plane for this. We're going to go rescue these guys. And when he saw the sharks and then the men below, he immediately called in to request permission to land the plane on the water and pick up the survivors and his request was immediately

denied and the reason for that is landing these planes on the open ocean was almost always a disaster because there's swells and if you hit them you like rocket off of them and stuff and it just like is a bad scenario but he really wanted to do it anyway marks hears that he's not allowed to do this and he pretty much says i'm not leaving these guys he sends a message that says says, will attempt open sea landing. And his whole crew agrees with them that they're just going to do it. Nice. Because they also witness these shark attacks.

Okay, I want to read about their landing straight from one of the books in harm's way by Doug Stanton. I think this is just a really interesting picture that he paints. And I can't say it better than him. So I'm just going to read it right from the book. He cut the throttle, dramatically lifting the nose of the lumbering Catalina and set her down in a power stall. Hitting the top of one of the waves, the Playmate 2, that was the name of this, this plane,

was knocked back skyward 15 feet, then it came down even harder. At any moment, the plane could blow apart. On the third huge blow, she settled down like a hen over an egg, her seams and rivets popping and seawater streaming in. Marx's crew shoved cotton and pencils into the holes in the metal skin of the plane. The radio compartment, located midplane, was taking on water, and the radio men began immediately bailing, starting a pace that would keep all the crew busy at a rate of 10 to 12 buckets an hour.

The propellers were still spinning, and it was essential they didn't dig into the sea or they would flip the plane. So they really risked a lot. Yeah, sounds like there's kind of good reason to tell them not to attempt that. Yeah, yeah. And what they do is they immediately begin taxiing this plane around on the water

and just loading as many men as possible into the plane. They landed near the men from Dr. Haynes' group, which now has about 95 people in it, because some have drowned and been eaten by sharks since they first spotted them. And the nearest destroyer was still 12 hours away. So they had to do their best to get as many of the people out of the water as quickly as possible. And they were focusing on the men that looked like they needed the most help. So the really unfortunate part of this is a lot of these men actually drowned or were killed as they swam for rescue.

I watched an interview with one of the survivors. His name was Seaman first class Dick Bellin. And he was with his good buddy and two other men in the Haynes group. And when one of the rafts landed, so they dropped all these rafts from the planes. And they were rubber rafts, so they would actually get him out of the water. One of them landed 50 yards from him and his friends, and they decided to swim for it. He swims as hard as he can. He's the first to reach the raft.

And when he pulls himself in, he realizes he's alone. Dude. He looks back and he sees one of the men like grabbing his. chest way back and struggling to swim and then that guy drowns and the other guy that he didn't really know was nowhere to be seen then he sees his friend terry who's only 10 feet from the raft but really struggling to stay afloat and for a second he thinks about jumping in to help terry but he's so worried about his own energy reserves that he doesn't know he'll be able to pull himself back up on the raft so instead he just yells come on come on you're going to make it and he stretches out his

arm to help him get into the raft and a shark explodes from the water and with his arm still stretched out he sees as Terry screams and is pulled under the water and he's the only one that makes it to the raft and he told this story himself it was like yeah it was crazy so pilot marks is now taxiing there's a large net hanging out the door of the plane that they could use to pull men up on and as they bring the plane toward the first men they see in the water he reaches down to pull him up and he just comes really quickly out of the water and he realizes he's just holding onto the torso of a guy. So he immediately drops that. And then they start rescuing living men.

And as they pick them up, they learn they're from the Indianapolis, which was a big shock for them. But back on land, some of the... That ship that's been missing for five days? Oh, yeah. Huh. That doesn't make any sense. Back on land, some of the high command at Guam and Leite and Pelilu were starting to kind of figure it out. They had heard that there was this many men floating at sea,

and they were like, wait, we haven't seen the Indianapolis for a day. Yeah. Right. And some of these like rear admirals and admirals and commanders are starting to realize like they really messed up. Yeah. So commander Norman Gillette, who is one of the guys that received the SOS message and didn't follow up, sent a message to rear Admiral McCormick, who was the guy that was going to be in charge of training the Indianapolis crew on Lati? And his message said, has Indianapolis reported to you? And the response from McCormick was negative. Oh, no.

So a lot of these guys are starting to sweat. Like, they know that they messed up. Gillette's the guy that had those, the tugboats turn around like seven hours into their trip, right? Oh, dude. He could have been a hero. I know. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So a lot happens during this first 12 hours before the destroyer show up. but I might have to summarize it. Basically, Marx's plane is pretty much coming apart at the seams, but he continues to pack men onto it, becomes so full that he even starts putting survivors on the wings of the plane. They do their best to pick up men that seem to be in the most need of rescue, but dozens, if not more, drowned or were killed by sharks

as they tried to get to the plane to be picked up. Do you know what makes me happy is when the captain gives you those little wings you can pin on your shirt? I'd hand those out to all the men. Yeah. They're like me on. They're like water. And you just give them those little wings.

Yeah. This is much better. Here you go. Other planes had arrived and were dropping more rafts and rescue gear. But the water that they were dropping was in these wood casks. And it almost always broke when it hit the water. So these men kept like, that was the first thing they wanted. And then it would be like tainted with seawater.

Just destroyed right in front of their eyes. That sucks. Yeah. So Marks had 53 survivors on his plane by the time he was completely full and he was like really shocked by their state. Men are covered in ulcers, oil, shark bites, sunburn and they're all gaunt, starving and ravaged by dehydration. They looked like living corpses. So I want to read a quick section from Indianapolis, that other book. That's how people lost weight before Ozmpic.

Just going out toward it. Stranded at sea. Yeah. Like it sucks, but it works. It does work. It works very well. It's effective. All right.

So this is about, I just thought this was like a really touching thing that happened with these survivors as they were on the plane. In the rear of the plane, the crew thought they'd run out of fresh water until a thorough search turned up a partially full water beaker in the radio compartment. Someone poured the water into a kettle and passed it up top where a crew member picked his way carefully down the wing, rationing the precious liquid to four or five men at a time. The kettle was then passed below, refilled, and the process begun again. As the crewman on the wing took the last of the water down to the line of men in the dark, he worried that he wouldn't be able to figure out where in the line he'd left off. He was surprised when, despite their misery, voice after voice in the darkness, said the same thing. I've had mine.

Wow. Yeah. So these men that are like, as thirsty as a human being can possibly be, would just get a sip of water, and they had the chance to kind of lie and get more. They cared so much about their fellowship mates that they told them they were honest, you know, which is crazy. I get that sense talking to my brothers who both served in different tours in war. The brother ship you develop with your fellow soldiers, whether you agree or not with whatever

they get up to, wherever they go. Like, it's a friendship and a bond that you can't artificially create. You know, you go through hell and life and death. Well, I think especially like something like this, you know, where it's like maybe the worst thing that any soldiers in modern war have had to deal with. Do you know? I think lately there's been a lot of science about proper hydration, and we're learning a lot about electrolytes and how good they can be for you.

