Raymond B. Lech
FIVE MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT ON JULY 30, 1945, THE FIRST TORPEDO smashed into the starboard bow of the United States heavy cruiser Indianapolis, and an ear-shattering explosion rocked the ship. Three seconds later, the second torpedo found its mark directly under the bridge and blew up. The vessel lifted slightly out of the water, quivered, then promptly settled back down. At the same time, from the bridge to the bow on the starboard side, water was sent soaring into the midnight sky; flame, steam, and smoke belched out of her forward stack, and an enormous ball of fire swept through the entire forward half of the ship. Within seconds, the fire died away. Once again the Indianapolis was level and riding high, but now with the bow gone and two huge gaping holes in her right side.
From midships forward, the cruiser was a complete disaster; no light, no power, no communication, no pressure. Although the rear half of the vessel was untouched, the tons of water that gushed into the forward part of the cruiser sealed the fate of the Indianapolis.
In the Water the First Day: Monday, July 30, 1945
Quartermaster 3rd Class Vincent Allard found himself with six or seven other men, all desperately hanging onto a coiled floater net. One of them had a bared knife and was busy cutting the tangles in the net so that it would uncoil and spread out. While this was going on, Allard heard a cry for help. He quickly swam toward the sound and in a few seconds found a sailor floating on a pontoon from one of the ship’s planes. He guided the man back to the group clustered around the net, but no sooner did he return when again he heard cries for help. Off he went once more and soon spotted two men holding onto a potato crate. One of the boys could swim, but the other could not and was very scared. Telling the swimmer to stick close, Allard began helping the nonswimmer to the safety of the net. On the way toward the group, he heard someone yell that he had a raft. Since it seemed that the raft was closer than the net, Allard changed course and headed for the sound. The voice called again, and Allard thought he recognized it as the Indianapolis’s skipper, Captain Charles Butler McVay III. Allard called out to ask if it were the captain calling, and Captain McVay replied that it was and to come aboard. They swam a short distance and reached the rafts.
The man who could swim climbed unassisted into the empty second raft, McVay and Allard helped the other sailor in, and then Allard joined McVay in his raft. The two men in the second raft had swallowed an enormous amount of water, and at first Captain McVay thought they were both dying. But after a while, they came around. Just before sunrise, they met up with five men on another raft that had a floater net tied to it. They lashed this raft to theirs, and, at first light Monday morning, the group consisted of three rafts, one net, and nine men. Captain McVay was the only officer.
An inspection of the rafts turned up two canoe paddles, a box of cigarettes, fishing gear, signaling mirrors, and a tin container that held twelve Very (star) shells and a pistol. They also found a canvas bag holding a first-aid kit and matches, but it was soaked and everything inside was useless except for some sealed tubes of ointment. During the day, a water breaker holding three gallons of water floated by. This was given to McVay to be tasted, but salt water had leaked into the archaic wooden container and the water was undrinkable. So as not to create unnecessary fear, the captain didn’t pass on the bad news but told everyone it would be rationed out when he thought it was “absolutely necessary that they have a drink.”
No food was found on any of the rafts, but fortunately, sometime during the day, an emergency ration can drifted by. Upon opening, they found it was dry inside, and they pulled out a number of cans of Spam and small tins of malted-milk tablets and biscuits. The skipper told the other eight men that one twelve-ounce tin of Spam would be opened daily and divided equally. In addition, everyone would daily receive two biscuits and two malted-milk tablets. Under this quota, he figured they had rations to last ten days.
When the rafts crashed into the sea, their gratings had broken. Nevertheless the men made themselves as comfortable as possible and hung on while they were tossed about by the heavy swells of the unending ocean. At one moment they would be deep in a valley of waves and the next moment on top, looking down into that same valley. While on this unwanted roller-coaster ride, resting momentarily on the crest of a wave, they spotted two other rafts also on the crest of their waves. One raft was about 1,500 yards away and appeared to have one man on it who was calling for help. The other raft was much farther away and looked like it held a group of men who seemed to be in good condition. At this time though, McVay’s group was too exhausted to paddle over to the near raft, and any investigation had to be held off until the next day.
During this first day, a monstrous shark decided to investigate the raft and its edible cargo. The shark kept swimming under the raft. The dorsal fin was “almost as white as a sheet of paper,” while the body was a darker color. The shark could therefore always be spotted because of the visibility of its white fin in the water. The frightened men attempted to catch the pilot fish by knocking them off with canoe paddles, but this was an exercise in futility. They also tried hitting the shark with paddles, but when they occasionally did manage to do so he swam away and returned a few minutes later. In the days to follow, this unwanted nuisance was to become a real menace.
After spotting the two distant rafts, McVay and the others assumed that they were the only survivors of the ship and, all in all, figured no more than twenty-five or thirty men, including themselves, made it off. What they didn’t know at the time was that they had drifted seven to ten miles north of the main groups.
Stranded in the middle of the deep and seemingly never-ending Philippine Sea, the captain understandably became very depressed. He daydreamed about taking a bath, drinking a cocktail, and relaxing in comfort, and in the midst of such thoughts he wished to live, but soon reality broke in upon his fantasies.
He dreaded the idea of seeing again the wives of his now dead officers. While at Mare Island, he and Mrs. McVay had gotten to know these women, and now “I knew there was nothing I could say to them. . . .” His mind drifted back to Guam. He remembered the moment when he was told no escort was needed, and he cursed the people there for not having one available; if there had been an escort, it could have radioed for help and picked up survivors. His final, and unfortunately most nagging, thought was of his personal responsibility: he was the captain, like it or not.
Two hours prior to the close of their first day, a plane flew overhead, its red-and-green running lights clearly visible. McVay fired one of the star shells skyward, but it went unnoticed. The container holding the shells had sixteen fillers but only twelve shells, which was the standard issue for this type of raft. It irked McVay to see four empty slots. Why couldn’t they just fill the entire thing up and be done with it?
As the day drew to an end, however, spirits were high in anticipation of the morrow’s rescue. The Indianapolis was due in Leyte Gulf in the morning, and when the heavy cruiser didn’t show up questions would be asked, a search made, and rescue would be on the way.
* * *
After narrowly escaping from his after engine room, Lieutenant Richard Redmayne swam from the starboard side of the Indianapolis. Within five minutes, he found a kapok life preserver, which he put on, and for about a half hour he rested in the water alone. Then he spotted a life raft with men on it and joined them. During the remaining dark morning hours, two more rafts and two floater nets joined the group. The three rafts and two nets were lashed together, and they continued to drift, picking up water breakers, floating food containers, and other men.
Surveying the area at first light, they found the hostile sea covered with a heavy oil slick, five-inch powder cans, and an assortment of junk. Many of the men were terribly sick from swallowing sea water and oil, and the ones who had passed out in the water were being held up by their shipmates. A head count was attempted, and they discovered that their group consisted of approximately 150 men, including four officers and five chiefs. Lieutenant Redmayne, as the senior officer, took charge.
In addition to the three rafts and two nets, about 90 percent of the people in the water in this group were wearing life jackets; the ones who didn’t have any held onto the side of the rafts or onto men who had jackets, or they hugged empty ammo cans. The rafts themselves were very overcrowded, each one averaging fifteen to twenty men, and the sailors who had been put on the rafts were the ones the officers and others in charge thought to be in the worst condition.
