by Doug Stanton
Yet, as McCoy understood, what a cruiser gives up for its astonishing speed is armor: the Indy was protected midships with only three to four inches of steel (battleships carried an average of thirteen inches), while her decks were laid with two inches. In her day, she had been the queen of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s naval fleet. But on this morning in July, she was considered old, past her prime. Newer cruisers were not as beautiful, but they were bigger, faster, and better armored.
Around 2 P.M., the PA crackled to life, calling all hands to their stations.
Dr. Haynes, standing on the forecastle deck, located on the bow, could see planes circling overhead in tight patterns, keeping careful watch. The dock was lined with some ten marines carrying automatic weapons. Whatever was coming on board, Haynes figured it was hot property. The tall physician waited, pensively smoking his cigar.
Shortly, two army trucks thundered to a stop on the wharf, and a detachment of armed marines silently stepped down. Haynes watched as the canvas flaps on the rear of the trucks were parted. Two large items emerged: the first was an enormous wooden crate, measuring some five feet high, five feet wide, and fifteen feet long. Then came a metal canister, painted black, about knee-high and eighteen inches wide. Two marines struggled to lift it down from the truck.
A line from a crane aboard the Indy snaked down above the crate, which was secured with straps. Haynes’s eyes followed the crate as it was lifted skyward and set securely in the port hangar, a fifty-square-foot-wide area normally used for observation planes. There the crate was lashed down.
Following a marine guard, the bearers of the ominous-looking receptacle struggled up the gangway. The heavy canister hung between them on a metal pole.1 They marched with it to the flag lieutenant’s cabin located in a part of the ship near the bow called officer’s country, a place strictly off-limits to enlisted men. (The flag lieutenant, a member of Admiral Spruance’s staff, was absent from the ship.) Accompanying them were two army officers, Major Robert Furman and Captain James Nolan, who announced themselves as artillery officers. Haynes didn’t recognize them. He thought they were nervous-looking men—Nolan, in particular.
A few minutes later, Captain Nolan reported to Captain McVay on the bridge. He explained that with the aid of the ship’s welder, they had fastened the canister to the deck of the flag lieutenant’s cabin, and that it had been padlocked. Nolan would hold the key throughout the ship’s journey.
McVay thought for a moment and said, “I didn’t think we were going to use biological warfare in this war.” He was clearly fishing for further information.
Captain Nolan left the bridge without explanation.
Looking down from the bridge, about forty-five feet above the main deck, Captain McVay surveyed the ship’s state of disarray. A noontime farewell luncheon held on board with his officers and their wives had gone off hurriedly but without a hitch; now, with the cargo safely loaded, he could at last turn his attention to more pressing concerns, such as his ship’s seaworthiness.
What the captain didn’t know was that another cruiser, the USS Pensacola, which had been moored next to the Indianapolis at Mare Island’s Pier 22S, had originally been chosen to set sail in their stead. But a week earlier, after an overhaul and refitting, she had failed her sea trials when her engines had quit in especially rough seas. Immediately, a search had begun for a replacement ship. And the spotlight had fallen on the Indy.
Before the surprise orders were given, it had been assumed that she would spend at least another six weeks of repair in the yard, followed by two weeks of sea trials to complete necessary shakedowns. Much still remained to be tested, such as the calibration of her radar range finders, firing drills for her main battery of 8-inch guns, automatic weapons tracking drills, intraship flag drills, voice radio drills, coding board drills, and anti-aircraft tracking drills. Belowdecks, yard welders were still at work mending the ship’s steel frames.
Even under McVay’s previous sailing orders, which had him leaving San Francisco in another two months, the repairs had been running behind schedule. And the end results of some of these repairs were uncertain.