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no questions asked. They have a very low return rate and a very high reorder rate. Thank you, Element, for sponsoring this episode. Okay, so close to midnight, the USS Doyle, which is one of the destroyers, finally arrives on the scene, and it's being captained by this guy named Graham Clayter. He had also defied orders and chain of command to get his show. ship that close and he was about to do something even more rebellious and courageous. He ordered the men on his ship to turn on their huge spotlight and point it skyward.

Why do you guys think that might be something that they really wouldn't want him to do? Batman. Batman might show up. Shine the lights upward? A huge spotlight pointing straight up. Japanese. Yeah, it makes them a huge target. Like a huge beacon for any submarine, any plane.

any plane, any warship. It essentially makes him the biggest target in the Pacific. Like, they wouldn't even smoke cigarettes in the nighttime on these ships because they were worried about the cigarette light being seen by enemies. So this was a huge risk, but the reason he wanted to do it was to tell the men in the water that he was there and to hang on a little longer. And there are multiple men that once they came out said they would have died had he not turned on that light.

So it's really cool. It had its intended effect, and the men in the water had not managed to board the plane, knew that they would be able to just hang on a little bit longer for rescue. The Doyle dropped whale boats, and the smaller boats went first to Marx's Dumbo, that floating plane, and they took the men from the plane and took them back to the Doyle. Okay, this is a gross part. It's terrifying. It's gross.

Most of these men had been floating in saltwater for four days and five nights, and the salt water, as I mentioned earlier, had made their skin and flesh extremely soggy and pruned and waterlogged. I think, you know, if you guys go into the ocean for a couple hours even, your fingers afterward, like, how do they feel? My nipples. Your nipples. Yeah.

If I'm on a surfboard. Yeah. Bad. They're not just like pruny, but they're also really sensitive, I feel like. Like you kind of, they feel almost like translucent, you know? For sure. Yeah. And these men had been in the water for like almost five days.

So they'd essentially started melting. And their life vests rubbing on them. Yeah, they're covered in ulcers. So a lot of the men are screaming when they're lifted out of the water and onto the boats. And that's because as the rescuers grabbed them under the arms or whatever, they would feel the skin and flesh and muscle pull away from the bones, kind of like a sock pulling off of a foot. And they were like removing big chunks of these men as they're pulling them aboard.

So they learned they had to be as gentle as possible. but sometimes they're not able to because the boats are moving and there's currents and everything. So it was some pretty unbelievably bad stuff to witness and be a part of. Another boat showed up, the other destroyer, the USS Bassett, and not long after they began rescuing men and pulling them aboard too, the captain of this boat, Captain Therald, was apparently a huge asshole. And his men, like, hated him because when they first met him, he made other people like carry his bags and stuff and was just like really hoity tooty and so something crazy happened as they were starting to load their small boats into the water one of his crew saw shark and he yelled out look at that huge fish fish is also a term for a torpedo and so he heard that and he panicked and he told his crew to fire up the engines and just to get out of there and some of his high-ranking officials

knew he was a coward. They physically got in his way and said, we're not leaving these men. And they escorted him to his room. And put an armed guard around him so that he couldn't, like, change his mind, which is really sweet. Yeah. And then they told on him, too.

Yeah. Yeah, because we know about him. There were other ships that showed up, too, but there was also some really incredible heroism. This one guy, Bill Van Welp, was literally jumping in this pitch black water. This is like happening after midnight, swimming around to help men get into the rescue boats.

And this is like a big farm boy and he's just huge. So they said he would pick up like six men at a time in his arms. That's awesome. And he's staying in the water so long so they can help all these men get to safety. And when his boat was full, he actually stayed in the water so that more of the men could like get into the boat and get to safety. He said they can have my spot.

I'll wait here for you to come back. When his boat showed back up, he got back in and they headed toward the Basset, but they hit a wave and their boat tipped to one side and three of the Indianapolis survivors toppled into the water and immediately sank. So everyone on this rescue boat is just like, this is the saddest thing that could possibly happen. Like these guys are on their way to rescue and they drown. And before they're even able to really process it, this guy, Bill Van Welp, jumps in the water and just dives down. And everyone's just looking out with their binoculars and just watching the water for like 20 seconds.

And then he breaks the surface and he's holding all three of these guys. That's crazy. Yeah, that's cool. Like a legend. Yeah. I want to read his biography. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Meanwhile, the people in command in Guam and Lati and Pelleleu learned that it was indeed the Indianapolis that was rescued. And I think they also realized that they goofed pretty hard.

No goof. Yeah. So messages start getting passed back and forth, and they gradually become more and more confidential. And soon, everything related to the Indianapolis was classified as top secret. Smart. Cover your back. Yeah. And I think that's part of the reason there's this myth of like, oh, this happened because they were on a secret mission.

And let's just remember everyone, their secret mission was over after Tinian. Like they were just doing normal Navy stuff after that point. So that's not the reason that rescue didn't come for them. It's not because of the atomic bomb. Incompetence. Well, and so you could say their prayers were answered, right? Yeah, I would say. But then, like, they probably should have prayed to not got torpedoed.

In the first place? Yeah. They weren't praying hard enough for that. They should have prayed to just be safe from the start. I'm going to pray right now. But I never get torpedoed. That's just going to be my most kid as well. Cover everything.

Berman prayers. I'll pray for you guys, too, so you don't have to. I'd love that. So the men of the Indianapolis were now at this point in a line of like 40 miles when they were rescued. So it took a long time to rescue them. And Captain McVeigh's raft was one of the furthest ones away, and he was one of the last groups to be rescued. But soon all 316 survivors were on board either the Doyle, the Bassett, or some of the other rescue ships that had shown up. They were getting their first food, water, and medical attention for five days.

The plane that had landed, actually, they had to sink because they couldn't fly it anymore. So that plane, that was its last mission. The last men were pulled from the water on the evening of August 3rd, almost 30 hours after the rescue had first started. They would be the last men rescued at sea during World War II. 890 men had gone into the water. 316 had come out. That's like the most famous scripture verse, John 316. John 316.

Braxton. Dude, that's three in a row. Yeah. We're on a roll. Some of these men wouldn't survive the boat ride to Pelelu. Like, that's how depleted they were. I just couldn't. It was past the point of any kind of resuscitation.

I mean, it seems they'd be so fragile that even everything they're ingesting, you have to be careful every step along the way, getting them to a bunk or to the medical bay or whatever. Do you think there were any sharks that, like, showed up right after they got pulled out of the water? and they're like, hey, guys, I heard this is like, quite the place. And they're all like, dude, you just missed it. Yeah, like one track that is there from the start, it's just like, oh, man, you're going to be mad. You're never going to believe.