On Monday, nothing much happened. The large group floated, drifted, survived. They spotted the same two afternoon planes McVay had seen and also fired flares at the one plane that evening, with no success.
Certain early signs of insubordination surfaced. One of the men on the floater net was Petty Officer F. Giulio. Because of his particular job aboard ship, he was well known among the crew. On this first day, he kept complaining that he should be put on a raft since the life jacket kept slipping around his legs and he had a hard time keeping afloat. Giulio was the senior ranking man on that net and therefore their natural leader.
Distributed among the rafts and nets were four water casks and about nine or ten emergency tins of food, which contained malted-milk tablets, biscuits, and Spam. During the late afternoon, Giulio and some of his followers broke into the rations and began to eat. A short distance away, Chief Petty Officer Clarence Benton spotted them and immediately ordered them to stop, since all rations were to be divided equally. For the time being, Giulio and his small group obeyed the order.
During the evening Lieutenant Redmayne allowed a small amount of food to be rationed equally to all the men in the group.
* * *
At approximately 1:30 a.m., Quartermaster 1st Class Robert Gause spotted a fin. By estimating the distance between the dorsal and tail, he guessed the shark to be about twelve feet long.
Quite a few sailors in his group were critically wounded. There were a large number of severe flash burns of the face, arms, and body, and some men had compound fractures of one sort or another. There were no medical supplies of any kind for the frustrated Doctor Lewis Haynes, and many of the men with fractures and burns died from shock during the first few hours. After removing their life jackets, the dead were allowed to slip away. Before the boiling sun rose over the distant horizon on Monday morning, about fifty of the original four hundred were dead.
By daybreak, this mass of floating humanity had split into three subgroups. The largest group contained about two hundred men, the second one hundred, and the smallest about fifty. These subgroups were separated from each other by a distance of only several hundred yards, at most. Leader of the group of two hundred men was Captain Edward Parke, commanding officer of the Marine Detachment and holder of the Bronze Star for bravery on Guadalcanal. Strong and athletic, he was superb in his energy, leadership, and self-sacrifice. Dr. Haynes remembered him as the typical Marine, one who was very strict with the group and had the situation well in hand.
The main objective was for everyone to stay together. Captain Parke found a cork life ring with about one hundred feet of attached line. To prevent drifting, he strung the line out and each man grabbed a piece of it and took up the slack. In this way, they formed a long line of men which began to curl on itself, as a wagon train would circle against attack. The wounded were brought into the middle and tied to the life ring itself by the strings on their jackets. There was no confusion, and the men stayed well grouped together. If someone did drift off the line, Parke swam over to the man and herded him back in. On several occasions, he gave his jacket to a man without one and swam unsupported until he could find another preserver.
Bravery in this enormous group of “swimmers” was everywhere. Commander Lipski, the ship’s gunnery officer, who had been very badly burned, was cheerfully supported all day Monday by Airman 1st Class Anthony Maday. Lieutenant Commander Coleman, who came aboard in Guam, was the leader of a group, and he worked unceasingly to keep them together. Time after time, he swam out to bring in stragglers. Ultimately, Commander Coleman became so weak that he died from exhaustion. And there was Ensign Moynelo, who organized a large group of men. For three days, he kept the group together, rounded up drifters, and took off his own jacket many times and gave it to those without until he could find another. Finally he, too, collapsed and died.
Shortly after dawn on Monday, Lieutenant Commander Moss W. Flannery, commanding officer of VPB-133 based on Tinian, climbed into his Ventura bomber and headed out over the Philippine Sea on routine antisubmarine patrol. Visibility was unlimited and in order to obtain better horizon shots for navigation, instead of flying at his normal 5,000 feet, he dropped down and flew between 1,500 and 2,000 feet. At 9:20 a.m., he flew directly over Dr. Haynes and his group of 350 men. In the water, the men saw this plane coming directly at them, the sun reflecting off its front window, and they began splashing the water with their hands and feet to draw attention. Ensign Park, one of the ship’s aviators, had some green marker dye in his jacket and spread it in the water. They all firmly believed that they had been seen and estimated that within five hours seaplanes from Guam would be landing in their midst.
Flannery, however, couldn’t see a thing. The best way to spot something as small as a head in the ocean is not to look out at an angle but straight down, and at a height of 500 to 800 feet, not 1,500 feet. Flannery was looking out his side window, and his biggest problem was the glassy sea.
By 10:00 a.m., the sun was reflecting so sharply off the sea that everyone began to suffer from intense photophobia, an intolerance to light. Dr. Haynes was very concerned, since he considered this far worse than snow blindness. It caused severe pain, which was relieved only when the sun went down. Closing the eyelids did not help since the sun burned right through. In order to somewhat ease the discomfort, the men ripped their clothing and blindfolded themselves. Fortunately, their bodies did not burn; they were all covered by fuel oil, which the searing rays of the sun could not penetrate.
For the remainder of the first day, there was constant change among the three subgroups. They would merge for a short time then break apart again. The wounded stayed in fairly good shape, and only a few men died. In order to determine death, Dr. Haynes would place his finger on the pupil of an eye and if there was no reflex it was assumed the man was dead. The jacket would be removed and the body allowed to drift away. In the background, some of the men would recite the Lord’s Prayer.
By noontime, the sea became choppy again, with large swells. Practically everyone by this time had swallowed some of the oil-soaked water, and they were all throwing up. Thirst was beginning to get to the men, and Haynes, while trying unsuccessfully to find some first-aid supplies, visited all three groups and cautioned them against drinking salt water. For the moment, all the men agreed not to drink from the sea.
The survivors were beginning to see sharks in the area, but, so far, there were no major attacks. Giles McCoy, of the Marine Detachment, saw a shark attack a dead man. He believed that because of the dead men in the water so much food was available that the sharks were not inclined to bother with those still alive.
That, however, had been in the morning and afternoon. By the time that the merciless sun began to set, large numbers of sharks had arrived on the scene, and the men were scared. Cuts were bleeding. When a shark approached a group, everyone would kick, punch, and create a general racket. This often worked, and the predator would leave. At other times, however, the shark “would have singled out his victim and no amount of shouts or pounding of the water would turn him away. There would be a piercing scream and the water would be churned red as the shark cut his victim to ribbons.”
In the Water the Second Day: Tuesday, July 31, 1945
Yesterday they had been too exhausted to paddle over to the raft holding the one lone man, and this morning he was still calling to them. Thinking him hurt, the McVay group began the tremendous task of pulling nine men on three lashed rafts and a floater net to this isolated and scared soul. Changing the two men paddling once every half hour, it took them four and a half hours to traverse the 1,600 yards separating them and their objective. Upon finally reaching the young man, they saw that, besides being lonely, there was nothing wrong with the new member, and McVay said, “As misery loves company, he wanted somebody to talk to.”
There still remained the other group farther away that had been spotted the day before, but the men were now too exhausted to try to reach them. Besides, most of the men had blisters on their hands, and these were creating saltwater ulcers. The new man told the skipper he had seen no one else in the water, and the captain was convinced that his group, plus the small pack of men in the distance, were the sole survivors, even though it seemed incredible that no one else had escaped.