One of the ship’s major problems, leading to the removal of one of the plane-launching catapults, had been solved, although never explained. After the catapult’s removal, however, the ship had developed a curious, albeit slight, three-degree list, or tilt, toward its lighter side. (If she was going to list, it should have been in the direction of the now heavier side.) The condition had been corrected by shifting freight and by the added weight of the oncoming fuel. McVay was also worried about the ship’s water condensers, supposedly repaired since they were damaged in the kamikaze attack; they were malfunctioning again. The condensers were used to make steam to run the Indy’s four turbine engines. Because they weren’t working to capacity, Captain McVay had posted an alert on board that all potable water had to be reserved for the engines. The crew was not allowed one drink from the scuttlebutts, or drinking fountains, dotted around the ship. But still, in the midst of all the activity on board, it was possible no one was paying attention to the alert.
Of his crew, more than 250 of the 1,196 men were new to the ship, some fresh from boot camp and training school. How would these green hands perform in the open sea? Or battle? Of McVay’s eighty officers, thirty-five were also new—at least one had graduated just weeks earlier from the Naval Academy in Annapolis. The navy had a nickname for the fresh Officer Candidate School graduates: they were called “ninety-day wonders.” The captain estimated that 25 percent of his crew was inexperienced, and he knew it would be a challenge to sharpen them into naval fighters before joining the invasion’s task force.
As the afternoon wore on, McVay could see nothing but problems. Until yesterday, the ship hadn’t even been loaded with her complement of required life vests; then a double order arrived—nearly 2,500 vests. With available storage space tight, where was he supposed to stow all the extras? And to make matters worse, earlier, before announcing this special mission, naval command had ordered the Indy to taxi nearly 100 extra navy personnel to Pearl Harbor for further assignment; now these men were showing up with seabags in hand, looking for berths. McVay, frustrated by the increasingly crowded conditions aboard ship, worried about his ability to run his new crew through their regular battle drills once at sea. It was a madhouse.
It was going to be a long night.
For the crew, the night ahead was filled with possibility. The sudden order to sail affected the boys in odd ways. Sailor Bob Gause, from Tarpon Springs, Florida, hatched a scheme to sneak off the ship to see his wife one last time. As a quartermaster, he had been so busy on the bridge during the last few days’ preparation that he hadn’t even had time to tell her the ship was sailing.
Others were bolder in their plans. Sailor Ed Brown had been plotting his escape since morning, when the captain first announced that all liberties were canceled. Brown, from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, felt he had always been lucky—he never failed to find a way to get around things. He joined the navy in 1944 and left for boot camp an hour after playing his last high school basketball game. He and his father had had to hurry to make it to the train station to catch the troop train passing through; there wouldn’t be another for a week.
As the train pulled away, his father ran alongside shouting, “Now, son, I gotta tell you about the birds and bees! I forgot to tell you about the birds and bees!”
“What, Dad!”
And his dad cupped his hands and said, “You’re gonna meet some women, and the only thing they want is your money!”
Brown shrugged, confused. “Okay, Dad. Bye. Tell Mom I love her.”
He sat down, wondering, “What the hell’s he talking about? I don’t even have any money.”
Four months later, he was aboard the Indianapolis, and he thought he understood what his father had meant about the birds and bees. While the Indy was in overhaul these past two months, he had met a girl and they had made plans to go dan
cing tonight at the Club Lido.
Down in his compartment, four decks below the bridge where McVay stood fretting about the problems of the ship, Brown now stripped and dressed in his navy blues—blue woolen pants and a jumper, the standard uniform for a sailor on liberty—and then over these he pulled on his dungarees and denim work shirt.
Racing up the ladder topside, Brown grabbed a garbage can from the hangar deck and walked down the gangway, trying to appear at ease under his uncomfortable bundle of clothing. His ruse worked; to anyone watching, he looked like a sailor on work detail dumping the ship’s trash.
Once he was on the wharf, he cut behind a warehouse building and tore off his dungarees and shirt and stuffed them in the trash can, covering them with newspaper. And then he sprinted through the yard’s main gate and stuck out his thumb for a ride into San Francisco. He was free!
But things did not come off quite as he expected.
