In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

by Doug Stanton

  In contrast to the war in Europe, where even the Nazis observed cease-fires and flags of truce, the Pacific campaign had taken on a surreal quality. Japanese soldiers disemboweled themselves at the sight of approaching marines rather than be captured. This sense of desperation only increased as the U.S. invasion of the Japanese islands of Kyushu and its close neighbor, Honshu (where the capital of Tokyo is located), neared.

  Dr. Lewis Haynes came aboard the Indy in July 1944, and he immediately found a home where he could hone his medical skill. He had joined the navy in peacetime, in 1939, after finishing his medical schooling at Northwestern University. As a boy growing up in northern Michigan, he had watched his father practice dentistry and decided he wanted to be a surgeon.

  In high school, Haynes held the state record for the 440-yard dash, and he loved to hunt grouse and fish for brook trout along the Manistee River. Michigan was wild country, and he knew it well. But when he joined the navy, he was rarely on land anymore, and to his surprise he found that he loved ship life, treasuring the camaraderie that developed among officers. Under Captain McVay, the Indy was more than the sum of its firepower and speed; it was a friendly city of more than 1,000 sailors. And Haynes watched herd over these boys.

  The doctor had an innocent fascination with the latest shipboard gossip—what sailors called “the poop.” Every week, in the officers’ wardroom—reminiscent of a sparse hotel lobby, complete with magazines (usually outdated), and a worn leather couch—Haynes and his fellow officers roasted one another, attempting good-naturedly to add levity to the grim business of war. The officers at the dinner table, pushing away their dessert plates of lemon pie or ice cream, took pleasure in addressing the sharp-witted doctor as “Dr. Seezall Tellzall.”

  But duty came before play for Haynes. He loved losing himself in his work. When he concentrated during surgery, the blood and screams in the operating room faded. He was no longer surrounded by boys exploded to pieces. Facing him, instead, were challenges that engaged and absorbed, and which he prayed his medical training could conquer. By February of 1945, as the horrors of the war multiplied, Haynes’s talents—and his capacity to distance himself—were sorely tested.

  He was on alert when the USS Indianapolis sailed with Admiral Spruance into the Battle of Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945—D-Day on the island. Their objective was the bombardment of the 21,000 Japanese dug deep into the coral tunnels braiding the volcanic island. Down in the Indy’s sick bay, the physician cared for the wounded men continually hoisted aboard from landing craft trafficking back and forth from the beach. His surgical theater contained four operating tables and was supplied with anesthetics including drop-ether and Novocain for spinals and locals. He used the latest cutting instruments, sterilized by autoclave. It was all operated by an auxiliary generator in case the ship suffered main-power loss, and it was also the only compartment in the ship that was air-conditioned.

  In less than three months, B-29 Superfortress bombers would have leveled fifty-six square miles of Tokyo and countless other cities—Osaka, Kawasaki, and Yokohama. Light, wooden Japanese dwellings would be destroyed in the firestorms, and by July 1945, all but 200,000 of Tokyo’s 8 million residents forced to abandon the capital. Even now, as the Japanese struggled fiercely to maintain control of Iwo Jima, it was becoming increasingly clear that Japan’s war machinery was literally running on fumes. Out of desperation, and lacking sufficient aircraft and adequately trained pilots with which to battle the well-equipped U.S. aircraft carriers, the Japanese command created the kamikaze pilot. It named their suicide planes “divine wind.”2

  While Haynes worked nonstop through this storm of lead and diving planes, the Indianapolis managed to survive untouched.

  During the buildup to the invasion of Okinawa the following month, the war had grown even more desperate, and Private Giles McCoy’s thoughts turned increasingly toward home. Born in the old river city of St. Louis, Missouri, McCoy had been just a freshman in high school when the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor. He had heard the news booming from his father’s radio in his living room. McCoy had wanted to enlist immediately after graduation, but because he was only seventeen, he wasn’t eligible without a parent’s signature. (The standard age of induction was eighteen.) His mother reluctantly signed for him.

