Most Secret Cargo of WWII - How a Lone US Warship Delivered the Atomic Bomb
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- Опубліковано 17 гру 2020
- When officials from the Manhattan Project and the United States Army Air Forces were looking for a base for a planned atomic bomb attack on Japan, they decided to look amongst the Mariana Island group. Eventually, they settled on Tinian, an island in the Pacific coincidently shaped just like Manhattan.
Tinian, once under the control of Spain and Japan, was the place where the atomic bombs were assembled and from where the B-29 Superfortress bombers departed towards Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The island was positioned strategically close to mainland Japan, as the round trip was only 3,000 miles long. Thanks to the diligent work of the Navy’s Seabees Construction Battalions, it also had multiple runways. It became the base of the 509th Composite Group, responsible for delivering the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man.
But before Tinian could be used as an atomic staging area, the parts to assemble the devices had to get there first. The task was left to the USS Indianapolis, a heavy-cruiser sent on a top-secret mission to deliver the enriched uranium and other parts that would belong to Little Boy. It would be a mission fraught with peril, as Japanese submarines still stalked the surrounding seas...
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When I was a young boy I was in a country diner with my dad on a saturday morning. He told me "son look behind you and go say hello that old man." I shook his hand and said thank you for your service sir. Only years later I leard he was a sailor on the Indianapolis. Now Ive served as well and to him I am happy to say I salute you sir thank you for your service and your sacrifice
My father was on Tinian as a Marine. He said when the ship was being dock. They herded all non-essential personnel to the other side of the Island. When they got the all clear signal, him and a buddy ran back and took a picture of the USS Indianapolis as it was leaving. Possible that last picture taken of it.
My grandfather was there as well, he was a B-29 tail gunner, 505th bomb group if I'm not mistaken.
My grandfather was in the Navy stationed there also. I asked him about the atomic bomb on the island, he said there was a lot of talk going on about something highly secret but it wasn't until the bomb was dropped that he found out. Sadly he passed away in 1999, but fortunately and gratefully, he and my grandma lived next door to us growing up and I got to spend the first 18 years of my life with him.
I have no story to contribute as my all family members were in Cuba until the 90’s but just wanted to say hi and a great day.
@@jcplays3842 they should go back to Cuba, we're full
@@roguespearsf imagine being a nazi supporter😂 embarrassing
For those interested in Little Boy trivia, the bomb was loaded on the plane without the high explosive charges in the bomb. The bomb was armed in-flight by Deke Parsons the weapons officer. A special temporary catwalk was stored in the bomb bay and put in place at the rear of the bomb for a work platform. The arming sequence is a follows:
Checklist for loading charge in-plane with special breech plug
(After all D-3 tests are completed)
1. Check that green plugs are installed.
2. Remove rear plate.
3. Insert breech wrench in breech plug.
4. Unscrew breech plug, place on rubber pad.
5. Insert charge, 4 sections, red ends to breech.
6. Insert breech plug and tighten home.
7. Connect firing line.
8. Install armor plate.
9. Install rear plate.
10. Remove and secure catwalk and tools.
The bomb was fully armed only after the green plugs had been removed and the red plugs inserted, by Electronic Test Officer Morris Jeppson.
my childhood best friend's father was by far the happiest person I've ever known, always laughing his joy never failed to lift anyone a mile within his orbit. And no one outside his family knew, until his death decades later, , that Marv was a USS Indy survivor. Maybe he was just born w/extra happiness, and/or getting thru that hell meant he had all that much more to be happy about from July '45 on. Amazing guy
I worked Rosario in Hoboken 1975 . Every morning as he entered the tool room , ( 20 or so toolmakers ) . He was smiling , and waving a greeting to all . Day long always smiling , cheery no mater what . One day i ask " Rosie , why are you always smiling " ....... oh , Michael you don't know , you don't know . This is a beautiful country ,a beautiful country . My country ( Columbia ) , they will come in the night , take you away ,shoot you ,your family ,etc . We don't know who these men are of why they do this . People disappear , killed , tortured , ??? who? why ? .......... This my new home the U.S. A . is a beautiful a ,beautiful country ,i love this country . I was 23 at the time and gained much from Rosie that day . Always keep conversation in my mind and heart . God bless the United States of America .