MONDAY, JULY 16, 1945
At around 5 A.M. Monday morning, the shrill blast of the boatswain’s pipe came over the ship’s PA. Rolling over and scratching, naked or dressed in skivvies, the boys whose turn it was to go on duty grumpily set to getting the ship ready to sail.
Lines were sprung from the bow and stern, and navy tugs prepared to back out of the harbor with the Indy in tow. On the wharf, a lone figure came running, his hand waving wildly; it was Ed Brown.
“What the hell are you doing off the ship!” yelled an officer standing at the top of the gangway. The tugs had now started the lean against the hawsers—the Indy was pulling away.
The officer was so flustered by the sight of Brown pulling his sailor suit from a trash can that he could barely speak. He watched in astonishment as Brown stuffed his clothes under his arm and sprinted up the gangway, judged the six feet between him and the departing ship, and jumped. In another five seconds, he would have missed it altogether.
As the security detail of planes appeared in the pale blue sky, the Indy moved out into the harbor. Around them, navy patrol boats prowled in crossing patterns, keeping a respectful distance. But then, at 6:30 A.M., the Indy did something unexpected. She halted, as if waiting—but for what, it wasn’t exactly clear.
One thousand miles to the east, on an expanse of scrubby desert in New Mexico, a tremendous flash filled the morning sky. It was an explosion of improbable magnitude, vaporizing the 100-foot tower from which it emanated. The searing blast turned the desert sand beneath it into glass. In high school textbooks, this moment would come to be known as the Trinity test; it was the first explosion of a nuclear device in the history of the world.
The men aboard the Indianapolis knew nothing of this explosion. But shortly after the ship paused, a marine delivered a message by motor launch. It was presented to Dr. Haynes, who, as a senior medical officer of Admiral Spruance’s flagship staff, was authorized to open it.
Haynes quickly perused the message, then took it to the captain on the bridge. It read: INDIANAPOLIS UNDER ORDERS OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF AND MUST NOT BE DIVERTED FROM ITS MISSION FOR ANY REASON.
Essentially, President Harry S. Truman was ordering the ship ahead at any cost.
Captain McVay appeared neither pleased nor anxious. He gathered his officers and informed them, “Gentlemen, our mission is secret. I cannot tell you the mission, but every hour we save will shorten the war by that much.” He also told them that in the event of a sinking, the black canister, which had been loaded on board with such care the previous afternoon, was to be placed in its own raft and set adrift. Only after doing this were the men on board to tend to their own safety.
McVay rang the engine room. Soon the propellers caught the water—the whole ship began to quake. It was like the movement of a freight train, imperceptible at first, but communicating power, the promise of speed.
Lashed to the port hangar deck, the large, wooden box rode easily as the Indy’s nose swung for the Golden Gate Bridge. The box was made of plywood and one-by-fours and resembled a heavily constructed packing crate; the screws were all countersunk and sealed carefully with red wax to prevent tampering. An area of thirty feet by thirty feet was cordoned off around it with red tape.
In the middle of the space, Private McCoy stood guard. He had orders to consider the watch “live ammunition duty,” which meant that he was to keep one round in the chamber of his .45 at all times. He was to use the weapon if necessary. It seemed silly—who was he going to shoot? He knew all these guys. He watched as the crew pressed to the tape, peering in, guessing out loud about the crate’s contents. They imagined it was everything from Rita Hayworth’s underwear to gold bullion.
Behind McCoy, inside the wooden crate, sat the integral components of the atom bomb known as “Little Boy.” In the canister welded to the flag lieutenant’s cabin was the carefully packed uranium-235, totaling half the fissible amount available in the United States at the time, its value estimated at $300 million. In twenty-one days, the bomb would be dropped on Hiroshima.
The contents of the crate were known to only a handful of people: President Truman and Winston Churchill; Robert Oppenheimer and his closest colleagues at the Manhattan Project; and Captain James Nolan and Major Robert Furman, who were now aboard the Indy. In reality, Nolan was a radiologist and Furman an engineer engaged in top-secret weapons intelligence.
