by Lynn Vincent
THE PHILIPPINE SEA
JULY 30–AUGUST 4, 1945
1
* * *
JULY 30, 1945, MONDAY—PREDAWN
Site of the Sinking
CAPTAIN MCVAY SWIVELED HIS head in the liquid darkness. He could hear other men calling out, but floated alone in a layer of fuel oil, the kind so thick it had to be heated to be transferred. The oil rocked on the surface in a gooey slab, its tarry stench climbing down McVay’s throat like the caustic fumes of road construction. Beneath the oil, the water felt cool—not cold—about eighty degrees.
Storms to the north of Indianapolis’s track had whipped the waves into a confused state that buffeted McVay about. He looked up and saw that clouds gauzed the moon. Suddenly, a hard edge bumped him and he whirled around. It was a potato crate and he climbed aboard, straddling it. A few seconds later, two life rafts floated by, one atop the other, and McVay abandoned the crate for the rafts. Most of the wood-lattice flooring in the rafts was gone, and he could find no paddles. Then he heard voices and began yelling in their direction.
Through the dark, a voice shot back: “Is that Captain McVay?”
“Yes! Who is that?”
“It’s Allard, sir!”
“Come aboard!”
Within a short time, the quartermaster had swum over, herding two young sailors, both spent and nearly unconscious. McVay and Allard worked to unstack the rafts and lash them together. Then, captain and quartermaster hauled the injured men into the second raft before crawling into a raft of their own. Both young men seemed to McVay to have ingested large quantities of salt water and oil, and they were unable to stop retching. Exhaustion finally set in, then silence. McVay kept an eye on the two stricken boys in the other raft. Soon neither was moving, and he concluded that they were dead.
• • •
In his haste to escape the ship’s suction, Glenn Morgan hadn’t had time to look around, but once he got clear, he sucked in his breath and took his bearings. The hazy moon offered little light, but he could make out a huge shadow hulking on the surface not far away. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the shadow resolved.
A seaplane!
Indy had carried three Curtis SC-1 Seahawk floatplanes, with one almost always sitting in a catapult, ready for launch. This one must have torn loose during the explosions and been blown clear. It was actually sitting upright on its floats.
Morgan immediately pictured himself climbing out of the drink into what was likely the only dry spot for almost three hundred miles. Wait until he told Mertie Jo when this was all over. She wouldn’t believe his luck.
He dug in swimming again. He’d heard some yelling and expected to meet other men, but he did not see a single soul. When he reached the plane, he saw an empty wooden life raft floating directly under the tail. Then, in a flash, he saw his salvation slipping away. The plane’s floats were damaged, and she was beginning to sink. The vertical stabilizer on the Seahawk’s tail fell sideways, aimed dead center of the raft like the downstroke of an ax. As the seaplane’s tail timbered toward the sea, Morgan lunged for the raft and grabbed its edge. He lifted his foot from the water, braced it against the stabilizer’s edge, and pulled the raft as hard as he could. Just as the plane’s tail hit the water, the raft scooted clear, and Morgan watched the seaplane sink through a flurry of black foam as quickly as a dead man with an anvil tied to his leg.
A wave of disappointment stole over him, followed quickly by a flood of gratitude. He’d lost the plane, but at least he had the raft. He climbed in and took another look around. He could still see no other survivors, but he spotted another raft. Paddling by hand, he got close enough to snag it. He lashed them together with lengths of slim line that were tied along the sides of each raft. That was when a head popped into view. Then another and another, each one black and unrecognizable, completely covered in a mucky sheath.
Several men climbed into the rafts with Morgan. The crude gray vessels resembled rectangular, canvas-wrapped doughnuts, and had wooden lattice work suspended inside them by rope mesh. While not at all dry or comfortable, they at least offered a resting place. In the case of the Indy, some of these could accommodate as many as twenty-five tightly packed sailors, all standing waist-deep on the wooden platform.
