Famous wreck: this is the ship that delivered part of 1 nuclear bomb that was dropped on Japan. 800 sailors died right near the end of WW 2.
https://www.paulallen.com/wreckage-from-uss-indianapolis-located-in-philippine-sea/
BTW this is the Paul Allen who was a founder of Microsoft.
My Grandmother’s 3rd husband, (never thought of him as my Grandfather) served on board the Indianapolis. But he never said much about his time in WWII. All I know for sure was that he was not on board when it went down. He’s been gone nearly 20 years now.
Funny he would talk your ear off about nearly anything but not his time in the Navy.
FYI: I just did a search on the crewwhen it went down and it is possible he was on the crew. His first and last name match one of the survivors but as his last name was Smith that confirms nothings.
very common for vets to not talk about their time in combat. That’s true of my father who was in the Army in France/Germany in WW 2.
Yes, seconded. My dad served in the Marines, he was in the Pacific in WWII and rarely spoke of it.
I just checked with my Dad, Chuck was indeed the Charles A. [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=2]Smith, S1 and one of the survivors of the sinking of the **USS **[/SIZE][/FONT]Indianapolis. My Dad said Chuck only talked about it the one time and only for about 5 minutes and he finished up crying.
Holy Crap, I truly never realized it. Makes me sad I never knew this before and especially when he and my Grandmother were alive.
One time a kid asked my father "did you kill people in the war? " He said he guessed he did kill men but they were far away from him when they died , he was in artillery. That’s only time I remember him talking about the war.
Thirded. Mine was in the South Pacific and never really spoke of combat experiences. He loved to tell how he broke his wrist while rollerskating on shore leave in Pearl, though.
The last ship my dad served on transported Marines. Not likely but possible that they were on the same ship at some point.
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week.
Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s… kinda like ol’ squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got… lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday mornin’ chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up.
You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
for those that don’t know the last post was a scene from the movie Jaws. It was told by the Robert Shaw character Quint.
That’s something to think about, the world is a small place.