“Suddenly the ship was gone and it was very quiet,” said Haynes. It had only been 12 minutes since the torpedoes hit.
lives for others and did so. There were those who were in more or less of an exhausted state and stupefied and they didn’t know much of what was going on. There were others who took the attitude that ‘I’m going to save myself and the hell with everybody else.’ But, I don’t think that you can censure any of that because so many people by that time were out of their heads, most of them didn’t know what they were doing.” When the ship did not reach Leyte on July 31, as scheduled, no report was made that she was overdue. This omission was due to a misunderstanding of the Movement Report System. It was not until 10:25 a.m. on Aug. 2, that the survivors were sighted. They were sighted by a plane on routine patrol; the pilot immediately dropped a life raft and a radio transmitter. “He was on a regular routine reconnaissance and search from Palau when he said he went back to take a Loran navigational fix,” said McVay. “Ordinarily,
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.” All air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to the scene at once, and the surrounding waters were thoroughly searched for survivors. Destroyers USS Cecil Doyle (DDE 368), USS Talbot (DD 390), and USS Dufilho (DDE 423) were called to the scene. The auxiliary ships USS Ringness (APD 100), USS Register (APD 92) and USS Bassett (APD 73) also came to the rescue of the remaining survivors.
Amazingly, the first survivor picked up by USS Register epitomized the spirit of the entire crew. Water Tender 3rd Class Joseph William Van Meter, at sea for only 17 days, four of them in the water, climbed the rope ladder, saluted the flag, and requested permission to come aboard. (Most survivor accounts in this article came from oral histories obtained soon after the event and retrieved from the Naval History and Heritage Command operation archives. Portions of this compilation were excerpted from a previous Surface Warfare magazine article written by JO2 (AW) Robert F. James in 1995.) SW
qq USS Indianapolis’ (CA-35) survivors en route to a hospital following their rescue. Ambulance in the background is marked “U.S.N. Base Hospital No. 20”, which was located on Pelelieu. (Photo courtesy of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) Museum, Indianapolis, Ind.)
SurfWarMag,ahf.nmci.navy.mil • Spring 2012
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