Pardon the somewhat provocative title, but this question occurred to me today. I was reading about the five Sullivan brothers, knowing pretty much only that they all died on the same ship, when the Wikipedia article mentioned that their ship, the USS Juneau, had about 100 survivors and was seen to sink but by a series of SNAFUs a rescue was not launched for several days and the 10 remaining survivors were rescued 8 days after the sinking.
That brought to mind the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, where again a large percentage of the initial survivors of the sinking died in the days between the sinking and rescue due to mind-boggling negligence such as not bothering to follow up on a late BATTLESHIP and marking it down as arrived in port when it hadn’t.
On one hand, two instances of royal screwups don’t necessarily mean that the system for commencing search and rescue was inherently defective. On the other hand, two prominent instances of losing track of full-sized ships (Juneau being famous for the Sullivans and Indianapolis being famous for delivering the A-bomb) suggest more. Hence my question: was the U.S. Navy’s system for commencing search and rescue efforts during World War II flawed in some fundamental way?
It tougher to search for people when the other side is actively trying to shoot you while doing so. The very vessel or plane who sunk the boat might be sticking around to sink the rescue ship as well. Enemy pilots have been known to actively strafe the survivors. War is hell.
The USS Juneau (CL-52) was indeed a sad case. However, most thought that since the ship blew up, there would be few survivors. And rescue operations were delayed due to ongoing fighting and reports of “Jap Subs” in the area- which indeed there were.
he ensuing magazine explosion blew the light cruiser in half, killing most of the crew. A message from USS Helena to a nearby B-17 search plane reported that Juneau was lost at latitude 10 degrees South and longitude 161 degrees East and that survivors were in the water. The sinking location was subsequently modified to 10 degrees South and 161 degrees East.
Owing to the risk of another submarine attack and because the sections of Juneau sank in only a few minutes, the American task force did not stay to check for survivors. However, approximately 115 of Juneau 's crew survived the explosion. But, as Helena 's message unfortunately did not reach Noumea and there remained uncertainty about the number of Japanese ships in the area, rescue efforts did not begin for several days. Exposure, exhaustion, and shark attacks whittled down the survivors and only ten men were rescued from the water eight days after the sinking.
The US navy was actually considered the best in WW2 at search and rescue, often spending massive resources for one possible downed guy.
This is why you cant stick around and search:
U-9’s torpedo tore into the Aboukir. Drummond assumed he had hit a mine and signaled the other two ships for help. According to Weddington, he must have hit under the magazine and the ship again shook from a massive explosion as this was set ablaze before going down at 6:55.
As the Hogue steamed in to pick up survivors, Weddigen fired his torpedoes again from just 300 yards away, striking the ship as the Aboukir fell beneath the waves.
The third of the Livebait Squadron ships lived up to its name, arriving to help the survivors of her fallen sisters. The Cressy was torpedoed at 7:20 and 7:30. None of the ships even had their water-tight doors sealed and by 7:55 AM, all were underwater.
One primitive U-boot sank three cruisers in 90 minutes. Loss of 1,397 sailors and 62 officers .
That being said there was no excuse for the Indianapolis . Secrecy and all, the cruiser shoudl have been tracked and even escorted.
Maybe I need to be more specific. I’m focusing primarily on the commencement of the process, the naval equivalent of calling 911 rather than what the police or fire department does once that call comes in. A ship or plane reporting that they saw another ship or plane go down. A base where a ship or plane is expected reporting it overdue.
That’s what struck me as the failure in the Juneau and Indianapolis incidents. The sinking of the Juneau was reported by an aircraft crew upon arrival but not immediately referred to search and rescue. The Indianapolis was marked as arrived at its destination when it hadn’t, which strikes me as particularly egregious. The fog of war is bad enough without using a fog machine on top of it.
The Juneau was sunk within range of Japanese airfields. During the battle of Guadalcanal, the US navy tried to have all of their ships out of range by daybreak. Search efforts at night were nearly impossible.
My understanding is that the Indianapolis wasn’t flagged as missing because it was on a secret mission (Delivering A-bomb parts) and very few people knew it was missing.
Agreed. The Indianapolis delivered there A-Bombs to a USA Navy controlled port. Afterwards they could have been allowed to hook up with the dominant fleet without worrying about giving away intelligence. The Japanese Navy and air intelligence was stretched and minimized by that point. It should not have gone down the way it did.
The gist of it is this: people knew that Indianapolis was coming, and people knew where it was going. But there was no system in place to make sure that reality matched expectations. No one was tagged with verifying that, yes, the ship expected to arrive on a certain day actually arrived. And when it didn’t arrive on time, to the extent anyone noticed, there were no required reports and those who might have been most interested in verifying its status (such as the Admiral in command of the Task Group it was to be reporting to) were not in a position to verify because they, too, were on ships out to sea. To the extent anyone tried to contact the ship, and were unable to do so, they chalked it up to known/not uncommon difficulties in using the new communication technology involved.
Rescue of downed U.S. pilots at sea in WWII was apparently pretty effective, in part due to subs being on dedicated duty to recover pilots during major operations (as detailed in Ian Toll’s Pacific war trilogy).
All of communications and all of bureaucracy was a mess during WWII. In many ways it’s a wonder routine missions worked as well as they did. It’s hardly surprising that some ships and planes and ground units would be misplaced in the paper shuffle. The ones where being misplaced led to obvious loss of life became famous later. The ones where it didn’t … didn’t.
In addition to all that has been mentioned, keep in mind that oceans are vast places. Even with clear skies and calm seas, finding something as small as a lifeboat is nigh onto impossible. There were no EPIRB devices back then. It was all visual.
Situation normal. I once tried to start a conversation about it with my Dad, and he wasn’t interested: it was like having a conversation about where the sun would rise: in the East, and that’s all there is to say.
