Review of Three Books – 2001
In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
Doug Stanton, New York, Henry Holt & Company, 2001. 333pp. Index & bibliography. $25.00.
Abandon Ship: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Navy’s Greatest Sea Disaster
Richard F. Newcomb with an Introduction and Afterword by Peter Mass, New York, HarperCollins, 2001, 326pp. Index. $25.00. (Originally published 1958, Henry Holt & Co.)
Abandon Ship: The Tragic Fate of the U.S.S. Indianapolis: The Navy’s Worst Disaster at Sea
Raymond F. Lech, New York, Cooper Square Press, 2001. 309pp. Index, Bibliography & Appendices. $18.95.
Reviewed by Captain Larry Seaquist, USN (ret.)
Touring the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum the other day, I walked into the section featuring World War II fighters and found myself standing next to an elderly pilot recounting to friends his days flying against the Luftwaffe from airfields in England. I eavesdropped, enchanted by the calm modesty of this veteran’s combat narrative and feeling fortunate that we can still hear those tales first hand.
In Harm’s Way author Doug Stanton reports his own enchantment with the stories of the legendary survivors of the Indianapolis sinking. Assigned to write about the 1999 reunion in Indianapolis of the ever-dwindling ranks of men who survived the cruiser’s sinking in the last days of the Pacific war, the author became committed to telling the stories he heard from these heroes, men whose saga was as dramatic and as deadly as the air battles over Germany.
This is the season for Indianapolis books. WWII naval correspondent Richard Newcomb published Abandon Ship in 1958. Now republished with an Introduction and Afterword newly added by prize-winning war correspondent Peter Mass, the book, like the others, tells the ship’s now famous tale: Under repair in San Francisco for battle damage, the ship pulled out of the shipyard early, loaded a mysterious cargo, raced at high speed across the Pacific to deliver atomic bomb components, then went down, torpedoed at midnight on a routine transit through the war’s backwaters.
Military historian Raymond Lech also tells the story. Now reprinted and retitled The Tragic Fate of the U.S.S. Indianapolis Lech’s book was originally published in 1982 as All the Drowned Sailors, an apt title for what happened next. Hugely damaged, the ship went down in minutes taking about 400 of the suddenly waked crew with it. The remaining 800 or so, including the captain, Charles Butler McVay, found themselves scattered in the water with, by modern standards, astonishingly little survival gear or training.
There was no Navy reaction. The ship’s SOSs elicited nothing, ditto the big ship’s failure to show up in the Philippines as scheduled. For nearly five tortured days wounds, lack of water, packs of sharks, and mental stress ate away at the floating packs of helpless sailors. When finally rescued only 316 stepped ashore into controversy that remains able to generate books to this day.
Rescued as the US use of the atom bomb they had carried helped end the war, their news was withheld. Navy buried the sailors’ ordeal and the huge death toll among V-J day news and the general euphoria at war’s end. Admiral Nimitz, the Pacific commander, ordered a Court of Inquiry but his subsequent recommendation against court martial was reversed by Navy chief Admiral King. Captain McVay was hustled through a judicial proceeding in Washington. The survivors are among those still angry about an action all of our authors describe as tainted by a chain of command determined to settle blame on the captain and avoid questions about why 500 men died amid packs of sharks, unrescued by an inert command network.
Which book to choose? Sadly, the new entry, In Harm’s Way, spoils the captivating first-hand accounts by several survivors with so many errors and narrative quirks that only readers never near a ship will be able to focus their anger on the tragedy rather than on the author.
Newcomb’s book seems the most comprehensive and well-told, Peter Maas’ additions make it worth adding to the bookshelf. Lech is the author for those who enjoy plowing through the details of investigation reports. He gained access to the previously embargoed proceedings of the original Court of Inquiry. Stanton benefits from recently declassified files on Ultra, the codebreaking system which had alerted Pacific commands to the presence of the Japanese sub along Indianapolis’ transit route—information never passed to the ship.
Which ever book you choose, dive in to a remarkable story of admirable heroism and endurance by sailors and disappointing lapses by the Navy at the very moment both triumphed in a titanic naval war.
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Larry Seaquist, a former warship captain, is the founder of The Strategy Group, a global action network of peacebuilding professionals.