For Nolan and Furman, the past three days had been an intense ordeal as they moved the bomb—what Oppenheimer and others bemusedly called “the gadget”—by a secret, plain-clothes convoy from Los Alamos, New Mexico, to Kirtland Army Air Force base in Albuquerque, where the black canister was given its own parachute and set aboard a transport plane on a seat between Nolan and Furman. After landing at San Francisco’s Hamilton Field, each stoplight and intersection along the route to Hunters Point had been timed and mapped in advance to ensure a safe, predictable arrival. Nolan and Furman had slept near the gadget with loaded .45s in a safe house at Hunters Point, their fake artillery uniforms laid out and ready for the dawn departure.
Now, as the Indy began steaming for the open ocean, Truman was with Churchill in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. He was about to deliver the Potsdam Declaration to Japan: surrender, or be annihilated. Earlier, the USS Indianapolis had paused after leaving the wharf to await the test results of this instrument of annihilation; if it had failed, she would have been ordered back to the pier.
But the Trinity test had succeeded, and, by 8:30 A.M. on July 16, 1945, Captain Charles Butler McVay had cleared the San Francisco harbor and was sailing to war.
CHAPTER TWO
Good-bye, Golden Gate
Whenever the Indy sailed under the Golden Gate, we used to say,
“Going out to sea was the worst of hell.”
And coming back—that was the best of hell.
—BOB MCGUIGGAN, seaman first-class, USS Indianapolis
JULY 16—26, 1945
Sailing to Tinian Island, South Pacific Ocean
For every sailor, passing under the Golden Gate bridge was a solemn moment. Silently eyeing its ochre spans, the boys wondered if they would ever lay eyes on it again. Down on the fantail, on the ship’s stern, headquarters for the enlisted men, some of the boys formed a betting pool: anybody who wanted could throw in a buck to wager on the next time they’d see the Golden Gate. Ed Brown, having successfully avoided the brig, was in the middle of the action, his white sailor’s hat filled with bills.
“The Golden Gate in ’48!” he said.
“I say ’47!” said another sailor.
“Ah, you’re all crazy, this war won’t be over for another ten years.” The boys booed.
Bob Gause was standing at the wheel as the ship made her way out of San Francisco Bay. Beside him was Captain McVay, looking stern, unflappable.
When Gause looked up at the bridge, his blood ran cold. There on the span, although he could barely make her out, was his wife. And she was waving! Beside her were other wives, also signaling their regretful good-byes. Gause couldn’t believe it. Hunched down, he
glanced out of the corner of his eye to see if the captain was looking in the same direction, too. The last thing he wanted was for McVay to growl, “Say, Gause, you see all those women up there? I wonder who they’re waving at.”
The sailor would have to tell the truth. And that could get him court-martialed. He’d violated navy orders by letting his wife know when the Indy was leaving. A poster he’d seen in San Francisco, depicting a drowned sailor, had said it best. Its caption read: A CARELESS WORD … A NEEDLESS LOSS. Another had admonished: CARELESS TALK GOT THERE FIRST.
Gause didn’t breathe easy until the ship had completely cleared the bridge and the beautiful structure was fading off the stern.
McVay’s orders for this mission remained sealed in an envelope he’d kept locked in a vault in his cabin. Following the schedule he’d been issued, he waited until he was the specified distance from land before tearing open the document.
Then he picked up the microphone on the open bridge: “Men, this is a speed run to the island of Tinian, where we are to deliver the cargo. We can’t lose time. All hands be sharp. That is all.”
Coxswain Mike Kuryla now opened the PA’s line to enlisted men’s country, which included everything to the rear of the number-one smokestack and the captain’s bridge. This area was about 300 feet long and 60 feet wide, terminating at the stern of the ship. As a coxswain, it was Kuryla’s job to handle the ship’s landing lines and craft, as well as pipe messages. He wore a seven-inch silver pipe on a lanyard around his neck. Positioning his mouth close to the small metal screen mounted in a wooden control board located on the quarterdeck, he gave the pipe a blow.