In the morning there was no wind, but the sea could still be described as rough. As the day wore on, the endless water calmed down. There were very long, sweeping swells, but they didn’t break and no whitecaps could be seen. Considering the circumstances, the group was comfortable and in fairly good shape.
During the day, Vincent Allard took the large canvas bag that had held the matches, first-aid kits, etc., and fashioned out of the fabric a “cornucopia” cap for everyone. The men pulled the hats over their ears, and this, together with the fuel oil that covered them, saved them from the scorching rays of the sun. To further protect their hands from sunburn, they placed them under the oil-covered water sloshing around in the grating of the rafts.
The fishing kit they found on one of the rafts was a delight to any fisherman’s eye, and both McVay and Allard were excellent fishermen. But it didn’t help much since there were a number of sharks in the area, and the one big monster of the first day was still performing his merry-go-round act. They did manage to catch some black fish which McVay thought to be in the parrot family; although the meat was very white, he was afraid to let the men eat it. Instead, he used this flesh as bait, hoping to catch nearby schools of bonito and mackerel. However, every time they dropped the line, the shark took what they offered, and, after a while, they gave up the idea of fishing.
During this second twenty-four-hour period, two planes had been spotted; one at 1:00 a.m. and the second at 9:00 p.m. A pair of star shells were fired at both planes, but they weren’t seen. The men griped about the shells, for once they reached their maximum height they burst like fireworks and then immediately died. The group wished parachutes were attached, which would float the light back and give the aviator more time to recognize the distress signal.
* * *
At dawn on the second day, the isolated Redmayne group had about sixty men on rafts and another sixty to eighty in the water. Meanwhile, during the dark morning hours, some of the more seriously injured men had died.
The water breakers turned out to be a disappointment. Some of the casks were empty while the others contained either salt or cruddy black water. Lieutenant Redmayne said, “It was dirty and tasted as though the salt content was about equal to the salt content of the seawater.” These casks were made of wood, and when the rafts crashed into the sea the seams on the casks split, thereby allowing fresh water to escape and salt water to seep in. The casks were large, heavy, and difficult to handle, and in the standard life raft the water would probably become salty after the first use. Once the seal was broken to pour water, it couldn’t properly be resealed, thus allowing salt water to seep in. Should the cup become lost, serving fresh water from the cask resulted in great wastage.
First-aid equipment was generally useless, since the containers were not watertight. Anything in tubes remained sealed, but there weren’t enough remedies to go around for burns and eye troubles caused by salt water and fuel oil. The food stayed in good condition but, here again, there was a problem since the primary staple was Spam. Not only did this increase thirst because it was salty, but Spam draws sharks. The men discovered this when they opened a can of Spam and sharks gathered all around them.
The policy of the group was to put all men on rafts who were sick, injured, or didn’t have life jackets or belts. The problem with this, however, was that men with belts or jackets began taking them off and allowing them to drift away in order to qualify for the relative safety of a raft. This necessitated keeping a close watch on the men. Giulio and his small band were now beginning to start trouble. Giulio, who was still on a floater net, kept insisting that he deserved some time on a raft. This request was not granted, and he continued to complain.
During the early part of this second day, some of the men swam over to Ensign Donald Blum and reported that the food had been broken into. Blum swam back with them to take a look and saw men eating and drinking. This was immediately reported to Redmayne, who then ordered that all food and water be placed on one raft and guarded at all times by the officers and chiefs. Later in the day there were reports that Giulio was again stealing food, but it was not clear whether food was being taken from the guarded raft or all the food had not been handed in. Ensign Harlan Twible, who was on a floater net about forty feet from Giulio, yelled out in a loud, clear voice, “The first man I see eating food not rationed I will report if we ever get in.” He further told them that they were acting like a bunch of recruits and not seamen. As far as can be ascertained, there were no deaths in this group during the second day, and everyone appeared to be in fairly good shape. The only problem was Giulio and his gang. The next day would be a different story.
* * *
Even though total blackness surrounded them, because of the choppy sea the men were having a very difficult time sleeping. In this inky isolation, some of the weaker members of the crew, who could not face what they thought must be ahead of them, gave up all hope; they silently slipped out of their life jackets and committed suicide by drowning. Numerous deadly fights broke out over life jackets, and about twenty-five men were killed by their shipmates. At dawn, Dr. Haynes saw that the general condition of the men was not good, and the group appeared to be smaller. Haynes later recalled that basically two factors, other than lack of water, contributed greatly to the high mortality: the heat from the tropical sun and the ingestion of salt water. The drinking of salt water in his group was generally not deliberate but occurred during bouts of delirium or from the accidental swallowing of water in the choppy sea.
The constant breaking of waves over the men’s heads the first two days, particularly when they tried to rest, caused most of them to develop a mechanical sinusitis. The swallowing of small amounts of seawater and fuel oil could not be avoided, and the sun caused intense headache and photophobia. The combination of these factors resulted in many deaths.
During the latter part of the day, the sea grew calmer. The men’s thirst, however, had become overpowering as the placid water became very clear. As the day wore on, the men became more and more exhausted and complained of their thirst. Dr. Haynes noticed that the younger men, largely those without families, started to drink salt water first. As the hot sun continued to beat down on them, an increasing number of survivors were becoming delirious, talking incoherently, and drinking tremendous amounts of salt water.
They started becoming maniacal, thrashing around in the water and exhibiting considerable strength and energy compared to those who were exhausted but still sane. These spells would continue until the man either drowned or went into a coma. Several brave men, wearing rubber life belts, tried to support maniacal men and also drowned, for during the struggles the belts developed punctures or rips and deflated. Haynes kept swimming from one huge huddle of sailors to another, desperately trying to help. All during this time, people were getting discouraged and calling out for help, and he would be there to reassure and calm them down.
There were sharks in the area again. The clear water allowed the men to look down and see them. It seems that during this second day, however, the sharks were going after dead men, especially the bodies that were sinking down into the deeper ocean. They didn’t seem to bother the men on the surface.
Things became progressively worse from sundown on the second day. The men’s stories become mixed up, and some accounts are totally incoherent, making it difficult to piece together what actually happened. Haynes remembered that shortly after sundown they all experienced severe chills, which lasted for at least an hour. These were followed by high fever, as most of the group became delirious and got out of control. The men fought with one another, thinking there were Japanese in the group, and disorganization and disintegration occurred rapidly. Captain Parke worked until he collapsed. Haynes was so exhausted that he drifted away from the group.
Some of the men attempted to help their shipmates. They swam outside the group, rounding up stragglers and towing them back in. The kapok jackets had a brass ring and also a snap on the back. At night, people who had these jackets on would form a circle and hook them all together. The rest of the men would get in the middle. The corrallers themselves were worried, however, since the jackets had lost so much buoyancy that the feeling of security they provided was rapidly ebbing.
By nightfall, more and more people were removing their preservers and throwing them away. Most of these men died. Haynes swam from one batch of crazed men to another, trying to calm them down. He would locate the groups by the screaming of the delirious men. From this night on, what happened in the water can only be described as a nightmare.
In the Water the Third Day: Wednesday, August 1, 1945
The captain and the men with him were continuing to fare relatively well. McVay still believed that his ship went down with all hands and that, at most, there could only be thirty survivors.