  His mother was his best friend and confidante, a woman who could beat him at wiffle ball and Ping-Pong. She liked to laugh at silly things. She would roll a napkin into a ball and try to toss it into a glass on the kitchen counter. While McCoy’s sisters did their homework and his father read the newspaper, she would close the kitchen door, hand him the napkin, and say, “All right, son, let’s see how good you are tonight.” They could play that game for hours.

  Tatie McCoy was full of life and pithy sayings. Early on, she gave McCoy a piece of advice he had never forgotten. “Just because I brought you into this world,” she told him, “doesn’t mean anything’s going to be easy. You’ll have to work for everything you get.” He credited her words with getting him through Okinawa.

  Okinawa was Japan’s Alamo, the only island standing between American forces and the final assault on Tokyo. Called Operation Iceberg, the U.S. attack on Okinawa was equal in scope to the invasion of Normandy one year earlier. The New York Times would call this siege, the final naval battle of World War II, the “most intense and famous in military history.” In total, the Japanese launched nearly 2,000 kamikaze planes at a fleet of 1,500 American ships—the most powerful armada ever amassed. The pilots, often dressed in ceremonial robes and clutching dolls given to them by their daughters, were relentless—the sky rained suicide planes (each attack averaged 150 kamikazes). Watching in awe as they spiraled out of the sky through rising fountains of lead and shrapnel, McCoy felt both his hatred and respect for the Japanese increase exponentially.

  He was bent to his work with a fierce will, sweating through the thin, cotton face mask he wore as protection against the muzzle blasts of the 5-inch gun he was manning. Its barrel poured flak barrages into the sky. Wearing heavy asbestos gloves pulled to his elbows, McCoy was supposed to catch the empty, heavy brass shell casings as they rolled smoking from the gun. The muzzle flash from the gun burned his face even through the protective mask. He heard the kamikaze roaring toward the Indy before he saw it.

  “Bogey! Bogey! Bogey!” cried one of the boys on deck assigned to watch the sky for attackers through special glasses resembling welder’s goggles. It emerged out of the blinding sun, as was the usual strategy of kamikaze pilots. On the fantail, the 20 mm anti-aircraft guns opened up. McCoy watched as the red tracers arced skyward toward the Japanese plane and on up. But the kamikaze pilot, moving fast, was closing in. There was no time for further fire. Captain McVay ordered the Indy into a hard emergency turn.

  McCoy was petrified. All around him men were ducking for cover, but he found himself unable to move. For a split second, it seemed that the descending plane might miss the ship, which was heeling under the strain of its turn.

  But then the plane hit. The Japanese pilot dropped a 500-pound, armor-piercing bomb, which plummeted through the ship’s decks, ripping holes as it fell, passing directly through the enlisted men’s mess room and through a dining room table where a sailor sat eating. The bomb, as it passed, broke the boy’s legs and lacerated the hull of the ship. The explosion loosened rivets on the ship and filled the mess hall with boiled beans.

  McCoy had run to the smoldering hulk of the plane and, with the help of other men, began rocking it off the ship, fearful that it would burst into flames. Staring through the cracked canopy, McCoy caught a glimpse of the pilot embedded on his control console before the plane slid into the sea.

  Belowdecks, fuel oil filled one of the engine rooms, drowning some of the men trapped there. Seawater flooded exploded compartments and threatened to sink the ship. Damage control crews set to work “dogging down” a system of watertight hatches and valves, and after a tense twenty minutes, the blown-up areas were secured. In a t
riumph of nerves and procedure over mayhem, the Indy was saved.

  McVay received a message from naval command that read: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR EXCELLENT DAMAGE CONTROL. YOUR MEN DID AN OUTSTANDING JOB.3 As a reward for that performance, the boys had been sent to an R&R camp on the island of Ulithi—an idyllic place nicknamed “You-like-it-here” located 400 miles southwest of Guam—where they enjoyed the three B s of a contented sailor’s life: beaches, baseball, and beer, and imbibed a concoction called Torpedo Juice, made from Royal Crown cola and the industrial-grade alcohol used to propel U.S. submarines’ torpedoes. It was potent stuff and gave some of the crew splitting headaches.