Eventually, Morgan, aided in part by Signalman Third Class Kenley Lanter from Thomasville, Georgia, and first-class radioman J. J. Moran, lashed four of these rafts together. As a bonus, they had a floater net tied alongside. The net did not offer the same type of protection as a raft, since it was really just a grid of cork floats connected at eighteen-inch intervals.
The rafts were equipped with survival kits. In them, Morgan and his new companions found meager rations, flares, fishing supplies, and some flashlights. They discussed using the flashlights to signal other survivors, but were leery. Japanese submarines had been known to lurk at a sinking site and machine-gun any survivors.
• • •
L. D. Cox hadn’t been in the ocean long when he started adding to its contents. His stomach lurched again and again, and he vomited great gouts of salt water mixed with the fuel oil, which seemed to him only slightly thinner than tar. Cox had watched Indy sink from view and heard her protests, rendered in shrieking steel. It had sounded to him just like she had a soul. Bubbles the size of jellyfish jetted to the surface, and he could feel them exploding against his groin. Must be the boilers, Cox had thought.
Afterward, Cox swam right into another young sailor, who had been badly burned.
“Is that you, Cox?” the sailor asked.
Squinting in the dark, Cox realized it was one of his best buddies. “Josey?”
Cox could hardly believe what he was seeing. Clifford Josey was covered in flash burns in every place that his skin was exposed. In the dim moonlight, it looked as if his face was melting off. To avoid touching the delicate burned flesh, Cox grabbed Josey by the vest, pulled him close, and held him while they floated in the dark.
“Someone put a life jacket on me and pushed me overboard,” Josey said, his voice barely a whisper.
Josey was one of the Texas boys Cox liked to hang around with. His family lived just a couple of hours from Cox’s own. Now the two, both still in their teens, agitated in the wind-whipped swells like rags in the gentle cycle of a washing machine. From somewhere off in the gloom, Cox heard shouts for help. But he stayed with Josey, held him, and soothed him with talk about what it was going to be like when they got home to Texas. Josey only lived for an hour.
• • •
A little over an hour after he fired his torpedoes, Hashimoto received another report: The target’s sonarI had gone silent. When his torpedomen finished reloading for a second salvo, he gave the order, “Surface the ship.”
The diving officer echoed back the command, high-pressure air shot into the ballast tanks, and I-58 rose like a dirigible leaving earth. A crew member asked Hashimoto whether, once back on the surface, he would allow the crew to attack any enemy survivors.
“No,” Hashimoto replied. “We have already done our job.”
When his boat reached the skin of the sea, Hashimoto pierced it with his periscope and swept the headwindow in a full ring. He could see nothing. He ordered the helmsman to make for the spot where the target would have sunk. Then he looked again. Still nothing.
A ship so badly wounded could not have fled so quickly over the horizon, he thought. Though he was now certain he had sunk a major American warship, he wanted some proof, but he could not even spot any debris. With the moon tucked again behind the clouds, he could barely make out the horizon, let alone detect objects on the surface.
Frustration set in, then regret, as he knew what he had to do next. There was virtually no chance the Americans would have sent a capital ship out this far on its own, so there had to be other ships around—probably destroyers.
Wary of counterattacks, Hashimoto gave the order to turn northeast, and I-58 sailed away.
• • •
Harpo Celaya had been swimming since the ship disappeared. All around him was a strange quiet, the only sound an eerily isolated slapping of the sea against his own body. For a moment, he pictured himself from above, the only man alive for hundreds of miles, just a pinprick in a vast, watery universe. He did not know that the ocean around him was filled with other men, some whole, others mortally injured, some drifting with the swells, others thrashing for their lives. Debris floated between them—food crates, helmets, lines, buoys, gas masks, the detritus of the ship. When the first torpedo opened the bow, it ripped into the ship’s stores, and the water was littered with shoes, gloves, and winter coats.
Harpo had been swimming for about fifteen minutes when he saw a floating body. Swimming closer, he could see that the dead man wore a life jacket.
Harpo swam right up to the body, which abruptly sputtered to life. “Get away from me!” the sailor yelled. “Get away!”
“What do you mean get away?” Harpo cried. “I don’t have a life jacket. I need help!”