From the opening of this day, the central thought on the minds of the men was to kill the shark; it was big, it kept circling closer and closer, and they were frightened. This monster could easily rip the raft apart with one swift motion of his enormous jaws. But the only weapon they had was a knife from the fishing kit, with a one-inch blade, and there was no way they could tackle this massive creature with a blade that small. So the day passed with the men sitting and staring at the shark, annoyed that a larger weapon was not in the kit and further chafed that not one man had a sheath knife, an implement customarily carried by many of the sailors aboard ship.
Just before first light, a plane flew over, and two star shells were fired. Again at 1:00 p.m., a bomber, heading toward Leyte, passed above. They tried to attract this second plane with mirrors, yellow signal flags, and splashing, but to no avail.
* * *
Although the order had been given the day before to bring all food to the command raft, there was still a certain amount of hoarding going on. This morning, however, several more rafts handed their cached rations over to Redmayne. During the day, one cracker, a malted-milk tablet, and a few drops of precious water were allocated to each man. Some survivors tried their luck at fishing but, as with the McVay group, the numerous sharks in the area kept stealing the bait. Not everyone realized there was safety in numbers. Some men swam away. Attempts to stop them failed, and soon after leaving the security of the group these sailors were usually dragged beneath the surface by the sharks.
Toward late afternoon, some of the sailors started becoming delirious again. More and more men were drinking salt water. Chief Benton (Redmayne’s assistant) attempted to talk to these half-crazed men in a calm, reassuring voice, but it wasn’t much use. Fights broke out, men started swimming away, and people committed suicide by drowning themselves. A sailor yelled to Redmayne that things were getting very bad on his raft, and Ensign Eames was sent over to investigate. Upon returning, Eames reported that some of the men were making homosexual advances toward one of the other men. Upon hearing these reports, the chief engineer’s reaction was to have the people around him recite the Lord’s Prayer.
Giulio had been on a net for the previous two days, but this morning the pharmacist’s mate decided to transfer him to a raft because Giulio complained that his eyes were bothering him. Shortly thereafter, it was noticed that Giulio and the people with him were eating and drinking. Upon checking the stored rations on the command raft, it was discovered that two of the four water breakers were missing, plus several cans of rations. The officers and chiefs ordered Giulio to return everything immediately, but he ignored them. Some of the senior people then swam over to the mutineers and tried to grab the food and water away, but they were unsuccessful since Giulio and his small band were much stronger than the tired officers. Throughout the day, he and his gang had themselves a veritable Roman feast while others suffered and died.
* * *
The early morning hours found Dr. Haynes with a large pack of swimmers headed by Captain Parke of the Marines who, through willpower, strength, and sheer determination, kept the group under control. Before dawn Haynes twice became delirious. At one point, he remembered, “The waves kept hitting me in the face, and I got the impression that people were splashing water in my face as a joke, and I pleaded with them that it wasn’t funny and that I was sick. I begged them to stop and kept swimming furiously to make them stop, and then my head cleared.”
Most of the men had become hysterical, and some were quickly going mad. A few of the sailors got the idea that people were trying to drown them and that there were Japanese in the group. The cry would circulate, “Get the Jap! Kill him!” Fights broke out, knives were drawn, and several men were brutally stabbed. Mass hysteria reigned.
The doctor did his best to calm them down but was unsuccessful and at one point he himself was held underwater by an insane crewman and had to fight his way back up. Captain Parke desperately tried to regain control but finally became delirious himself and eventually died. Once Parke was gone, the mass madness forced the subgroup to further dissolve, and the men scattered. They wanted to be alone, for no one trusted anyone else.
Under a cloudless sky and full moon, Haynes drifted, isolated but totally alert. A man floated by, and they instinctively backed away from each other. Everyone was crazy. Haynes hated being alone, however, and not very far away he heard the noises that the irrational members of another group were making and began swimming toward the sound. Only a few yards short of this band of men, his strength gave out, and he screamed for help. Breaking off from the pack, his chief pharmacist’s mate, John Schmueck, grabbed him and towed him to the safety of their numbers.
Supported by Schmueck, who put his arm through the back of Haynes’s jacket and lifted the doctor’s body so that it rested on his own hip, Dr. Haynes fell asleep for a few hours. Schmueck himself was not in good shape and was having a difficult time with his rubber life ring. It was defective, and for two days—until he finally got a kapok jacket—he had had to hold his finger over the valve. When the ring would deflate too much, he would have to blow it up again and then hold his finger on it some more.
The new group was well organized and ably led by Ensign Moynelo. Someone in the group suggested using the leg straps on the kapok jackets to snap the men together. This worked very well and prevented them from drifting apart. By daybreak the sea was mirror calm, but the condition of the men was becoming critical. They had difficulty thinking clearly, and most of them talked incoherently and had hallucinations.
By this time, the kapok jackets just kept the men’s heads out of the water. There was a great deal of anxiety within Moynelo’s group concerning the buoyancy of the preservers since the Navy Manual stated that jackets would remain buoyant for only two days, and they were now well into their third. However, the kapok preservers maintained fair buoyancy, even after one hundred hours, and the mental distress that the men felt on this account turned out to have been uncalled for.
Preservers were, unfortunately, fairly easy to obtain. When a man died (and they were now dying en masse), Haynes would remove his jacket and add it to a pile in the middle of the group. This became their reserve when somebody’s jacket went on the “fritz.”
Sanity, as we know it, virtually disappeared on this third day. The few men who retained some semblance of sense tried to help their weaker shipmates, but it was a losing battle. Chief Gunner Harrison recalled that “Doctor Haynes’s conduct throughout the time he was in the water was, in my opinion, above his normal call of duty. The comfort the men got from just talking to him seemed to quiet them down and relieve some of their worry.”
Haynes felt that what kept him going was taking care of the men. They constantly asked him questions about whether the water was salty all the way down and when he thought the planes were coming.
Gunner Harrison remembered, “Early one morning somebody woke me up and wanted to know why we did not stop at an island that we passed. That story caused a great deal of trouble. Several of them believed that those islands were there—three islands. Lieutenant McKissick even dreamed he went to the island and there was a hotel there and they would not let him on the island. The first time I heard the story was, this kid woke me up and wanted to know why we did not stop there.” All day long, small numbers of men broke off from the gathering and swam for the “island,” never to be seen again.
Noticing a line of men stretching for some distance, Commander Haynes curiously swam to it and asked what was going on. He was told to be quiet for there was a hotel up ahead but it only had one room, and when it was your turn to get in you could sleep for fifteen minutes. Haynes turned and swam away from this procession of patient survivors. Stragglers were continually being rounded up and herded back to the group. Sometimes the job would take up to an hour but Haynes knew that they had to stay together in order to be found.
On this Wednesday afternoon, Ensign Moynelo disappeared with the group who were going to swim to Leyte. It all started out when some quartermaster claimed to have figured out the current and the wind, and how long it would take to swim to Leyte. Approximately twenty-five men joined him. They anticipated that it would take them a day and a half to reach the Philippines, based upon a two-knot current and swimming at one knot per hour. Once this large party disappeared from sight, it was never seen again. This was the largest single group of men lost during the days in the water. All of the strong leaders were now dead, except for Gunner Harrison and Commander Haynes. The doctor recalled that “Gunner Harrison and I were about the only ones left who were well enough to think, and he was just like the Rock of Gibraltar. He always had a smile and kept the group together. He used to say to the fellows, ‘If that old broken-down Rickenbacker can stay out on the ocean for a week, we can stay for a month.’ ” Because of Harrison’s leadership, “we managed to keep together. His morale was high, and his cheerful exhortations kept everyone united.”
