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(Suggests Raft Radar Screen)

Suggests Raft Radar Screen

I would certainly make certain that the crew and the officers were familiar with all this material. They should actually see it opened up to know what's in it, to know how to use it rather than wait until the time you have to use it. The emergency signaling mirror is not an easy, not by any means an easy gadget to use. It takes quite a bit of ingenuity. I say this because I think I have normal intelligence, it took me about an hour and a half to two hours to chase this so-called reflected cross on your body around to see that it reflects back in the small cross in the back of the mirror and then you have to at the same time see a plane in that. It is not at all easy when you're going on a raft which is not a steady platform. I felt that after two days trying this I had at least mastered the technique and I felt certain that we were shining this thing directly on planes, but maybe were weren't. Certainly nobody saw the mirror or saw either on of the mirrors that we had with us, nor was any other group able to attract the attention of a plane with them. In fact, we could not attract planes with either the mirror in the daytime or with the Very stars at night.

The Very stars are excellent; however, they are not strong enough. They might possibly have a parachute attached, something that will stay up a longer period of time. Of course, we know now that they have perfected a light which they think can be seen by a plane at night regardless of whether he's looking for anything or not. But certainly the old type Very star has proved to my mind that it's a very difficult thing to see from a plane. Of course, we know we can see them from ships very easily. On ships, although we have radar, we have not secured [i.e., removed] our lookouts. In a plane you can't watch your radar, your instruments and also have lookouts, because you can't carry that many people.

So I think that every raft should have a radar screen on it, should have some method of giving signals or certainly reflecting signals so that they may be seen by a plane. I believe the aviators have these, if we had one of those on each raft, we unquestionably would have been picked up much sooner.

I understand that the group that was down south did have a reflector dropped to them and also a talkie [hand-held radio]. Well, none of them knew how to use this talkie, what the pilot was trying to do was determine who was down there. He knew there were people, but he didn't know from what ship the survivors were from and he was trying to make his report. He made his report saying that there were survivors but he didn't know from what ship.

I don't know that I can personally add anything regarding life saving equipment. I naturally feel very strong that our present material is inadequate, because I tried for some hundred hours to attract people to us and was unable to do so [while floating on the life rafts].

I would like to go back to the actual damage of the ship and from what we have been able to piece together with the help of the people from the [US Navy's] Bureau of Ships, we now have what we think is a fairly good idea of about what did happen. We believe we were hit by two torpedoes, one around frame 8 or 10, because the bow was blown off forward around ten. Another one [torpedo] around frame fifty. We believe that they were large torpedoes, that they were running close to the surface, because none of us believe the magazines blew up, that is the only way we can account for the flashes of flame through the ship.

We do know that the doctor, for instance, whose room is second on the starboard side forward on the port bow, was blown out of his bunk. He said flames shot through the deck in his room. He gained the passageway and flames shot by him and he pulled back and then went in to the wardroom [officers' dining and socializing room] where he fell. He supported himself with his left hand, apparently on the deck. He touched the deck with his right hand and his right hand was very badly burned. So he knows the deck was very hot. He got up and got to a port[hole] in the wardroom on the starboard side. He got that open and crawled through the port.

He said it was so hot in the passageway forward, so hot in the passageway aft, that that seemed to him the only way he could get out. The fact that it was very hot in those passageways was borne out by people who were aft the wardroom sleeping in offices. They opened the doors of the office and found the heat so intense that they closed them immediately and opened the ports, went out the ports. That happened on both the starboard and port side of the ship.

I have one officer, the chief engineer, who had the eight to twelve watch [8 p.m. to midnight], and his room is on the forecastle deck, starboard side, just aft the Captain's cabin. He had come down and was in what we call the head of department's head [bathroom] and shower, which is amidships, there just by the ladder which leads down to the main deck in the midships section there. He was in there when we were hit. He came out of there and remembers that there was intense heat, his hair was singed, he knows that, his fingers were very badly burned. H doesn't know how they were burned, although he feels that he must have touched something that was particularly hot.

He was able to aft on the starboard side, although badly injured, he didn't get to the main engine room, No. 2 engine room, where he found No. 2 engine had lost vacuum and that was shut down. He did talk to somebody in No. 1 engine room. They told him that apparently the main steamline going through the port side of the forward engine room had been knocked loose. They had no steam and asked for instructions.

He told them to secure everything in No. 1 engine room and to abandon it, which they did. At that time, there was very little water in No. 1 engine room so that we feel that the No. 1 fire room must have gone up and possibly that is what caused the explosion which caused the heat. On the other hand, there were no more sparks or fire noticed from the No. 1 stack than you would expect to see when you fired a salvo.

Since there were only two explosions, I don't feel the boilers went up. We have men who were in No. 1 [main battery gun] turret and No. 2 turret who got out, so that I do not feel that a magazine blew up.