“Get away! Get away!” the sailor repeated, and struck out in a flailing crawl to put distance between himself and Harpo.
Harpo swam away, and kept swimming until he ran right into a miracle: two sailors on a raft. He made his way over. “Boy, am I glad to see you fellows,” he said.
As he prepared to climb aboard, one of the men batted Harpo’s arm away and roared, “Get the hell off!”
Harpo swam to the other side of the raft and tried again. The other man grabbed Harpo’s shoulders and tried to shove his head underwater. Harpo fought his way loose. He kept his distance for a few moments, then cautiously made his way back to the raft. He saw a rope tied to one side, trailing down into the water. Harpo grabbed it and hung on.
• • •
Edgar Harrell found himself floating in the midnight sea with a group of about eighty men, including two other Marines. One was so badly injured that he lasted only a couple of hours. The other, Private First Class Miles Spooner, a Florida boy, was in agony. Leaving Indy, he dove into the water headfirst, and now his eyes burned beneath the viscous layer of oil that clung to his corneas like a poison skin.
To keep the waves from separating them, these survivors had latched their life vests together front to back, forming a circle. The first topic of conversation was rescue. Had an SOS gotten off before Indy sank? They tried to assure each other that one had. Besides, the Navy would miss them when they failed to show up for gunnery practice as scheduled. Harrell, who served as Captain McVay’s Marine orderly, had heard the skipper discussing this appointed rendezvous. Indy was to meet the battleship USS Idaho on the morning of July 31—which, the men realized, was only a handful of hours away.
The conversation then turned to danger. They were reasonably sure it had been a sub that sank them, and Japanese submariners were known to be ruthless, surfacing to machine-gun survivors. Sometimes they dragged survivors onto the sub and systematically killed them by pistol, clubbing, or beheading. In 1944, half a dozen such stories had sizzled around Indy like sparks on a wire. On the other hand, Harrell and many others figured that help was on the way. There was a good chance the enemy would know that, too, and clear out of the area.
• • •
After he abandoned ship, nineteen-year-old Seaman First Class Felton Outland looked around to see four tethered life rafts almost within his reach. Only moments earlier, he had nearly suffered the same fate as Indianapolis. Before the order to abandon ship, Outland’s friend, George Abbott, went below to look for life jackets. He returned with only one and gave it to Outland, then went to look for more. Outland started to leave the ship on the port side, but the water met him on the main deck, and as Indy plunged for the bottom, she took Outland with her.
On the way down, his feet got tangled in some kind of line and the ship dragged him under the water, deeper and deeper. Soon, the air in his lungs turned toxic and he had to expel it, bubbles jetting to the surface even as he descended into the cool, dark abyss. Just when it seemed he would never see light again, the line untangled and the kapok jacket shot him to the surface. He sucked in a great ragged breath and thanked God and George Abbott. The kapok saved Outland’s life, but he would never see his friend again.
On reaching the bundled rafts, Outland did what he could to clear his eyes of diesel fuel and found one other man there, Mike Kuryla, a coxswain. He climbed aboard and together they called out to others. “This way! We have a raft!”
Soon, eighteen-year-old Glen Milbrodt, a seaman second class from Akron, Iowa, pulled himself into one of the four empty rafts, then turned to pull others aboard. One man he helped was completely naked. Feeling badly for him, Milbrodt gave him the shirt off his own back.
Soon the group swelled to seventeen men, including Robert Brundige, another Iowa farm boy, and Giles McCoy, a loud and cocky Marine. McCoy had been guarding two prisoners in the brig when the torpedoes hit. Working the jail keys quickly, he freed the prisoners and the three men bolted topside together. Now, McCoy still wore his big, heavy shoes and a .45 automatic pistol in a gunbelt on his waist.
* * *
I. Both reports to Hashimoto of Indianapolis using underwater sound detection were in error. Indy had no such gear.
2
* * *
JULY 30, 1945, MONDAY—SUNRISE
Five Miles from Sinking Site
SUNRISE OVER THE PHILIPPINE Sea revealed an ironically beautiful morning. Blue skies, azure seas, and what promised to be a bright tropical sun. Had someone spotted the survivors from the air, they would have seen a thick, jet-black mat of oil with clumps of men distributed throughout.