The doctor continued to pronounce men dead. He would remove their jackets, recite the Lord’s Prayer, and release the bodies. The water was very clear, and Dr. Haynes remembered the bodies looking like small dolls sinking in the deep sea. He watched them until they faded from sight. A cloud of death hung over everyone, and rescue was no longer discussed. By early evening, all was calm—it was no longer a question of who would die, but when.
In the Water the Fourth Day: Thursday, August 2, 1945
With Lieutenant Redmayne delirious, Ensign Twible tried to command the group until he became totally exhausted and his effectiveness limited. Chief Benton was in a little better shape, however, and issued many orders on his own. During the morning, a man swam over to Twible’s raft with cans of crackers and said Giulio sent them. No reason was given, and it is not known whether this was in response to a direct order or a limited act of charity.
More and more people were losing touch with their rational selves. For example, there were plenty of good kapok jackets available, but an insane sailor went up to a man wearing one of the rubber rings, ripped it off his body, and swam away. Unnecessary and foolish acts of this type were taking place throughout the groups. As Freud said, “The primitive stages can always be reestablished; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.”
The pharmacist’s mate in this group, Harold Anthony, worked as hard as humanly possible to aid men in the water and became extremely fatigued. During the night he mentioned to one of his friends that he couldn’t keep this pace up much longer and would probably be dead shortly. Twelve hours later, with the relentless Pacific sun beating down on this lonely spot of ocean, the lifeless body of the corpsman was permitted to drift away.
* * *
Doctor Haynes’s group disbanded again. Small groups were continually forming and breaking up. The night had been particularly difficult, and most of the men suffered from chills, fever, and delirium. These lonely people were now dying in droves, and the helpless physician could only float and watch. By Thursday morning, August 2, the condition of most of the men was critical. Many were in coma and could be aroused only with exceptional effort. The group no longer existed, with the men drifting off and dying one by one. This isolation from the companionship of another human was cataclysmic.
* * *
At 9:00 a.m., on Thursday, August 2, securely strapped in the pilot’s seat, Lieutenant (jg) Wilbur C. Gwinn pushed the throttles forward, brought the motors of his twin-engine Ventura bomber to an ear-splitting roar, and raced down the Peleliu runway. His mission was a regular day reconnaissance patrol of Sector 19V258. He was to report and attempt to sink any Japanese submarine in his area. The route for the outward leg of his journey just happened to have him flying directly over the heads of the dying men of the Indianapolis.
At the very rear of a Ventura is an antenna that trails behind the aircraft. It is used primarily for navigation. In order to keep the antenna from whipping around in the wind, which would make it useless, a weight (known as a “sock”) is secured to the end. Once Gwinn gained enough speed to get airborne, he pulled back and the nose of the bomber pointed up toward the blue sky. At the same time, he lost the weight from his navigational antenna. With this “trailing antenna sock” gone, he had two choices: turn around and get it fixed, or continue on patrol and navigate by dead reckoning. Because the weather was excellent, Lieutenant Gwinn decided to go on, took the plane up to 3,000 feet, and over a glassy sea began looking for enemy submarines.
Dead reckoning navigation is not very accurate, and over the Pacific Ocean it is neither a very comfortable nor enviable position to be in. At 11:00 a.m., about an hour and forty-five minutes out of Peleliu, Gwinn figured that since caution is the better part of valor, the whipping antenna being pulled behind the plane should somehow be anchored down. Because the radioman was busy with something else and his co-pilot was concentrating on filling out a weather report, Gwinn resolved to repair it himself. Crawling through the after tunnel of the Ventura, he reached the narrow end and stared at the long, slender, thrashing piece of metal, wondering how to fix it. While attempting to come up with some creative solution to his problem, Gwinn happened to look down from his 3,000-foot perch into the Philippine Sea. At that precise moment, he saw it. The thin line of oil could only have come from a leaking submarine, and the startled pilot rushed back to his left-hand seat and began flying the airplane.
At 11:18 a.m., he changed his course so as to follow the snake-like slick. Not being able to see very well, he brought the bomber down to 900 feet. Mile after mile the slick continued, never seeming to reach an end. Five miles later, he suddenly saw them—thirty heads wrapped in a twenty-five-mile orbit of oil. Many were clinging to the sides of a raft, while others floated and feebly made motions to the plane. Who in the world could these people be? At 11:20 a.m., about two minutes after sighting what had looked like black balls on the water, the pilot dropped down to a wave-skimming 300 feet.
He ordered his radioman to get a message off, and at 11:25 a.m., the following transmission was sent:
SIGHTED 30 SURVIVORS
011-30 NORTH 133-30 EAST
DROPPED TRANSMITTER AND LIFEBOAT EMERGENCY
IFF ON 133-30
Now that he had positioned the thirty survivors, there was nothing more Gwinn could do so he decided to spread out his search. Following the slick on a northerly course, six miles farther on he found forty more men. Continuing on, four miles more had him pass over another fifty-five to seventy-five people—and still farther north, he found scattered groups of twos and threes. After an hour of flying and looking, Lieutenant Gwinn estimated that there were 150 men in the water.
The survivors were dispersed along a line about twenty miles long. He noticed a group so crowded on rafts that he was unable to tell the exact number of rafts they had. He could barely spot a lone oil-covered man, even at his low altitude, unless he was splashing the water.
Gwinn’s antenna problem now had to be solved—quickly. The position he sent out in his first message was calculated by dead reckoning and couldn’t possibly be accurate. He had to fix the whipping antenna, and once again he crawled through the dark tunnel to reach the end of the bomber. Once there, he put his hand out the tail, grabbed the long rod, and pulled it inside. Taking a rubber hose, he tied it around the tip of the antenna and pushed the length back out, hoping, while crawling back to the pilot’s seat, that there would be enough weight to stop the shaking and get a decent fix. They tried, and it worked.
One hour and twenty minutes after sending his first message of thirty survivors, a second dispatch from the bomber was transmitted:
SEND RESCUE SHIP
11-15N 133-47E 150 SURVIVORS
IN LIFE BOAT AND JACKETS
DROPPED RED RAMROD
Gwinn received orders to stick around.
Dr. Haynes saw the thing and prayed it was real. Flying very low, the bomber zoomed over his head and as quickly as it came, it passed and soon was a dot on the opposite horizon. At that moment, Haynes knew he and his fellow survivors were dead men. Their last ounce of strength was giving out, and this plane was like all the others—blind to the living hell beneath it.
After scouting the area, there was no doubt in Gwinn’s mind that these were American sailors below him. Turning the plane, he looked for a group which appeared to be alone and without rafts, and began dropping everything in the plane that floated.
When Dr. Haynes saw the distant dot suddenly reverse course and come back toward them, low over the water, he then knew that they had been sighted. Like a sudden tropical squall, things began falling from the sky. Two life rafts were dropped, together with cans of fresh water. The water cans ruptured on landing but the most important thing was that Gwinn saw them, and those fortunate enough to be still alive knew rescue was near.