  Now, three days away from San Francisco, McCoy tried to forget the images of Okinawa as the Indy rounded the volcanic black hump of Diamond Head. He wondered what the future—the invasion of Japan—held in store for him. The damn thing was sure to be a bloodbath, and most of his shipmates believed they wouldn’t make it. But he had to. For his mother. And his father. McCoy and his dad had never really had much of a friendship. The McCoy family had been comfortable through the depression because Giles McCoy Sr. worked twelve-hour days as a successful butter salesman. He would come home at night, listen to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio, and drift off to sleep. In truth, his son didn’t know him that well.

  The night before McCoy was to ship out by troop train for boot camp in San Diego, his friends threw him a beer party. Two boys sped into the yard, throwing gravel onto Mr. McCoy’s flower beds. He was angry; it was clear the boys had been drinking. But McCoy knew that his father was upset over more than the beer. His dad had served in World War I and had a vivid bayonet scar on his side to prove it. McCoy sensed his father was scared for him.

  He told McCoy, “You’re not going anywhere with those boys.”

  McCoy was shocked. “But, Dad! This party is for me. I’ll be all right.”

  “You’re not going.”

  McCoy took a breath and said, “Well, Dad, I am.”

  He had never spoken to his father that way before, had never disobeyed him. He surprised even himself. He stepped off the porch and started walking to the car. The next thing he knew, his father was running up beside him. He suddenly reached out and hit McCoy in the back of his head, knocking him across the lawn.

  McCoy couldn’t believe it. He got up and walked toward his father, leaned into him, looked him in the eye. He said, “Boy, you should never have done that. That was the wrong thing to do.” And then he walked away.

  When McCoy came back that night from the party, his mother met him at the door. She asked him how he was going to get to the train station the next day.

  “I’ll walk,” said McCoy.

  “Why don’t you have your dad take you?”

  “I don’t want him to.”

  But in the morning McCoy’s father was already up and waiting. They drove to the train station in silence. At the door, McCoy got out first. He’d decided he’d at least say good-bye to his dad. As he came around the car, he saw his father was crying, tears streaming down his face.

  He said, “I don’t want you to leave like this.”

  “I don’t want to either.” The two hugged, and McCoy told his father, “I’ll try to come back, I really will!”

  “You better.”

  And then McCoy walked to the station. When he looked back, he could see his father sitting in the car, staring ahead through the windshield. He watched as he draped his arms over the steering wheel and dropped his head, his body heaving as he sobbed.

  This was an image that McCoy had kept with him. It wouldn’t go away. It patrolled his mind as he heard the PA system announce triumphantly: “We have just set a record!”

  The cruise to Pearl Harbor had been more than 2,405 miles, and it was a feat the crew accomplished without incident in an astounding 74.5 hours.4 The boys sent up a cheer, hats flying. Then they hurriedly dressed in their navy whites, thinking they’d be allowed off the ship for liberty. They took turns giving each other the once-over—if you weren’t presentable at inspection, you couldn’t leave the ship. Some of the boys even gave each other quick, on-the-spot haircuts.

  McCoy wasn’t the only one disappointed when he heard McVay announce that there would be no liberty. Instead, the captain off-loaded his passengers, refueled the ship, and five hours later turned back to sea, to Tinian. The island still lay 3,300 miles ahead, deep in the West Pacific. There was no time to rest.

  On July 21, the ship crossed the international date line, which was usually cause for celebration in a sailor’s life, especially if he was a green hand and had never made the transit into the “Golden Dragon’s domain.” This time, however, there was no ceremony; the new recruits on the Indy—dubbed “polliwogs” for the occasion—were informed that today’s crossing would be noted in their records. Their next step in becoming true men of the salt would be initiation into “King Neptune’s domain.”

