Abandon Ship! Richard F. Newcomb’s Account of the Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Trial That Followed
The sinking of the cruiser USS Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine in the last weeks of the Second World War was a tragedy the United States would not easily forget. Its crew faced the worst the Philippine Sea could offer: shark-infested water, a sun that became an enemy by day, burning their skin, and an unbearable cold at night.
Author: Richard F. Newcomb (1913–2004)
Title: Abandon Ship! The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Navy’s Greatest Sea Disaster (1958)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 368 pages
Scope: Naval history
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0060959215 (ASIN 0060959215)
The Navy’s Most Baffling Disaster
The book recounts the agony the crew endured after the ship went down on 30 July 1945, and the court-martial that followed. Its captain, Charles McVay, was made the scapegoat and held primarily responsible, while many others were guilty of negligence: an extraordinary chain of coincidences came together that night.
Human Error or a Failure of the System?
So many lives were lost, and nobody seemed able to believe the reasons behind the tragedy. Was it human error, or a failure of the system? Newcomb weighs the evidence and lets the reader judge.
The Enemy Commander
The book also gives the version of the Japanese submarine commander, and describes how he was brought to the United States to testify at the trial and then returned home. It ends with the close of the war and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a war the Indianapolis had helped end, since it had just delivered components of the first atomic bomb to the island of Tinian.
A Secret Mission
Days before she was sunk, the Indianapolis had completed a top-secret mission: she carried key components of the atomic bomb later dropped on Hiroshima from San Francisco to the island of Tinian, arriving on 26 July 1945. She then sailed on alone, without escort, towards the Philippines. Shortly after midnight on 30 July she was hit by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 and sank in about twelve minutes.
Four Days in the Water
Of the nearly 1,200 men aboard, around 300 went down with the ship. The rest, many injured and without enough lifeboats or rafts, were left in the open sea. Because of a series of failures, nobody noticed that the ship had not arrived, and the survivors drifted for four days before a patrol plane spotted them by chance. By then, exposure, dehydration and shark attacks had taken a terrible toll: only 316 survived.
Justice for McVay
Captain Charles McVay was court-martialled and convicted of failing to zigzag, the only US captain in the war to be court-martialled for losing his ship to enemy action. The Japanese commander, Mochitsura Hashimoto, testified that zigzagging would have made no difference. McVay died in 1968. Decades later, a campaign by survivors, helped by a schoolboy’s history project, led Congress to pass a resolution in 2000 declaring that his record should reflect his exoneration. The wreck was finally located in 2017, more than 5,000 metres down.
A Story in Popular Culture
Many people first heard of the disaster through Quint’s chilling monologue in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). Newcomb’s book tells the real story behind it, with the care of a journalist who interviewed survivors and studied the records.
It remains essential reading on the subject.
It is a tribute to the men who never came home.
The book gives the survivors’ voices their rightful place.
Why Read It
Newcomb’s book was the first full account of the disaster and helped keep its memory alive; decades later it fed the campaign that led to McVay’s exoneration. It remains a gripping, humane piece of naval history.
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