| Abandon Ship! |
| Richard F. Newcomb, 1958 |
|
| At two minutes after midnight July 29/30, 1945, in the South Pacific,
the heavy cruiser Indianapolis, Flagship of the Fifth Fleet, was torpedoed
by a Japanese submarine. In exactly twelve minutes, a mass of choking smoke
and blazing fury, she sank, But slithering and sliding over the oil-streaked
decks, over 800 men went overboard -- only to face one of the worst ordeals
in Navy History. |
| By a fantastic turn of fate and error, the Navy did not know the
Indianapolis had gone down. There was no escort vessel to give the
alarm, and on Guam and Leyte, no one had marked her absence. No lifeboats
were launched and only a few life rafts. Three and a half days later, the
Indianapolis had still not been missed. On the fourth day, after the sea,
sun, and sharks had taken a frightful toll, a lone patrol plane out of Peleiu
accidentally sighted the victims and mustered a huge rescue armada. Of the
original crew of 1,196, on ly 316 survived. The curtain had dropped on the
most shocking disaster at sea in the annals of the U.S. Navy. |
| How did it happen? What did the men experience during those
sunscorched days and desperate nights, clinging to water-logged lifejackets
and bits of debris in the water? And how did the Navy explain away this colossal
snafu? Here, for the first time, in the tense, minute-by-minute story of
the Indianapolis affair, the incredible loss of life (only one-third
of which was due to the submarine attack), the laxity of the Navy, and the
travesty of a trial which followed. Captain McVay, Commander of the
Indianapolis, charged with negligence, was court-martialed in December,
1945. A precedent was thus set, for never before had a commander been
court-martialed for loss of his vessel during wartime. |
| Abandon Ship! is both a virile tale of adventure at sea
and a vividly documented account of naval history. Extracting in full measure
the human drama on ship and adrift in the sea, Abandon Ship! stands
as a heroic memorial to the men of the Indianapolis. |
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