I do not know about the aviation gas. We had one full tank of that [for the use of the cruiser's spotter aircraft]. We only had one tank left at the time, about 3,500 gallons. The people who were up there don't seem to think that there was a gasoline fire. We have two or three officers that got out of the second deck space, Warrant Officers [commissioned officers below the rank of Ensign], who by the time they reached the deck outside their room, it was filled with oil and water. So we do know that there was very rapid flooding.

The No. 2 engine room was perfectly all right. Of course, securing No. 1 would stop your outboard [propeller] shafts, No. 1 and No. 4 We know that No. 2 had lost vacuum, therefore that was secured. He [the chief engineer] was still making about a hundred rpms (revolutions per minute) on his No. 3 engine. When "abandon ship" went, he secured.

All power all lights were lost forward. The fact that the [torpedo] hits were there, at least we think they were up forward, are borne out by the fact we have almost no Marines who were reported in that section of the ship. We have not a single steward's mate and their compartment was up there and we have very few officers that were in their rooms at the time of the explosion. So we believe all of those people were killed almost instantly.

We do now that sick bay [the medical dispensary compartment] was a shambles. We have evidence to indicate that the number one mess hall [enlisted dining compartment] which is under the main deck, the quarterdeck, was flooding. I think that many people lost their lives because the ship rolled over so rapidly. They got caught under some debris or they got caught in a compartment. How Lieutenant Redmayne, the Chief Engineer, got off the ship he himself doesn't know. He knows that he got out of the engine room, he knows that he got in the passageway on the port side when the ship took almost a 90 degree list and after that he just knows he was in the water. He can't imagine how he got out of that debris and stuff that piled on top of him. He was probably just lucky.

All my other heads of departments, (except the senior doctor and the chief engineer), are missing. I talked to the damage control officer; the navigator; to Captain Crouch, a passenger; to my executive officer; and in fact talked to all the heads of departments except the chief engineer and the gunner officer before the ship went down. I talked to them on the bridge. Whatever happened to those people, I haven't the faintest idea. I can only say that, as somebody put it, maybe they went back to their room to get a flashlight, a knife, or some money or something else. That's the only thing that would make any sense to me.

I can't believe that they got in the water and were never seen and it's true that we did not see any of them, so they must have gotten caught and not gotten off. It was very embarrassing to me, being the old fud on the ship, to find out that there is nobody between me and, well, the doctor's about 31 or 32, but I have no line officer above a [naval] reserve lieutenant. I can't account for that in any way except possibly the fact that when I thought I was going to be sucked under with the ship, I tried to swim away.

You have rather peculiar thoughts that go through your mind. I thought that, well, it may be embarrassing if I'm the only one left, or at least if I, as a Captain, am left and my ship is gone. But, I decided that I would attempt to save myself. I must admit that I had the thought that it would have been much easier if I go down, I won't have to face what I know is coming after this. But, something stronger within me decided that, spurred me to get out of the way, at least to attempt to save myself.

And, on the raft, of course, I had a great many hours to think of the disaster and I knew of some of the people I had lost. I hated to think of having to see their wives and a great many of them I knew quite well, having been in the States over two months just previously. Most of them had been up at Mare Island. I knew there was nothing I could say to them, and I think probably the fact that I enjoyed life, that I thought of many a cocktail hour that you have at home after you have an exhausting day and you come back and take a bath and can relax for a few minutes and get away from the worries of the office. I thought I would certainly like to repeat some of those evenings and I guess that's what kept a good many people going. They just thought of some of the happiness that had been theirs in life and decided they'd stick it out.

On the other hand, we know of many people who apparently just decided it wasn't worth it.

To go back to the time when we were hit [torpedoed] and I said that I was attempting to get to Radio One to find out if the message had gotten off. I knew what the message was, as I had told the navigator that besides the ship's position which should be going out now. I wanted to say that we had been hit by two torpedoes, I wanted to give our exact latitude and longitude. I knew we were sinking fast and we needed immediate assistance.

And I know that message got to Radio One because we have a survivor who was in Radio One sending that message out--at least he thought he was sending the message out. Of course, now we know that that message apparently did not get out. At least, we know of nobody that picked it up.

We know that we had lost all power forward, but we have evidence from people who were in Radio Two, (unfortunately my radio electrician, Woods, who is an excellent man and who was in Radio Two was not saved), but we have evidence from some men there that they know that power was on, they knew that a message was apparently being sent out and we can't understand, nor can they why no message got off the ship. I suppose that our antenna must have been knocked down our grounded by the explosion.

We know that we attempted to send an SOS [radio distress call] over the distress frequency, at least the people back there thought it was going out. It does not seem possible that such a message could have gotten off the ship, because it would have been picked up because that distress frequency is guarded [i.e., continuously monitored] by about four stations in that area. As I say, until I was told that no message got out I could not believe from what I knew that we hadn't gotten one out, and even now, I haven't any idea why the message never got off the ship. I have no explanation for that. All I have is the word of several people that we picked up who are positive that the message got off, apparent evidence to the fact that the message was never intercepted, so you can't come to any other conclusion but that the message didn't get off the ship.