When the torpedoes hit, some men forward were blown off the ship, while others saw the bow gone and jumped over the side without orders. For the twelve minutes that Indianapolis was still above the surface, she continued making way. Her inboard screws—driven from the after-engine room—propelled the ship through the water in a giant leftward arc, depositing men, singly and in groups, over one to two miles on her heading of 260 degrees.
For this reason, on the morning of the first day, the survivor groups could not see each other, and many thought their group represented the only men left alive.
The currents in the area moved along at about one mile per hour and also whorled in giant, slow-moving eddies that mixed men and debris as if all were caught in a slow-motion butter churn. Some men drifted together, others apart. Two men within shouting distance in the morning might be a quarter-mile apart by afternoon—or vice versa.
Still, the men would never again be in such close proximity as they were this first day.
Already, the survivor groups had drifted about five miles generally west-southwest. About 300 to 400 of the 880 or so initial survivors had coalesced into one large group. Mostly bobbing in life jackets or treading water, this group included John Woolston, Dr. Haynes, Dr. Modisher, Father Conway, and Captain Parke, commander of Indy’s Marine detachment. It was Parke who had detailed Harrell to post guards around Major Furman’s crate. Now, in the water, he immediately took charge, and the men, who had been safe on their ship one minute and the next cast adrift in the open sea, were glad of it.
They could hear the Marine captain yelling orders to be on the lookout for buoys, which might hold telephones to be used by downed pilots who crashed at sea. With his booming voice and the help of Conway and Haynes, Parke organized these hundreds of floaters into one great mass. Each man put his arms through the life jacket of the man in front of him so that back to front, the group formed a large ring. The injured, and those without life jackets, were put in the center where Haynes and Modisher could look after them.
At first light, Parke took stock of the group’s resources, which, apart from life jackets, consisted of a single line of rope, about a hundred feet long.I Though the seas were calm, rolling swells and shifting currents threatened to drag the group apart. Parke ordered the men to shape the line into a ring. Those with life jackets were to tie themselves to the line,
and those without jackets were to hang on. The procedure was simple, but it kept the men together and gave them something to focus on, a strategy that would prove to save lives.
Modisher had been sleeping near the bow when the first torpedo struck, and he awoke to the whistle of a lethal blade. The explosion had launched a porthole cover from the hull plating and it went sailing past his head like a guillotine. He jumped down from the middle rack and peered out the open porthole but could see only steam and smoke and hear the sounds of chaos. The doctor donned a life jacket and dashed to the quarterdeck, where he found a melee of badly burned men. He found an emergency kit, but there wasn’t much he could do except to dispense salve and pain medicine. He wished he had some now. Several men in his floater group were catastrophically burned.
There was not much the doctors could do medically, but Haynes and Modisher encouraged the men to fight their salt water– and oil-induced nausea and to refrain from vomiting. They needed to conserve both energy and fluids, since no one knew how long they’d be adrift before rescue arrived.
• • •
The pearl light of dawn revealed to Harpo Celaya that his group had swelled in the night to more than a hundred men. At least two more rafts and two floater nets had joined the flotilla, and now he hung on to his little line and watched a bizarre carousel of desperation: castaways crabbed over the rafts and nets in swarms, swamping them until they dumped everyone and sank, only to pop to the surface again. The process then repeated.
Finally, Chief Clarence Benton swam forward to short-circuit the chaos. “All right, everyone off the rafts unless you’re injured or without a life jacket. Everyone else can hang on to the sides.”
Benton, all of twenty-eight, was not the senior man. A number of officers had joined the group, including Ensign Donald Blum, who’d watched gunnery practice with the Army officers on the way to Tinian, and Ensign Harlan Twible, one of the new officers who had joined the ship at Mare Island. Twible had graduated from the Academy, gotten married, and reported to Indianapolis all in the space of a single month.