There was a guy that was this big. I was trying to tell you, like, dude, we said to hurry up. Just three days later, the nuclear cargo that the Indianapolis had dropped in Tinian would be dropped in Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, would immediately kill. almost 70,000 people that were like instantly killed and vaporized, almost all of them, innocent civilians. And by the end of the year, roughly another 80,000 would die from the terrible radiation the bomb would leave in its wake.

In my opinion, one of the most kind of horrific things that's ever happened in the history of the world. For sure. Yeah. And you can argue foreign against it. It's hard to argue for it too much. Yeah. Their argument was that it ended the war.

And it saved millions of lives. that maybe otherwise would have lost it if we had to occupy the mainland. I'm not saying. I will say, I got him to argue for it. I will say, though, what I'm saying is it's inarguable that it is one of the worst thing that it's ever happened,

justifiable or not. I think something that we've kind of always been lied to that's kind of propaganda, in my opinion, is we were told the Japanese wouldn't surrender if we didn't drop this bomb. What I've kind of learned is that they wouldn't unconditionally surrender if we didn't drop the bomb. And an unconditional surrender is, what the U.S. wanted.

And that basically means we got to dictate every single term of that surrender. And I do think Japan was ready to surrender, but they wanted to kind of go to like a negotiating table. Interesting. And the U.S. didn't want that. They wanted unconditional. Well, I remember. For me, that's what makes it wrong.

In the movie Oppenheimer, he kind of says that too, that like they are saying that this made them surrender, but he's like, actually they were like about to surrender anyway. They were ready to surrender that. US just didn't like the terms. Well, we kind of killed more people with the bombs in Tokyo. The firebombing. Yeah, the fire bombing was like maybe up like close to a million people. But between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think we're talking like over 300,000 people dead by the time the fallout was over and everything. So, yeah, it was a lot. McVeigh was on the boat, the ringness and almost immediately was asked for information about the sinking. And he's still kind of in a daze and all these people are.

or asking him questions, and he couldn't even remember if they'd been zigzagging or not. Jeff, we pinned that in the first episode. Yeah. Will you pull that pin out? That's unpin it. Okay, unpin it. Was he zigzagging, Wes? No.

Spoiler. But he had gone to bed and given one of his officer's command when the ship was sunk, but in his report, he decided to say they hadn't been zigzagging, and this would prove to be a very costly admission. And again, this zigzagging thing was required in good visibility, but in poor visibility, they could choose not to zigzag because they were afraid they might like hit something or it wasn't necessarily useful because a submarine can't even really see them in poor visibility.

So they actually didn't think the visibility was good enough to be zigzagging and that's why they weren't doing it. It was in the middle of the night, right? Is that not enough to constitute just blanket statement, poor visibility? Not to like be on the prosecution side here at all. Yeah. The Hashimoto sub did see them. Sure.

You know, so like visibility wasn't that bad. Yeah. But we're going to get into whether or not zigzagging even matters. Because like in the movie Apocalypse, Jaguaripa, he zigzags and that's why he's like able to escape. Yeah. The other guy doesn't. But then like he's much smaller than a naval ship. Yeah, I would say so.

So like I feel like he's a harder target when he zigzags. I feel like with a naval ship, you got a. you got to take into account that it's bigger. Yeah. And that it might still be easy to hit even if it is zigzag. Yeah. Because of how big it is. Yeah.

I think in the trial, the defendant was, or the defense was like, Your Honor, we want to bring to your attention the movie Apocalyptic, directed by Mel Gibson. Yeah. And if you'll notice here, Jaguar Paw is zigzagging. Yeah. Yeah. It will have been a good point.

Yeah. How good can those? The torpedo? I don't think so. That's what I was going to ask, though, because the kiten, are the guys zigzagging in their torpedoes? They could move. I don't think the kaitens were like, like you could do a 90-degree turn and hit something. I think it was more like you could direct it a little bit.

Sure. Still the coolest thing ever, though. Those are so cool. Yeah. You want to get in one? Kind of. Yeah. Where would you target?

I would say if I was in one and I know it was with target. Yeah. If I missed, I would just blow myself up. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. It shows all of your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you forgot about.

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Like, he immediately was like, hey, what happened? You know, like, why were we floating for so long? And not long after Admiral Nimitz in Guam called for a court of inquiry into the sinking of the Indianapolis. and he was joined by this guy named Admiral King, and their job was basically to figure out if anyone was to blame for the sinking and the delayed rescue. Now, Admiral King is a bit of a villain, in my opinion, in this story, and I'm sure he did plenty of good stuff,

but he hated McVeigh's father because he was once a junior officer to McVeigh's dad, and he tried sneaking some girls into a ship, and McVeigh's dad issued him a formal letter of reprimand that was on his record. So some people think, the reason this guy went so hard after McVay is because he just had a grudge against his family. That's so weak.

Because pretty much... By his dad, though, too. Yeah. The guys just having some fun. Yeah, you should just let him... Like, they're a war. Yeah. Let him blow off some steam.

Also, one of the judges on the court of inquiry, like the guys that's going to make the decision whether or not to court-martial McVeigh was one of the admirals that was responsible for the incomplete intelligence report that McVe got about enemy submarines. Oh, so he had a conflict of interest here to protect himself. If you guys remember, the USS Underhill, I don't think I said the name of the boat, which I definitely should have, because it sounds like a Tolkien reference. Yeah. The USS Underhill had been sunk by submarines on the very same route that the Indianapolis was on just like four or five days before the Indianapolis was told there was no danger and they didn't need an escort. Yeah.

So that was a huge mistake by the Navy. and this guy was not about to admit it. Smart. I mean, you shouldn't ever admit anything is what I've learned. Yeah, that's a sign of weakness to admit you're wrong. What list? Why would you do that? What list?

Why are people still talking about it? It was five days ago. There's nothing wrong then. It was almost a whole week. I don't even think there was a client list ever. Let's move on. Yeah. I like me looking forward.

Not like living in the past. All right. after the court of inquiry was conducted, and they pretty much said, yeah, a bunch of people messed up, and that's why you guys weren't rescued earlier. They issued some light reprimands to all of those people, like the guy that recalled the tugboats.

But ultimately, they said that McVeigh was responsible because he didn't zigzag and he didn't make the call to abandon the ship in a timely matter. Two of the admirals just wanted to reprimand him, but Admiral King pushed really hard for a court-martial, and ultimately they decided to court-martial him. Yeah, which means another trial. And he would be the only captain in U.S. Navy history to be court-martialed for the sinking of a ship from an act of war.

So this isn't normal at all that they would do this. So the crazy thing here to me is that the whole Navy should have been on trial for just leaving these guys to float in the ocean. Yeah, like the main crime here was not getting them as soon as they sunk. Right. Yeah, it wasn't like McVeigh probably made some little mistakes. But the like the biggest issue was that no one rescued us. Right. Yeah.

