Sailing a ship anywhere during World War II, whether a war ship or not, was a dangerous undertaking. Nevertheless, the ships were necessary, and so they went. Normally these ships had a destroyer escort, but on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis did not have a destroyer escort due to a combination of factors, including high demand for destroyers, assumptions about low risk in the area, and the belief that the cruiser could operate safely on its own, especially after completing its primary mission. The story goes that they ship was supposed to sail in a zigzag fashion, which is ridiculous since ships can’t zigzag at a speed fast enough to dodge much of anything.
The Indianapolis had already completed its major mission: the delivery of key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped a week later at Hiroshima to Tinian Island in the South Pacific, having made its delivery to Tinian Island on July 26, 1945. The mission was highly classified, and even the crew of the ship had no knowledge of its cargo. After departing from Tinian, the Indianapolis headed to the U.S. military’s Pacific headquarters in Guam. In Guam, USS Indianapolis received orders to rendezvous with the battleship USS Idaho at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan. 
As the ship made its way across, it was halfway between Guam and Leyte Gulf, when, shortly after midnight on July 30, a Japanese sub hit the Indianapolis with a torpedo, sparking an explosion that split the ship and caused it to sink in approximately 12 minutes, with about 300 men trapped inside and completely unable to escape. Little did those men know that their fate was the easier one. The remaining approximately 900 men went into the water, where many died from drowning, shark attacks, dehydration, or injuries from the explosion. An even bigger atrocity was that there was no help coming. Somehow the fact that the ship did not arrive at its destination was overlooked as they thought it must have been reassigned somewhere else. In fact, help would never have arrived, if passing planes didn’t spot the survivors in the water…those left anyway. Four days after the torpedo hit, on August 2, an anti-submarine plane on routine patrol happened upon the men and radioed for assistance. Of the approximately 900 men in the water, only 316 survived.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, causing nearly 130,000 casualties and destroying over 60 percent of the city. Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, with casualties estimated at more than 66,000. During this time, the U.S. government withheld news of the Indianapolis tragedy until August 15 to ensure it was overshadowed by President Harry 
Truman’s announcement of Japan’s surrender. They wanted to save face after they didn’t protect the ship.
After the Indianapolis tragedy, its commander, Captain Charles McVay, faced a court-martial in November 1945 for not sailing a zigzag course, which supposedly might have helped the ship avoid enemy submarines, which we all know wouldn’t have helped. McVay, the only Navy captain court-martialed for losing a ship during the war, tragically took his own life in 1968. Many of his surviving crew members believed he was unfairly scapegoated. In 2000, 55 years after the Indianapolis sank, Congress officially cleared McVay’s name, not that it mattered in light of his suicide years earlier.
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