Moran, who was a first class radioman, has said that he has a feeling that possibly the ship's call with the SOS that he believed went out--his feeling personally is that if he had been on watch, he might have been standing a split phone or that might have been tuned in on a loud speaker as sometimes it is on a smaller ship, he feels that if it had been keyed only two or three times the average radioman would have said, "I think I hear an SOS," and then listen more closely to make certain whether he actually did hear it and not hearing the thing again would say, "Well, I guess I was mistaken." Moran said, "That's my personal feeling of what could have happened, since I feel that that might have happened to me under similar conditions."

The fact that no help arrived, of course, is certainly mute evidence to the fact that apparently no message did get out, or was picked up by anybody else. It was this unfortunate circumstance that caused such loss of life and it is natural that the public will criticize the Navy for not getting aid to us sooner, yet if all the circumstances would be told, I don't believe you can hold any one outside the ship responsible for not getting there sooner. I don't believe you could--might say "pin it" on anybody.

You might blame us for not getting a message out. However, since we believe that we made every possible attempt to get one out, I don't think that that is a just criticism. The thing is just one of those unfortunate disasters which many of us have thought of during this war.

Whenever I was traveling without an escort, I always had the feeling that "Suppose we go down, we can't get a message off. What will happen?" Well, we know now what will happen--it happened to me. I know that you can't escort every ship, but I know that people who have had similar experiences are bound to have that in their mind. It's inconceivable that you can't get a message off or that we didn't get a message off. However, we do know that we were in the water about 107 hours, therefore, next time we think that we would like to have a positive means, in case we went down, of somebody saying, "They're gone", somebody with us and tell the outside world about it. The's not a criticism, that's just a personal feeling that I have.

To give some explanation as to how we were picked up and when, I talked to the aviator, Lt. Wilbur C. Gwinn, USNR, who was piloting a [PV-1] Ventura [a patrol bomber manufactured by Lockheed]. He as stationed on Palau and in VPB [patrol-bomber squadron] 152. He was on a regular routine reconnaissance and search from Palau when he said he went back to take a Loran [navigational] fix. Ordinarily, he said he wouldn't take a Loran fix, that the radioman would do it, but the radioman was busy and he stepped back there to get the fix and happened to glance down towards the water and saw a large oil slick.

He then decreased his altitude and followed the oil slick for a number of miles when he sighted the group of what he thought were about 30 survivors. He did not know that they were survivors from the Indianapolis. He did not know the Indianapolis was missing.

This was about 1125 K time (11:25 a.m. local time) Thursday, 2 August, that he sighted these survivors in what he believed was 11 degrees 30 minutes North Latitude and 133 degrees 30 minutes East Longitude. He also said he had dropped a transmitter and life boat and emergency IFF. He then, an hour later, sighted another group of survivors and sent a message, "Send rescue, 11 degrees 54 minutes North, 133 degrees 47 minutes East, 150 survivors in life boat and jackets. Dropped red ramrod."

That message went out, and that, of course, started things going. Gwinn said that he saw the slick only by the Grace of God. He happened to go back to get a Loran fix. He wasn't looking for it. He didn't know there were any people that he was supposed to be looking for and he just was plain lucky in finding us.

Of course, it appears that everybody came to about the same time and realized that the Indianapolis was missing. It was one of those peculiar chain of circumstances that everything is quiet for a certain length of time and then suddenly all hell busts loose and everyone starts doing what they should do.

As I say, this was around noon on Thursday and most of the survivors in that group were picked up that night by ships which had been diverted from their spots that could get close to us, close to that group within 12 hours.

I was sighted the next morning, Friday, 3 August, at about 1030 (10:30 a.m.) and we were picked up then. There was one group of survivors that had been picked up the previous night by the [high-speed transport USS] Bassett [APD-73], 155 [sailors], which were taken to Samar [Philippine Islands]. They did not get the message to come to Palau and the skipper knew there was a hospital in Samar so he headed for there rather than Palau or Ulithi, even though Samar was a little further away.

The groups which were picked up by the Ringness and the Register were taken to Palau. There were 166 in that group. In Palau when they reached there, two of the enlisted men died. In Samar when that group reached there, two of those enlisted men died. So that the total number of survivors originally picked up was 320. We had left, finally 316, 15 officers and 301 men.

All the people who did survive were apparently in quite good physical condition. They had some people with fractured arms or fractured ankles, but on the whole those who survived the four days in the water were in very good shape.

I think I've said before, everybody was suffering from exhaustion, most people had quite bad sinus problems from the salt water and oil that had been washed up their nose[s]. A lot of people had burns, everybody had those salt water ulcers which are very painful and take quite a while to heal up, and my personal feeling is that had we not been sighted when we were , within another 24 hours, we would probably have had only 50% and 24 [hours] after that we might not have had hardly any in that life preserver group, because eve we, on the rafts, were getting very uncomfortable.

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(Suggests Raft Radar Screen)