But I think they knew that, and so they wanted to make McVeigh a scapego. Yeah. They wanted to put all of the blame on him. It's like us with Bill whenever we mess us. Except it's actually his fault, always. The court marshal convened in Washington, D.C. on December 3rd, 1945, and a lot of the survivors were called to testify. They weren't allowed to talk about the time in the water, the heroicism of their captain, they were mostly just asked about visibility on the night that they were sunk.

And while most of them said the visibility was bad, and that's why McVeigh didn't zigzag, the prosecution made the point that it couldn't have been that bad because they were obviously seen by the Japanese. So the prosecution called witnesses, the witnesses were like, visibility is bad. And they're like, well, that doesn't count, actually. Was it? It's infuriating. That's so frustrating. This is even more frustrating.

Behind the scenes, the Navy Inspector General had sent a report that said McVeigh did not have proper intelligence about the Japanese submarines and that they needed more time to investigate. But Admiral King really wanted to get McVe court-martialed, so he ignored this report. He just said, no, we're going to keep moving forward. And that report probably would have exonerated McVeigh. On the second week of the trial, they made a really crucial. crazy decision and they brought commander Hashimoto, the commander from the sub that sank the Indianapolis to the trial.

I can't imagine what Hashimoto is going to be thinking is he's walking down the aisle. It's like surrounded by this country that just bombed his people. Yeah. That they just lost a war two. He caused the worst experience of like 900 men's lives. Those people are probably in that crowd watching him walk up to the stand. Dude, that's intense actually. That's crazy

Okay Yeah So at first He told the prosecution What they wanted to hear And he said The visibility wasn't that bad But then he immediately said

That he was super close To the Indianapolis That he had shot six torpedoes And that all of the zigzagging In the world Wouldn't have stopped the sinking Oh nice Yeah

He's just like Yeah He's like there's no way I was missing her Yeah Yeah It was sweet Prosecution though

We know how they play. They're like, well, I don't know. Cut out that last part. But the visibility was good, right? Yeah. They also talked to a highly decorated U.S. submarine commander and asked him how effective zigzagging is, and he pretty much said it does absolutely nothing.

But after the trial was concluded, they still convicted him on the quote. No way. On the count of failing to zigzag, he was demoted, which meant he could never become an admiral, and basically meant he would never. command another ship. Some of the admirals in the Navy did take pity on him and they remitted his sentence. He ended up being promoted to rear admiral, which is kind of a dead-end

thing, and they only did it when he retired from the Navy in 1949. Yeah. All right, it's going to get a little sad here for a second. That Christmas, he started receiving phone calls and letters from angry relatives of the boys who had died from the Indianapolis disaster. Because again, the media had blamed him for all this. So these people now think that he was responsible, and they would essentially tell him that he was the reason their loved ones had died, and he took it really hard, because in some ways I think he did kind of believe him. In 1961, his wife Luis suddenly passed away from cancer. He remarried an old flame, and they seemed to have a happy enough life, but in 1965, his grandson that he really loved died suddenly of an illness, and that kind of

sent him over the edge. He became despondent and depressed. One morning his stepson heard him crying in the bathroom and when he opened the door, McVeigh was clutching a fresh hate letter from a relative and he just told his son-in-law, I can't take this. And then on a cold morning in November of 1968, Charles Butler McVeigh went out onto his front porch with his revolver and ended his own life. He was 70 years old. Oh, man. Yeah. Right.

I mean, imagine sometimes we'll get an unhappy review on Apple podcast. Yeah. It's like kind of bums us out, you know? This guy for decades was getting the brunt of the blame for the worst thing possible. People's children dying in a war. And yeah, unfairly, it seems. Yeah. But dude, that's brutal.

Yeah. That's the worst. It really is. And like, I don't, I think that definitely added to all of it. I think part of it was losing his wife. And we're going to talk a little bit about mental health in a minute. But anyway, really, really tragic end. But there is kind of a silver lining that we're going to talk.

about right now. We're actually going to time travel. We're going to hop in our time machine. Awesome. We're going to go to 1996. Oh. 11-year-old Hunter Scott was probably a little young to see Jurassic Park when it came out three years ago in 1993, but hopefully his parents have let him watch it by now. And I'm guessing they have because he was watching Jaws, his dad, in 1996. Yeah. I mean, there's more nudity in Jod's. There is. And I would argue scarier and more violent, too. in Drescent Park. That's my argument.

When they get to Quince monologue, Hunter is pretty transfixed by it, and he asks his dad, did that really happen? And that started a big old fixation for 11-year-old Hunter Scott. He decided to make his history fair project about the Indianapolis, and he basically put out a want dad to try and get in touch with the survivors of the sinking, and someone replied with the list of all the survivors that went to a reunion. And he interviewed all of them that were willing to be interviewed, and by the time he was 12,

he'd interviewed 150 the survivors, almost 150, and reviewed over 800 documents about the sinking. Yeah. How old is he? 12. There's a photo of him on the back of Left for Dead,

that book, and he's just, like, surrounded by all these, like, papers and stuff, this kid. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, like, I feel like if I was one of the men that survived, like, just telling a 12-year-old, like, Then the shark, like, tore his guts out in front of me, and I was swimming in his guts. And the 12-year-old's like, go on. Just imagine you're his parents.

It's like, do you see what Hunter was reading? It's got 7,000 pages of shark attacks. Yeah. Yeah, that would be hard. If you're, like, sitting in your house trying to forget all this, and it's like, hey, I'm doing my history project. And I want you to tell me about the worst time of your life. Anyway, during that time, he learned that all of the survivors felt as though their captain had been court-martialed unfairly, and his new mission was to try and get McVe exonerated. So during this time, he turns up some of these declassified documents that showed how much the Navy bungled the whole disaster, and those documents would be key to this fight for exonerating McVe.

He was joined by survivors of Indianapolis, some of McVeigh's sons, congressmen, authors, and and many others in his fight to clear McVeigh's name, he even testified before Congress, and he talked to Commander Hashimoto. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. Hashimoto's cool. I love Hashimoto.

I love him. Like, he seems so cool to me. In October of 2000, Congress passed a resolution that exonerated Charles McVeigh for the sinking of the Indianapolis, and Bill Clinton signed that resolution. Oh, nice. Unfortunately, Hashimoto had died five days before the resolution was passed.

Oh. Yeah. I like Hashimoto, he's like, if, like, Steph Curry hit a game winner on someone, and they tried to, like, blame the defender for, like, not staying on him. He's like, no, no, no. Like, he did everything he could.

I just hit the shot. I'm just that good. Yeah. The coaching. The coaching. They should have, like, they should have had a. Yeah. I wasn't missing that shot.