Once there was nothing left to drop to the splashing, oil-covered men, Gwinn released dye markers and smoke bombs so as not to lose the position.
It would not be until the next day that the Navy finally discovered that these were survivors from the Indianapolis. By this time, the entire Pacific was curious as to who these people were. Ashore, many people thought that they had Japanese in the water and weren’t in too big a rush to get things moving. A short time before, in this same area, escorts from a convoy had reported they had attacked a Japanese submarine.
However, after the second report citing “150 survivors” came in, all hell broke loose. Because submarines don’t carry 150 men, Pacific Fleet knew they had a surface vessel to contend with, and if a Japanese warship had been sunk they would have known about it. It finally dawned on CinCPac that they might have an American ship down, and panic started to set in. Shortly after Gwinn’s second message was received, CinCPac (now in a state of agitation) began radioing ships to report their positions.
For an hour after his second dispatch, Gwinn was all alone, attempting to comfort the dying men beneath him as best he could. Then another plane, on transport duty to the Philippines, appeared. It stayed with the Ventura for about an hour and dropped three of its rafts.
Back at Gwinn’s base, the communications officer decoded the first message concerning the thirty survivors and quickly passed it on to his (and Gwinn’s) boss, Lieutenant Commander George Atteberry, commanding officer of VPB-152. This was the Peleliu unit of the Search and Reconnaissance Command of Vice Admiral Murray, Commander, Marianas. The unit was under the command of Rear Admiral W. R. Greer.
Atteberry calculated the fuel supply of the lone, circling bomber and estimated that Gwinn would have to leave the scene by 3:30 p.m. in order to land with a small amount of reserve fuel. Not wanting to leave the survivors alone, Commander Atteberry started making some fast decisions.
Not far from the Ventura squadron was a squadron of seaplanes (Dumbos), and Atteberry picked up the phone and told the duty officer of VPB-23 to get a seaplane out to the area by 3:30 p.m. Not having intercepted Gwinn’s message, “23” was skeptical about the whole thing and not eager to cooperate. Not liking this attitude, Atteberry drove over to their unit to ascertain the ready status personally. Once there, he decided they couldn’t get a plane up in time to relieve Gwinn, so he quickly drove back to his own unit and ordered his plane and crew to get ready for takeoff. At exactly the same moment Gwinn’s second message came in, Atteberry, whose call sign was “Gambler Leader,” was lifting his bomber off the Peleliu runway.
During the hour-and-a-half flight out, “Leader” was in constant contact with his squadron office and was happy to hear that “23” finally had gotten airborne and on the way. At 2:15 p.m., Atteberry spotted Gwinn, together with the PBM, the large seaplane on transport duty, and immediately established voice contact with both. The commander was given a quick tour of the groups in order to size up the situation. Finally, so that the men in the water wouldn’t think they were being deserted, the pilot of the PBM was ordered to circle the southwest half of the huge slick while “Gambler Leader” ranged the northeast portion.
Gwinn’s fuel supply was running low, and twenty minutes after Atteberry arrived, he sent Gwinn on his way. Lieutenant Gwinn’s third and final message read:
RELIEF BY 70V [Atteberry]
RETURNING TO BASE
The PBM also had to go, and for forty-five minutes Commander Atteberry was all alone, circling and comforting those below by his presence. Then out of his cockpit window, he saw the big, lumbering Dumbo waddling toward him from the distant southern horizon.
Patrol Bombing Squadron 23 was told that Atteberry and his planes were going to remain on the scene until “23” got one of their Catalinas out there. Lieutenant R. Adrian Marks happened to be the duty pilot at the time, and 1,400 gallons of gas were loaded into his seaplane. While this was taking place, Marks, together with his air combat intelligence officer, went to group operations to see if they could gather any more information than what Commander Atteberry had given them. Operations had nothing to offer and, unable to believe that there were so many men (i.e., thirty men as per Gwinn’s first transmission) in the water, Marks assumed he was going out to pick up a ditched pilot. With a full tank of gas and extra air–sea rescue gear, Lieutenant Marks shoved his mammoth down the Peleliu runway and, once airborne, turned north. The time was 12:45 p.m.
On the way out, “Playmate 2” (Marks’s call sign) received word that instead of thirty men in the sea there were now about 150. This was absolutely incomprehensible to Marks, and he assumed that the message must have been garbled in transmission. However, he “thought it would be a good idea to get to the scene as quickly as possible.” At 3:03 p.m., he began picking up radio signals from Atteberry, and a little over three hours from takeoff, at 3:50 p.m., “Playmate 2” made visual contact and established communications with the commander.
Marks was dumbfounded—how did all these people get here? “Gambler Leader” instructed “Playmate 2” not to drop a single thing—there was much more than met the eye. For a half hour, Atteberry gave Marks the tour. Then the Dumbo dropped everything it had (saving only one small raft for itself), concentrating on those floaters who had only jackets.
With everything out of the plane, Marks wondered what he could do next. Looking down at the bobbing mass of humanity, he knew they were in horrible shape but also just as important—and maybe more so—he saw the sharks. Therefore, at “about 16:30 I decided a landing would be necessary to gather in the single ones. This decision was based partly on the number of single survivors, and the fact that they were bothered by sharks. We did observe bodies being eaten by sharks.” Marks told “Gambler Leader” he was going in, and Atteberry notified his base that the Dumbo was landing and that he himself needed relief.
Preparations were made inside the Catalina for landing, while Marks looked for a spot where he thought the floating plane would do the most good. Never having made a landing at sea before, he was a little nervous. However, “at 17:15 a power stall was made into the wind. The wind was due north, swells about twelve feet high. The plane landed in three bounces, the first bounce being about fifteen feet high.” “Playmate 2” was down safe—but not very sound.
The hull was intact, but rivets had sprung loose and seams ripped open from impact. While rivet holes were plugged with pencils and cotton shoved into the seams, the radio compartment was taking on water and was being bailed out at the rate of ten to twelve buckets per hour. In the meantime, the co-pilot went aft and began organizing the rescue effort. Because of the high swells, Marks couldn’t see anything from his cockpit seat. Atteberry stayed in direct communication with him, however, and guided the Dumbo toward the survivors. Both pilots made the decision to stay away from men on rafts, since they appeared to be in better shape than those floating alone. There were problems, however, for although every effort was made to pick up the single ones it was necessary to avoid passing near the men on life rafts because they would jump onto the plane.
The side hatch had been opened, and the plane’s ladder was hung out. Standing on the rungs was a crewman and, when they passed a swimmer, he would grab him and pull him aboard. This was very unsatisfactory though, because the people in the water were too weak to hang on. Furthermore, when a burned survivor, or one whose arm or leg was broken, was snatched, the pain was excruciating. They tried throwing out their remaining raft with a rope attached for a swimmer to grab (they were too frail to jump in). Then they would reel the raft back in. This proved to be impractical, because Marks continually kept the plane taxiing and anyone hanging on was dragged through the water. Finally, they settled on going up to a man, cutting the engines, bringing him aboard, and then starting up again and going to another swimmer. Once the engines were cut, silence enveloped the area except for the terrifying cries for help heard by the crew of “Playmate 2.”
