The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
Sharks, secrets, and the story of the worst naval disaster in US history
A Secret Mission
On March 31st, 1945, the eve of the allied assault on Okinawa, a bomb loosed by a Japanese fighter plane plummeted through the deck of the Fifth Fleet flagship U.S.S. Indianapolis, rupturing fuel tanks, damaging propeller shafts, and killing nine crewmen.
The Indianapolis would spend the next three months undergoing extensive repairs at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, and with Japanese forces on their last legs, many of the ship’s crew expected to sit out the remainder of the war. But on July 15th, Vice Admiral William Purnell summoned the Indianapolis’ skipper, Captain Charles B. McVay III, and surprised him with a new assignment: to transport top secret cargo to Tinian Island, a staging area for the Allied war effort and home to the largest airbase constructed during the war.
The next morning, the United States Army would conduct the first ever detonation of a nuclear device, code-named Trinity, in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico. Mere hours later, the Indianapolis departed the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard under a shroud of secrecy. Unbeknownst to the ship’s captain or crew, the classified cargo she carried in her belly contained half of…