Trapped him at half court or something. They should have had a, what? What's the other ship? Just an escort? An escort. Yeah. The defender needed help. He's like, nope.

We even went 10 escorts, I would have sunk that ship. All right. So the books go into what happened with these men after they got home, their lives, how they kind of went through everything. And I listened to, again, a lot of interviews from these men that talked about this trauma. And I just kind of wanted to mention that I think, especially, you know, in these wars that happened in the middle of the century, the 20th century, it was really backwards kind of how these men were taught to deal with their trauma. I think after World War II is when they kind of started to realize what PTSD was. And even in that context, these men were kind of just told to rub dirt in it and just get over it and go back to normal life.

And a lot of them have made me cry in your sleep. Yeah, exactly. But like, therapy wasn't for them and all of these different things and men have to be tough. And I think some of that still is today. Like men aren't allowed to kind of feel these things. And I just want to say, like, there's nothing wrong with talking to a therapist. There's nothing wrong with getting help if you have some trauma. It doesn't matter if you're the toughest guy in the world.

You know, you need to process that stuff. And I wish some of these men had to been able to because you could still see it in their eyes as they talked about it. That trauma was still with them. And- Go talk to it. 12 year old. Yeah. You know.

That's not what I was talking about, but, um, I mean, it worked. It, no, I don't think that's what helped them process their trauma, but it did help exonerate their captain. I want to see what grade hunter got. He got like a C man. Some teachers like, you didn't follow the guidelines of the, he's like, but I testified before Congress. You didn't cite your sources of, pro, but you missed a comma here.

It's like, sorry, rules or rules. All right, and I also just want to do a quick pitch. Read these books if you're more interested in this story because there's so much information in them. There's likely some things that I, you know, didn't report as well as I could have. So go back and read them. I am like forever. Make your own podcast. Yeah, make a podcast.

It might be better than mine, ours. Yeah, it has really opened up a whole new appreciation for me of like World War II. what these men went through, what human beings can withstand in the face of just some terrible odds stacked against them. Well, for me, too, it's kind of like what sharks are capable if you really give them the opportunity. Yeah, yeah. I know we hadn't talked about sharks much this episode, but they, you don't see anything about the Indianapolis without mention of them. And I think that just points to the fact that this was a lot of sharks that took a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. What did you see?

say the final account was probably from sharks? Up to 150 is what they typically say. Man. I actually think it could have even been more. Between 30 and 150 is what you often read. Yeah, you took like 150 stories of sharks killing someone. I just feel like if the planes are seeing multiple people get killed by sharks. And I know the planes made them like really, you know, energetic and stuff, the people and that drew in the sharks.

but yeah anyway. Yeah. It is another, I was watching some of those interviews. I think it was at the World War II exhibit in New Orleans or somewhere down there. We went to see something and there are some interviews from survivors of the shipwreck. One of the guys that was being interviewed was like, you know, I don't care for sharks. Yeah. I don't really like them.

Yeah. It's like kind of an understatement, but. It's fair. Yeah. It is fair. You know, we try not to vilify them, but. If I could talk to that. that guy, I'd probably be like, listen.

Yeah. Sharks are cool, dude. Yeah. Do you have any idea how many sharks are dying right now? I'm like, look at whale sharks. They wouldn't even eat you. Yeah. Have you heard of the lampuilet of Lorenzini?

Ampulet. It's really cool if you really get into the biology. We do, I mean, we want our listeners to have a huge appreciation for sharks. And again, I want to stress that these are animals that go a long time without eating, and they're going to take advantage of feeding. opportunities and that's all they were doing. And in a way, it's crazy that more people weren't killed after them floating that long. Like the sharks didn't just kill all of them.

So it still shows how cautious they are. They weren't just attacking all of them. There were some of these guys that were bumped the entire time by sharks and they never got in bed. Never got munched. They're into the intermittent fasting trend. You think, like not even that effective, it turns out. I'll introduce him to that Joe Rogan podcast episode.

That guy, that guy that like still hate. sharks yeah like it's fine with me as long as he still hates the Japanese as well but if he like got rid of that grudge and still holds a grudge against sharks I'm kind of like all right dude you gotta pick both or none right he's like I hate sharks but you know what I love torpedoes yeah this episode is brought to you by Hymns Hymns can't solve snoring or blanket stealing but when it comes to performance they got you covered. Take control of ED with personalized treatments with proven ingredients prescribed by licensed providers 100% online. And see, that's the thing. 100% online, you know me.

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All right. So you guys have any questions about the rescue? Anything, honestly, about the Indianapolis before we go into categories? In your personal opinion, I don't know if there was as much material as you'd want to feel confident saying, would you have exonerated McVeigh of all wrongdoing or do you think there is some justification for that court marshalling? I don't think there was justification for the court marshalling. I don't know if I would say I exonerate him of all wrongdoing. Okay. Like I do think even just him being like, oh, we don't have an escort and I have incomplete intelligence and then still kind of going forward. just seems a little like maybe a little kind of reckless.

Yeah, yeah, casual. Like you're kind of just assuming that you're going to be okay. But I don't think McVeigh deserved what he got by any means. I think he was a really good captain. And I think he just was kind of railroaded by the Navy. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. This seems like one of the scariest, worst things that happened in human history, honestly.

Like, even Jaws, which is like a horror movie and very scary. Yeah. The scariest part is them talking about this. Yeah. You know? And I don't know. It's just good. It's almost like too much to comprehend a bit, though.

Like sometimes with our shark stories, it's like one raft. Right. And then you get like a real insight to each person. And for this, it's like 150 people. it's like hard to even keep track of it all. Yeah, like shark attacks were getting to be just kind of like normal to them. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, it's, I agree. Should we normalize shark attacks? I don't know if we need to normalize them, but yeah. I actually just read an interesting article about that, about how like have we pushed it too far saying that sharks aren't dangerous, you know? But I don't think we have on this show. I think we do our best to say that they can be dangerous. Okay.

You guys good? Should we move on categories? I think so. Okay. First category is your favorite captain from pop culture in honor of Charles McVeigh. I mean, there's a bunch. You want just my favorite ever? Probably Jack Sparrow.

Yeah. Mm. Yeah, it's a good pick. It's hard not to say him. That's funny in the first one too, where he's like, you're the worst captain I've ever seen. And then it's shit. The other guy's like, that's the best captain I've ever seen. Or he says you're the worst captain I've ever heard of or something.

He goes, but you have heard of me. Oh, that might have been pirate that he says. Yeah. Yeah, he's a good captain. I agree. First movie is like one of the most rewatchable movies in history. I was playing around with, so we just did our top songs. Yeah.

