USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010713.1832 (On Screen): By the end of World War II, the Japanese fleet was a no-show. Nearly every ship they had was sunk or damaged. About all that was left were a handful of submarines, but such few as there were of those were still quite deadly because they were armed with the war's best torpedo, the dreaded Long Lance. Still, the Pacific Ocean was huge and there weren't all that many submarines, and they hadn't been an effective threat for the last year of the war because they had spent most of their time delivering small quantities of supplies to Japanese garrisons which had been cut off by the American advance. So it's somewhat understandable that after delivering the components for the two nukes to Tinian, that on 30 July 1945 the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis wasn't too worried about submarines. But one found her and hit her with two torpedoes, causing her to sink.

Most of the crew died. 316 were rescued. The first friendly to find the crew as it floated in the water was an American PBY Catalina, a two-engine amphibious plane heavily used for reconnaissance and for air-sea rescue work. Hundreds of American fliers owed their lives to the PBY's (affectionately known as "Dumbo") and the men who flew them. After this one landed, it used its engines to taxi around as its crew pulled sailors out of the water. It never even tried to take off again; instead it loaded up with as many sailors as it could possibly carry, even to the point of having them laying on its wings, while its radio operator frantically radioed for help. Eventually surface ships showed up and rescued the remaining men in the water.

883 men died. Inevitably someone had to be blamed and the captain of Indianapolis, who was one of the survivors, was courtmartialed for it. In 1968 he committed suicide (and became one of the last casualties of the war). Now he's been exonerated, as he properly should be, though it makes no difference to him.

There was a crime for which there should have been a court martial, but it wasn't his. War is a dangerous business; sometimes ships sink. The real crime was that Indianapolis wasn't missed, and no search was ever ordered. It didn't get a chance to radio an SOS. The PBY which found its crew was on routine patrol, it wasn't looking for her. Indianapolis was supposed to report in by radio periodically, and when she stopped reporting no-one noticed. A ship that size doesn't sink rapidly, and there was time to abandon ship. She took fifteen minutes to go down, and about 800 of the crew of 1199 got off her before she sank. And they floated in the water, waiting for rescue which never came. Over the course of four days, the captain encouraged his men, trying to keep their spirits up as they became thirsty and hungry and cold and tired and gradually lost hope. And men lost strength or gave up, and one by one nearly 500 men slipped beneath the waves, never to be seen again. Maybe he wanted to die, too, but he owed it to his men to stay alive to help them stay alive, as they waited for someone to notice that their ship was gone and to come look for them.

If anyone was courtmartialed for not noticing that Indianapolis stopped reporting, I've never heard of it. But that's who really should have stood before a court. (discuss)