  McCoy was disappointed in the lack of formality—he’d earlier crossed the date line on his way to Peleliu—but he understood the need to press the Indy on her mission. And perhaps, for the green hands’ sake, it was just as well. The induction into King Neptune’s domain, for example, which was carried out when a ship crossed the equator, could be a daunting affair. On one navy ship, the induction, which was meant to strengthen esprit among the boys, involved older officers ordering the green hands to strip and, while dressed only in black neckties, push a peanut across the deck with their noses. Next they met King Neptune himself, usually a fat crew member whose belly had been covered in shaving cream, and which the polliwogs rubbed their faces in: this was called “kissing the royal pudding.” Finally, the recruits entered the King’s Chamber, which was actually an artillery target sleeve filled with garbage. Only after passing through the ripened mess did the polliwogs emerge as hardened shellbacks, initiated members of King Neptune’s domain.

  In general, this leg of the voyage had been efficient but uneventful. Seven days after leaving Pearl Harbor, on July 26, Charles Butler McVay and the crew of the Indy rode into Tinian at flank—or full—speed, the ship’s gargantuan propellers spinning in a molten whir. As the ship dropped anchor, a flotilla of boats bore down on them in greeting. The Indy had made it.

  Private McCoy was still wondering if he would make it back to St. Louis.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The First Domino

  Whenever I was traveling alone, I always had the feeling,

  “Suppose we go down and we can’t get a message off?

  What will happen then?”

  —CHARLES BUTLER MCVAY, captain, USS Indianapolis

  THURSDAY, JULY 26—SUNDAY, JULY 29, 1945

  The West Pacific

  The boats present at the anchoring of the Indianapolis in Tinian included an impressive gathering of officers from both branches of the military, about thirty men in all. While it may have struck some as strange that so many high-ranking officers were on hand, the island did remain a strategic location. It was from here that many of the B-29 Superfortresses took off for bombing raids on Japan. Private McCoy, standing on the quarterdeck, had never seen anything like this spectacle.

  Looking out at the island a half mile distant through heavy, rubber-coated binoculars, he saw a devastated wasteland. Tinian Island, a mere ten miles by five miles, was, at the time, the largest airbase in the world. A small city carved from coral and palm trees, it was shaped like the island of Manhattan. McCoy knew that naval command had jokingly named its main thoroughfare of crushed coral and limestone after Broadway. Riverside Drive ran along the western shore of the island, and the airfield used by the B-29 Superfortresses was located at Ninetieth Street just east of Eighth Avenue.

  The airfield consisted of four paved runways, each nearly two miles long and wide as a ten-lane highway. In the hills, it was said, several hundred renegade Japanese troops remained on patrol, sniping at passing jeeps.

  McCoy had never been to Tinian before. But he had heard the stories of the bombardment
that had taken place in July 1944, when Dr. Haynes had been aboard with Admiral Spruance, and the Indy had taken part in leveling the island. The Indy, along with the rest of the Fifth Fleet, had given the place a “Spruance haircut.” Hardly a bush or palm tree now remained.

  McCoy could see the burned hulks of B-29s. Capable of carrying a ten-ton load of bombs, the enormous planes, with wingspans of over 141 feet, needed every yard of the runways to lift off into the thick, tropical air. Those that hadn’t made it sometimes exploded in showers of burning napalm.

  About ten men from the flotilla of boats now boarded the Indy. McCoy watched as shipfitters emerged from officers’ country with the black canister. The wooden crate was removed next, this time with the use of the ship’s crane perched atop the hangar deck. Ed Brown was at the controls, with executive officer Joseph “Red” Flynn directing the delicate task. Just for a laugh, Brown let the lever slip on the crane’s control bar, and the crate began a heart-stopping plummet for the deck of the landing barge rocking fifty feet below. Brown then applied the brake. The gathered officers went berserk. McCoy smiled, but executive officer Flynn, looking like his nerves were shot, softly muttered, “Brown, tell those officers to shove off.”

  Brown expertly lowered the crate the rest of the way to the barge. Even though they had no idea what it was they had carried, they knew this: their mission was complete. McVay and the boys of the Indy let out a cheer.

  Private McCoy noticed Captain Nolan and Major Furman searching the crowd, but it was unclear whether they found what—or whom—they were looking for.5 McCoy had heard that the voyage had been difficult for Nolan, who spent much of his time seasick in his cabin. All in all, he had seemed a suspicious character.6