We made our own tooth and claw bracket of each of us, like chose 16 songs. Yeah. I was playing around Pirates of Caribbean song. Oh, the Hans Zimmer. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. It goes hard. I'm going to pick.

peanut butter Captain Crunch balls You love just the top of your mouth being ripped to shreds Well that's more so regular Captain Crunch I think the peanut butter balls are a little more gentle on the top of your mouth I think the peanut butter ones are the worst for me

Really? Yeah The regular ones have like razor edges Captain Crunch is good I'll stand by that I do like it He's a great captain He's a pretty good

Like he always has little games for you to play Yeah Mazes and trivia and stuff Yeah. Like all good captains. Jack Sparrow just has game night every night on the black girl. Little mazes. I picked Captain Hook from the like Disney animated Peter Pan.

Oh. I just always thought he was such a good character and villain. And something I really miss is just villains that were bad. Like through and through, they're just bad. I hate that in new movies they have to humanize villains and kind of give them like a backstory to show us why they're bad. Yeah. And he was just like a really bad guy.

He was. So I liked that. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't treat Smee very well. No, it wasn't good to Smee. And Smee is like one of the best voice actors in all time. One of the greatest.

Yeah. I actually, this is not official or anything, but I kind of view Captain Hook and Smee is one of the first, like, iconic gay. I think you might be right. Yeah. Oh. You know? They have that kind of, they have a relationship where it's like they're so comfortable

with each other that like even the guy that's, like, even the guy that's, serving under Captain Hook is willing to kind of give him a little bit of the business. Yeah. What does that mean? It means whatever you want it to mean. Okay. All right. I'm going to shout out Captain Morgan.

Okay. Luffy's actually my favorite from one piece. Yeah. And then Captain Moroni. Okay. Captain Falcon. Oh, yeah. I don't like Captain Falcon.

Captain Punch. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Falcon Punch. Yeah. What is he captain of? A race car? I don't know.

Captain Kirk. Captain Kirk. Al Capitan. That one, Rock. Yeah, the rock. Big old rock. That's a pretty good one, actually. It's the most powerful, Captain.

Right. Alex Arnold. Arnold. Arnold. Yeah. His hands? Oh, my God. All right.

See those guys? If you were doing a history fair project, what would you guys do it on? Like, if you have to just do a big old project about one thing in history, what would you pick right now? I've been listening to a podcast called the History of First. philosophy without any gaps. Okay. And the first couple episodes are about those early Greek philosophers. And you know how philosophy back then kind of was all-encompassing of sciences and anthropology,

et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. But they didn't have any basis upon which to expand their knowledge or their theories upon. So they were just saying like, yeah, magnets have souls. Why else would they move? You know, they're just kind of like making stuff up and seeing, just kind of testing it out. And I think that's such a fun idea to really get into. the, like, what they thought the shape of the earth was.

Is it a cylinder? Is it a globe? Is it a flat disk? I just think there's a lot of meat on that bone to explore and have fun with. That's cool. Yeah. Like, Mayan culture. Yeah, like that.

Like Tikal, Guatemala type thing. Yeah. The guy in the second Black Panther, the bad guy. Yeah. Jaguar paw. Jaguar paw. That, like, hoot. Zigzagging. That, like, hoop where you got to, like, hit the ball through with your.

hip and that losing team like dies every time or something. Yeah, right. That is pretty crazy. That's a fun to watch. Yeah. I'd watch a lot of NBA. Yeah. If that was.

Like, you don't even have to like kill them. It's just really hard to like get a favorite player. Mame them slightly. That's true. Like, I wouldn't want to buy a jersey because well, if they die. That's something they'll need to work through. I think I would pick Lewis and Clark because I recently learned that there's a pretty decent chance they walked like through my plot like where I live.

Oh. That they crossed the river like right by us and walked through our little valley. And that just kind of got my mind spinning and I've been reading undaunted courage. And I think that I do think their expedition like led to a lot of really terrible things afterward. But the expedition itself is really fascinating to me. Yeah. It's not like a Columbus thing where they were the ones causing the terrible stuff. But they kind of brought that idea of manifest destiny with them, which is a bad idea.

But it was still really cool that they used so much indigenous knowledge and stuff, and they formed good relationships with a lot of those people. So I just think it's a fascinating story. I'm really enjoying the book. So that's what I would do with all. What are their full names? There's a Maryweather. Maryweather, Lewis, and, man.

Saddam Clark. Saddam Clark. That was it. No way. Saddam. I don't know why that's the name. I can't remember his name. I don't know why I should kill his.

Mark. I got to look it up now because I just said I'm reading a book about him. I can't remember his name. William Clark. William. Okay. I wanted to ask you guys, another real-life nightmare situation you've heard about that you would hate to be involved in.

Because this just seems like the biggest nightmare possible. I'll go first for this one. I want you to. Did you guys ever go in the nutty putty caves? Oh, yeah, that's a guy. Yeah, so out by Utah, or in Utah, there's these caves that I've been in like probably 20 times where you could just kind of like go yourself and wiggle around and they're really tight little caves. And there was this part called the birth canal that I went into where you literally just go through this tiny little canal with your flashlight

and you can't move at all until you get all the way through and then you can turn around and come back. it's like one of the scariest things they've ever done and probably like 15 years ago a guy got stuck in it and there's a whole the worth documentary about it he got stuck I think in the birth canal or one of these other little

shoots and was stuck upside down and just died a slow death in these caves. Yeah like they like hell could get to him but not get him out type of thing. Yeah and so he just died and they closed the caves afterward I mean they like blew up the entrance or something

But that one, anytime I think about it, I get the shakes, the willies. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go with Robert Landsberg and Reed Blackburn. Okay. They were two photographers with Mount St. Helen. And when Mount St. Helen blew up, especially Lansberg, he was famous for not even trying to get away from it.

He, like, knew it. He was toast. Yeah. And he just used his body to protect his camera, so at least, like, his... Really? images of the eruption would make it. Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah. I'm going to go, it's really similar actually to just kind of like a crazy sequence of events of consisting of incompetency and poor judgment and everything, kind of like the USS Indianapolis, but the Chernobyl disaster. Yeah. Where there was just like poor communication, people trying to like save themselves, cover their own backs. And just for so many people there, when they realized how Daney. the situation was, it was already just way too late. You know, like anyone that was anywhere near there or like on that bridge witnessing. I don't know how accurate that mini series was, but yeah, just melting.

Yeah. Melting while still alive. Yeah. It's the worst. All right. Next category, I want you both to pitch me an idea for a show for Shark Week. And I'll pick the better one. Yeah.

I was thinking kind of like all the sharks, they get points for, um, Taking pictures of different types of sharks. Yeah. I think, like, season two, it should be you get points for how many sharks you touch with your hand. It's kidding. Okay. Like, I already have an idea of who's, I'm going to have to do some real bad work. Maybe, or, like, in that shark week where it got canceled, where the Great White went in the cage and broke stuff.