Before night fell, Marks had picked up thirty people and crammed them into the body of his leaking seaplane. All were in bad shape, and they were immediately given water and first aid. Naturally, as soon as the first man was plucked from the sea, Lieutenant Marks learned the Indianapolis had gone down. There was no way, however, that he was going to transmit this word in the clear and “I was too busy to code a message of this nature.” So it would not be until Friday, August 3, that the U.S. Navy finally learned that one of their heavy cruisers had been sunk just after midnight on July 30.
In the sky above the drifting Dumbo, Atteberry was busy directing Marks and telling other planes coming into the area where to drop their gear in order “to obtain the best possible distribution among them.” Between the first sighting and midnight, planes continually flew in, and, at one point, there were eleven aircraft on the scene.
With night upon him, it was impossible for Marks to pick up any more individual swimmers, and he therefore taxied toward a large assembly of men who had had rafts dropped to them earlier in the day. This was Commander Haynes’s group. Survivors were packed like sardines inside the hull of the Dumbo, so Marks ordered these men to be laid on top of the wings, covered with parachutes, and given water. This damaged the wing fabric, and it became doubtful whether the Catalina would ever fly again.
In the black of this Pacific night, things began to settle down; the stillness was interrupted only by the occasional pained moans of the Indianapolis crew. Marks couldn’t move the plane for fear of running people down, so they drifted and waited for rescue. Just before midnight, a searchlight on the far horizon pierced the onyx sky, and at the same time a circling plane dropped a parachute flare over “Playmate 2.” The ship changed course and steered toward the beat-up PBY and her precious cargo of fifty-six former Indianapolis crewmen.
* * *
It was 4:55 p.m. when 1st Lieutenant Richard Alcorn, U.S. Army Air Corps, 4th Emergency Rescue Squadron, forced his Catalina into the air over Palau. Two hours and twenty minutes later, he arrived, and after quickly surveying the situation tossed three of his eleven rafts out the door. He also saw Marks’s plane already on the water picking up survivors. Noticing that the swimmers didn’t have enough strength to pull themselves into the rubber boats, Alcorn decided not to throw any more out. Instead he landed at 7:30 p.m., bringing his plane down two miles north of Marks.
Within minutes his crew saw the first survivor and pulled him into the aircraft. Then they taxied a few feet, stopped; taxied again, stopped—and kept this up until darkness without seeing another living soul. When Alcorn stopped and searched, they found a tremendous amount of debris in the area, most of it having fallen from the sky during the day.
They also saw bodies, dead bodies everywhere. In the dark, they floated silently with their lone passenger. Soon they heard cries for help from a group of men and sergeants Needham and Higbee volunteered to take one of the rafts, pick them up and bring them back. Alcorn agreed, but with one provision—they could only go as far as the rope attached to raft and plane would take them. Unfortunately, the umbilical cord was not long enough, and the men returned disappointed.
Overhead, planes circled all night. Marks’s Dumbo was totally out of commission, but Alcorn continued to signal to the flyers and they reassuringly flashed back to the two. By the end of the day, still no one on shore knew for certain who the people in the water were.
Yet after Gwinn’s second frightful message was received, one of the largest rescue operations in U.S. naval history began. The Cecil J. Doyle (DE 368) was heading home after an unsuccessful submarine hunt, when she suddenly received orders from the Western Carolines Sub Area to reverse course and steam north to pick up survivors. This was immediately after Gwinn’s first transmission. Once the second message came in, the destroyer escort increased speed to 22.5 knots.
At 2:35 p.m., Doyle’s radio room made voice contact with Commander Atteberry, and they were kept informed of what was going on. The ship was asked to rush but replied that there was no way they could make it to the area until after midnight.
The destroyers Ralph Talbot and Madison, both on separate patrol off Ulithi, at 4:00 p.m. turned their sleek bows northward and hastened to the scene at thirty-two knots. It was 6:56 p.m. when the Madison made contact with the Doyle and pointed out that she wouldn’t be able to help until 3:00 a.m. the next morning, and the Talbot announced that her ETA wasn’t until 4:00 a.m.
At 9:49 p.m., Doyle’s lookouts spotted their first star shell, and from that moment on flares were always visible. An hour later, the ship’s giant twenty-four-inch searchlight was switched on and pointed skyward to give the guarding planes an idea of where she was. Instead of seeking individual people in the water, the destroyer escort headed straight for Marks’s Dumbo and, shortly after midnight, the first survivor from the incredibly luckless Indianapolis was pulled aboard a rescue ship.
It was noon when they noticed the circling plane far to the south of them. An hour later, there was another, and as the day wore on the planes swarmed over the line separating sky from sea. Frantically the men signaled, but they were too small to be seen. They ripped the kapok out of jackets, threw the silky fiber into an empty 40-mm ammo can, and set it afire, hoping the rising smoke would draw attention to their plight. It didn’t work.
Captain McVay was confused and couldn’t imagine what was going on. If the men in his group were the only survivors of the ill-fated cruiser, what was going on ten miles to the south of them? They began to feel discouraged, for as darkness blanketed their isolated spot of ocean the search seemed to be moving farther away. McVay was almost certain they were not going to be found and ordered all rations cut in half.
Midnight saw them staring at the tiny pinprick of Doyle’s light piercing the black sky, and now they were certain of other survivors. They were also certain, though, that the search area didn’t extend north to their position and that it would be a long time, if ever, before they were found. No one slept, and, as the night wore on, this lonely group was very frightened.
* * *
The planes had no problem spotting the large Redmayne group and in the afternoon rafts, rations, and other emergency gear showered downward. With the security of sentinels circling above them, the men calmed down and patiently waited for rescue.
* * *
After Gwinn dropped the two rafts, they were quickly inflated, and, while the men held onto the side, Haynes was pushed in to investigate. The doctor ordered the sickest men put on the raft. He found an eleven-ounce can of water and doled it out in a plastic cup at the rate of one ounce per man. An enormous amount of equipment was dropped to this “swimmer” group, including a ten-man boat that soon had thirty people in it. But, during the day, it became so hot in the rafts that a great many men jumped back in the water to cool off.
Once the supplies were delivered, the group had almost everything they needed to keep them relatively comfortable until rescue ships arrived. Included in this bonanza were fresh water, rations, emergency medical supplies, and sun helmets. Dr. Haynes greatly appreciated the helmets for, when properly used, not only did they protect the wearer from the roasting sun but they also had a screen which dropped down in front of the face and prevented water from getting in the eyes and up the nose. As for the food, they found it impossible to eat the meat and crackers, but the malted-milk tablets and citrus candies went down easily.
Even though so much was dropped to them, the men’s deteriorating physical condition made it essential that they be taken out of the water and given rudimentary first aid and medication; otherwise they wouldn’t be alive when the ships came. Commander Haynes decided to swim for the plane. He told the group to stay where they were and explained what he was going to do. Then he swam toward Marks’s plane and, after what seemed like two hours, finally reached it. His group still didn’t have enough water, and he asked the crew of the plane to swing closer and give them some. They did so, and an emergency kit containing K-rations and a quart of water. Haynes treated burns and administered morphine to the more seriously wounded.