Yeah. That's just the whole show is, like, different sharks in a cage with someone. like breaking into glass cages with people. All right. Don't touch sharks, by the way. So mine's a little more like a sport than a reality TV show. I want to do like a Nathan's hot dog eating contest, but for sharks. You know, there's like the big bait balls and the sharks like take passes through.

If there was some way to keep track of how many fish each of these sharks was eating, you know? Yeah. Like a fat bear week for sharks. Exactly. And you could like keep track of like which shark shows up first. how many passes through the feeding frenzy. We could kill a bunch of whales and leave the whales out there floating. And then at the end of the week, whichever sharks have eaten the most of the whale.

That's such a good idea, Wes. Okay, I pick my idea. Okay. No, Mike you win. Sorry, Jeff. I don't want people touching sharks. All right. This was kind of...

Which one of us three do you think would make it longest on the USS Indianapolis? Oh, that's a good question. Huh. I'm saying Mike Dyes. First just because he's such a good swimmer. I think he'll try to swim too much and the sharks will get him. I think he burns up on the ship or drowns because he doesn't want to get out of bed. Yeah, my door is closed and locked and like it's going to be a long way out.

He doesn't notice the door beat up. Yeah. I think Jeff is surviving the longest because he, I think he's the most, has the most mental fortitude. I would agree. He can just turn his brain off and be like, this isn't whatever. I may be like the least polite and like least is set. Well, actually, Wes is pretty good at not listening to authority. So I feel like if like someone tried to pull rank and be like, you can't be on this raft,

Wes would be like, no. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I don't know. Yeah. But I wouldn't worry about like being polite. I'd get on a raft.

I think Jeff's mental like protection would be the biggest tool. So I would vote Jeff to. Right. Yeah. I think all three of us at this point would know what to do around these sharks, which I just want to remind you. people, if you do find yourself in the open ocean and there's sharks around, the main thing is just staying as calm as possible. So not splashing, not looking like prey, like thrashing in the water or

anything. If the shark does come in close to you, if there is something you can keep in between you and the shark, that's great. And like Dan mentioned, if you just keep facing that shark, especially underwater and even swim toward it, like we've talked about with like mountain lions and stuff too, that isn't what prey does for them. That is very scary to a shark, and that might be enough to convince it that you're not prey. So really, the main thing is just kind of staying in a dominant position with these sharks. Keep your wits about you.

Keeping your wits about you and not splashing at all. I think Mike might have died from the kamikaze pilot because you'd be eating all those beans. Scraping them off behind the... Well, like, you'd be in the beans, and then the pilot hits, and you explode with the beans. I do like those beans. Jeff, have you heard the story of the beans, West?

I told it. No, my beans. Oh, no, I don't think so. I left my beans in Jeff's fridge and he threw them away, like, immediately. And I came back the next day thinking they were still going to be there. Yeah. I think they were in there for like six months. Great.

Were they white northern beans, I think is what they were? You guys are even for the Louisiana. I probably still have them. Yeah. He just refuses. to take them back. All right. It's kind of a bummer of a story,

so I just wanted to ask you guys to something you're stoked about this week. I've been getting really into, so I think we've brought this up before how none of us are traditionally the biggest fans of the character of Superman. Maybe we've thought he's a little boring and bland and flat.

And maybe that's true, but I've been reading a lot of comics, like the most highly recommended ones. And I think a lot of people thought the message of this newest movie was a little saccharine and simple where it's just like be kind to be good like treat people well and I think fundamentally that is what his character is but like just having it in the context of like the most powerful one of the most intelligent the man with the most resources chooses to use his power for good yeah and we just don't

see enough people in places of power whose main goal in life is to like help other people you know I agree. So I just, that's something I've been really excited to kind of get deeper into is, yeah. Me and Jeff are going on a week-long float trip and I brought some of your comics so I can read them. Yeah, I'm excited to also get into that. Jerf. Is that your pick? No.

Yeah, that's probably my pick. It's just, you know, I'm in Montana right now and haven't really fished much this year. So it's been kind of getting to a point where I just can't take it anymore. I have to fish. Yeah. So I'm excited to go fishing for a week straight. Yeah. It's going to be great.

The thing I'm stoked about, we are planning a couple more trips. We're doing Thailand and China next fall sometime. Oh, yeah. And the more I look at the itineries, the more stoked I get about them. You're going to see pandas in China. I'm really excited about that. And just so everyone knows, with those trips, we do tend to give our people on Patreon first crack at that.

So if you are thinking you would love. to go on a trip with us at some point. It's another good reason to join our Patreon is that is where people hear about them first. Okay, a couple listener questions. A few days ago, we asked for questions specifically about the Indianapolis or sharks. We got some more good ones. So this first one is from Tresd-016. They say, if Jeff is elected president, what will be his first act to protect sharks? I mean, my politics is sharks. Yeah. but what's your policy? I don't know if I've really gotten too deep into that.

Okay. Probably, I'll probably elect you. I'll probably put you in charge of that. You sound like a politician. Like I'll put you in charge. Surround yourself with confidence. I got a shark guy. That guy knows more about sharks than anyone.

He's going to take care of these sharks. I would take care of them, but I don't know more than anyone. So what we're asking really is, what is Wes's first? Shark man, Dan. I'll bring him over. Shark man, Dan. My first policy would be to completely outlaw the, like, transport, traffic, eating, anything, any part, any shark, not allowed. And then once you're done with that, you're fired so that I can start my own Panda Island in Hawaii.

Okay. Because you wouldn't allow that. I wouldn't allow that, yeah. All right. Next question. This is from Yichata's. Yichata underscore. What's your favorite sub?

I like Italian. Favorite subs? Italian subs good. That's spicy Italian? Yeah. I mean, the one when it's the best is my favorite is a Philly cheese steak. For meatball. You like meatball quite a bit, don't you?

I like cheaper meatballs better than nice meatballs. Yeah. Like nice meatball subs, the meatballs are too big, but if you go to Subway, the meatballs are perfect size. Yeah. Subs a weird one. I mean, I love chopped cheese sandwiches, but I don't know if that's really quite a sub. I don't even know if a Philly cheese steak is technically a sub.

It's more of like a Hogan. I don't, yeah. So I'm, I recuse myself. All right. I love a 99 at Jersey Mikes. Jersey Mikes. Yeah, I like their, um, pig one. It's, it's mostly like.

Do you get it Mike's way? I don't think so. Yeah. What's that mean? Uh, I think it just means like extra sauce. No. But then there's like a TikTok thing where they make them put on the sauce until the bread's just like,

I like an Italian actually. That's my favorite sub. Really? Yeah, I do. Do you like Italians? Yeah, I love Italians. Really? Yeah.

Like the people? Yeah. Which one's your favorite? Forget about it. That's like American Italian. Yeah, but I like Italian Italians too. What do they say? Nehomori.

Forget about it. I don't know. I mean, in the last tennis tournament, I see you. Don't touch on alcatraz. Alcaratraz. Alcaras. Yeah, he's not Italian.

Singer is Italian. I'm not saying that in every way I love Italians, but I do like Italians. All right, would you guys rather be, this is from cam. Stack, would you rather be one of the Indianapolis boys or the soccer team stranded in the Andes? Ooh. I'm going to pick the Andes because they didn't have animals attacking them. Like I know theirs was colder and probably, I don't know, in some. It has to be the Andes.

How quickly were those people discovered in the sense? That was the big difference. It was like months for them. Oh. And Indianapolis was like days. So five days, but it's way worse. Months, but yeah. I might go, time in.

They said soccer team, but it was a rugby team. Can I choose both? I want both. Yeah. Hardest path for me. Let's see how. You want to get be involved in both. 72 days for them for the Uruguay.

rugby team. The harder life you have, the better you turn out. I want both. Yeah. I just feel like it'd be crazy after hearing about this story for three hours to go with the U.S. 16 out of the 45 were rescued, but a lot of those people died in the crash. So anyway.

I think it's cooler to survive a plane crash or a boat being torpedoed. I think the boat, I think like the Indianapolis story is the best story you could ever tell. Yeah. Have you guys watched Society of the Snow yet? No. That's such a good movie. I watched that one. It'll give you a better insight into the rugby team.

Okay. This one is from Focus 22 Photography. Do sharks lose interest and prey after a while? Would they just keep picking them off if the Navy hadn't rescued them? I think in this situation with these pelagic sharks, these open ocean sharks, they would just stick with them for a very long time. And they probably did with a lot of the corpses. Probably new sharks coming.

in each day. I don't think they ever would have been free from sharks, but other sharks do lose interest for sure. Like if you're out in the ocean, there's a good chance sharks aren't even going to have interest in you. Like Dan said, there's so many videos now of people swimming with great whites passing directly underneath them and not even recognizing the person or like caring about them at all. So often sharks have no interest in us whatsoever, but these particular sharks probably wouldn't lose interest. Right. I agree.

Great. This is from B Cortina 23. Would you rather have a shark head or shark body? You keep your other half. Head, head. Body. Explain. Well, I mean, you guys aren't kissing anyone.

And I'll be so... It always comes down to kissing with you. I'll be so fast at swimming. You guys will be slow at swimming. Yeah. You're going to be bad at walking. What are you going to do with a shark head? chomp stuff?

Eat hot dogs beat Joey chestnut? You didn't think of that, did you? What part of the body would you... What part of the body would you say the gills are on? Is that a head or a body? I'd say that's head. Okay, because I don't want to live... Shoot.

Well, but I think you have both. It seems like either way you're going to have to live in the water. I think you have both. You have gills and lungs if you're a shark head and human body. I think I could claim the gills as part of the body. Let's say we both have gills and lungs. Okay. Yeah, shark head.

I want to live on land. It seems like you'd primarily have to be in the water if you got a shark body. Yeah, who wasn't in Harry Potter that had the shark head? I was sick. Crom. Yeah. Cronk. Cronk.

No, that's Crom. Crock. Crom. Crom. Isn't it Crom? Victor Crum. I thought it was crumb, yeah. Victor Crum.

Yeah, K-R-U-M. Crum. Crum. Crom. Grond. Grond. Yeah, okay. He had more than just a shark head, though.

It was just a head. He used it to. swim. No, you're right, because he's using it to breathe. Yes, he hears this. It's just his head. Oh, and he had the dorsal fin too, but his arms are human. That's pretty sick.

Yeah, that's pretty sick. That's what I want. I want the crumb special. All right. R. Martinez's X. What is something the average person can do to help protect sharks? It's a great question. I think the biggest thing an average person can do to help protect sharks is be really conscious

about your seafood decisions. So only buy seafood from verified sustainable sources. The brand that we rep, Wild Alaska, I really looked into them. There's stores that only sell sustainable seafood, there's restaurants that only sell it. So you can do your research and just make sure you're not eating stuff that is fished unsustainably. And that whole, like, those classifications, they look into like how they're catching fish, if there's lots of bycatch, if they're, you know, catching fish they're not supposed to be. So a lot of sharks get caught by these operations on accident,

and then they're just killed and wasted, and then some are targeted too. So you just got to be smart about it. Avoid it all together. That's also an option. That's like probably the best thing anyone can do, but if you're going to eat seafood, do it sustainably. Yeah.

With the one that we've been running ads for, I talked to friends about it and they, that are in fisheries and they said they're really good. So I do eat that. Outside of that, I don't really eat any seafood. because it's just, it's so problematic. But all right, I think that's it for listener questions. That leads really well into our last little bit, which is about conservation.

Again, we've talked about this in all these episodes so far. Sharks are, as, you know, as a group of species, these are some of the animals that are at most risk on the planet right now. People don't really like them often. And because of that, people don't really care when they're being slaughtered wholesale. and the shark finning industry, bycatch, targeted sharks, people that are just commercial fishing for them sometimes, it's wreaking havoc on their populations. They have seen huge drops in populations like Oceanic White Tips, and they do a lot of good for the ocean in general, and they're beautiful, important animals. So we really need to do better.

Jeff for president. Anything to add? Love sharks. I love them. We really do. I feel like when we've gone scuba diving together, the thing that we want to see is sharks. Like that is like the highlight.

And it's not just because there's an element of danger. It's because they are so incredibly beautiful when you get underwater with them. The way they swim, the way they're just like their presence underwater is entrancing. And they're amazing, just incredible animals. So we love sharks here. I think if I saw like a hot mermaid underwater while scuba diving,

like aerial type of a mermaid. Yeah. I'd still think the shark was more beautiful. Yeah, I'd probably agree. I probably wouldn't think it's more sexy, but I'd think it's more beautiful. Yeah. Okay.

Why about you, Mike? Well, I'm like, yeah. Break the tie? Shoot. Wes got me thinking about sharks in a whole new way last episode when you were talking about sticking his finger in one. So I don't know.

Let's revisit this in the next episode. end this series on that. But we're going to. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. This was part three of the USS Indianapolis story. I'm really glad we finally did it. I learned so much.

And if any of you had, I know we've already had people telling us that they had relatives that were involved with this. And I have so much respect for them and what they went through. And yeah, it's just amazing what people can do to survive. so I'm glad we got to tell it. You did great, Wes.

Thanks. It was amazing to learn all of that. Thank you to all the sailors of the USS Indianapolis for giving us this story to tell. I don't know if any of them are still around. I'll be honest, but they might be. Yeah, thanks. They're listening. All right, we'll see you guys later.

Love you. Yeah.