When nightfall came, they were in much better shape and had enough rafts so that all but four or five were out of the water. Fresh water was still a problem, but at sundown Haynes had found a saltwater converter in one of the rafts. He spent all night trying to make fresh water out of salt water. Because he was so exhausted, the directions didn’t help and the effort was a failure. He eventually made two batches of water which tasted horrible, but which the men drank. They even asked for more, but it had taken almost four hours to make the first batch and Haynes had had it. The doctor, who had worked so hard over the last four days, finally surrendered. He took the converter, flung it into the hated sea, and began to cry.
In the Water the Fifth Day: Friday, August 3, 1945
Ten minutes after midnight, in a rough sea with a north–northwest wind blowing between eight and ten miles per hour, the Cecil J. Doyle lowered her heavy-motor whaleboat. It headed directly for the closer of the two Dumbos. Twenty minutes later, it returned with eighteen former crewmen of the Indianapolis, taken from Marks’s plane. As soon as the first man was lifted aboard, he was asked, “Who are you?” Minutes later, an urgent secret dispatch was sent to the Commander of the Western Carolines:
HAVE ARRIVED AREA X
AM PICKING UP SURVIVORS
FROM U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS
(CA 35) TORPEODED [sic]
AND SUNK LAST SUNDAY NIGHT
Between 12:30 and 4:45 a.m., Doyle raised from the brutal sea ninety-three men, which included all survivors aboard Marks’s plane and the lone man on Alcorn’s. In addition about forty men were retrieved from the water and the rafts. While the whaleboat shuttled back and forth, the mother ship slowly cruised the area, sweeping the watery expanse with her huge searchlight and following the flares dropped from the circling planes. The crew of the whaleboat, meanwhile, had a tough time removing men from the plane and bringing them aboard ship. Transfer was difficult because of the condition of the survivors, some of whom were badly burned from the fires on board the ship, one of whom had a broken leg, and all of whom were terribly weak from thirst and exposure.
At 1:10 a.m., the Doyle saw a searchlight to the north and soon discovered it to be the high-speed transport U.S.S. Bassett. Two hours later, the destroyer escort U.S.S. Dufilho also appeared. Until dawn, the Doyle, Bassett and Dufilho worked independently, hoisting men to the safety of their steel decks. Sunup brought the two destroyers Madison and Ralph Talbot on the scene.
First light allowed Marks to inspect his Catalina, and he quickly determined that it would never fly again. At 6:00 a.m., Doyle sent her boat over to the Dumbo and transferred the crew and all salvageable gear to the ship.
Lieutenant Alcorn was relieved of his lone survivor by Doyle at 4:00 a.m. and, with the sun rising over the eastern horizon, he had to decide whether or not to take off. The sea was very rough and a heavy wind was blowing, but, fortunately, his Catalina was not nearly as beat up as Marks’s. He resolved to try it, and at 7:30 a.m., with no trouble at all, he powered his way down the endless runway and lifted off. At almost the same time, Doyle poured eighty rounds of 40-mm gunfire into Marks’s abandoned plane, and she sank in the same area as the ship whose men she had so valiantly rescued.
After sinking the seaplane, Doyle secured from general quarters, and all of her survivors were logged in, treated, and put to bed. The crew of the Doyle were extremely helpful to their fellow sailors who had so recently suffered through a living hell. Men moved out of their bunks to make room for the former crewmen of the Indianapolis and constantly hovered around them, waiting for the slightest request that they could fill. The men were all given baths, and the oil was removed from their tired bodies. Every thirty minutes, a half glass of water, hot soup, hot coffee, and fruit were served to them, and this continued throughout the night and into the next day. The Doyle’s doctor examined everyone and listed them all in medical condition ranging from serious to acute.
As it searched for the living, Doyle passed by the bodies of twenty-five to fifty dead sailors floating in life jackets. At 12:20 p.m., Madison ordered Doyle to take off for Peleliu, and this, the first ship on the scene, was now the first to leave, heading south at 22.5 knots.
All McVay and his isolated band could do was watch the distant searchlights, the falling flares, the circling planes. When the sun rose over the horizon, they were in despair. The entire morning was spent staring at the activity very far away. It did not seem to be coming closer. At 11:30 a.m., they spotted a plane making a box search. It was a very wide pattern, and on each leg it came closer. They found it extremely depressing, for the plane gave no recognition sign. Captain McVay contended that they were never spotted from the air. But they were, for this plane, flown by Marks’s squadron leader, Lieutenant Commander M. V. Ricketts, saw them and reported that he sighted two rafts, with five survivors in one and four in the other. By voice radio, he directed the U.S.S. Ringness (APD 100) to pick them up. Like Bassett, Ringness was a high-speed transport sent by Philippine Sea Frontier, and it had just arrived. After receiving Ricketts’s message, Ringness headed for the spot, and at 4,046 yards she picked McVay up on radar. On the rafts, the spell of isolation and despair was suddenly broken when somebody cried, “My God, look at this! There are two destroyers bearing down on us. Why, they’re almost on top of us.” The two destroyers were both transports, Ringness and the newly arrived Register. Register turned north to pick up another small group while Ringness headed for McVay.
Everyone made it aboard under his own power, and all were immediately given first aid. They had lost about 14 percent of their body weight, and during the afternoon they were given ice cream, coffee, and as much water as they could drink. During the entire four and a half days on the rafts, no one in the group asked for a drink. This was surprising to McVay, since he had assumed people couldn’t go that long without water—but they did.
* * *
While Doyle was taking care of the Haynes group, Bassett took care of Lieutenant Redmayne and his men. Lowering her four landing craft at 2:30 a.m., Bassett’s boats picked up most of Redmayne’s people. A head count was taken, and a little over eighty sailors were collected from the original group of 150. Bassett next sent a message to Frontier Headquarters:
INDIANAPOLIS (CA 35) WHICH
WAS TORPEDOED 29 JULY [sic] X
CONTINUING TO PICK UP
SURVIVORS X MANY BADLY
INJURED
Ralph Talbot picked up twenty-four survivors and then spent most of the afternoon sinking eight rafts and a small boat with her 20-mm guns. Later she transferred her survivors to Register. As soon as Madison arrived in the area, Bassett reported that she had 150 survivors aboard and desperately needed a doctor. Shortly thereafter, at 5:15 a.m., Madison’s physician, Lieutenant (jg) H. A. Stiles, was transferred to the transport. It was at the time the landing craft from Bassett came over to pick up Dr. Stiles that Madison first learned the survivors were from the Indianapolis.
During the day scouting lines were formed with the planes bird-dogging, but nothing was seen except for the dead, and they were generally left where they were. The unpleasant task of recovery and identification was postponed until the next day. The last living man plucked from the Philippine Sea was Captain McVay, who was the last man to enter it.
By the time the blazing Pacific sun reached its zenith on this day, not another living person from Indianapolis was to be found in that enormous ocean. She had sailed from San Francisco with 1,196 young men, was torpedoed, and about eight hundred of her crew escaped from the sinking ship. Of these eight hundred, 320 were rescued; two later died in the Philippines, and two on Peleliu. Because of complacency and carelessness, approximately five hundred U.S. sailors (no one will ever know the exact number) died in the waters of the Philippine Sea.