@@murphy13295 right on
Great story. Its amazing how some people are so happy to be alive, and others like me suffer from depression and are rarely happy. Maybe I need a new point of view on life
Marv knew after surviving that horrific event...Every day was gravy.
I once worked for a guy who was a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam. There was nothing you could do to get him upset, absolutely unflappable.
Dad (see below) was also on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 covering the Japanese surrender ceremony for his NY newspaper. Proud to be his son.
“Looks just like Manhattan”
I suppose...if you unfocus your eyes
And the Manhattan Project began in 1939 with paperwork from FDR after a letter to him from Einstein and all the other nuclear physiatrists. That was a full 2 years before Pearl Harbor and It had nothing to do with any island shapes. This channel is run by an idiot.
@Sean M and it doesnt
It looks nothing like Manhattan Island other than it is an island.
This guy is whack!
Engines in the nose of stealth Blackhawk helicopters was his biggest faux statement
Maybe he meant Staten island? I thought it was wierd too haha
@Sean M geographically, you have to take hard drugs to see the same shape as Manhattan.
Capt McVay was court martialled for failure to order abandoning ship in a timely manor, endangering his ship by failing to zig-zag in an attempt to throw off torpedo attacks. This despite being refused a destroyer escort and no intelligence that a submarine was in the area. The captain of the submarine appeared at McVay's court martial and testified it would not have mattered if the Indianapolis zig-zagged, he still would have hit it.
It is the only time in US Navy history that an enemy combatant was allowed to testify in a court martial.
You nailed it! It was not a "Shining" moment for the USN. It is also thought because McVay's father was in command of the Asiatic Fleet during the 20's...His dad was a "By the Book" and intolerant and was not well-liked...there was some payback from that Courtmartial board.
What they did with Mcvay was a disgrace and disgusting by the Navy brass.
My Grandfather was one of the 316 survivors and told me stories of what happened. He’s been gone many years now. I still miss him. He was the greatest grandpa ever. So grateful he survived.
Ya, someone also really dropped the ball at were they were going. They got marked as arrived, when they hadn't. That's why no one came looking for them.
My father was a Navy Corpsman on Tinian during the A-bomb missions. He said no one new about the mission before the Enola Gay took off but everyone new about it before it landed. Thousands of personnel lined the runway when the Enola Gay landed. He said it was the happiest day of his life, knowing he would not have to spend many more years caring for combat burn victims in Navy ships and hospitals.
Japan surrendered because the Soviets entered the war against them - despite Japanese efforts to broker their surrender with them - knowing that fighting on another front was futile. It suited Japanese high command to blame their capitulation on the A-bombs though because they could claim to their people that they were defeated honourably on the battlefield by the new super weapon. Major General Curtis LeMay, head of the 21st Bomber Command went public the month after the bombings telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all".
@@tubthump bullshit they had a third one ready to go that would later be disassembled into the infamous demon core. That bomb would have been addressed to Tokyo and would have caused the single largest loss of life in the war. They wouldn't have surrendered if it was just Russia and the US with no nukes, they showed their ferocity and absolute lack of concern for loss of human life during the entire pacific theatre. Many generals were concerned even the bombs wouldn't be enough. They would have rather fought to the last man and maintained their 'honor' rather than surrender, but when your enemy can delete your cities at a moment's notice it's over.
@@fademusic1980 The Soviets were also just next door to the west. Strategically, Japan could not harm the Soviets enough to stop them from bombing, with the U.S. support, the islands back into the sea. There is a video that covers this and why throughout history destroying cities has never had an effect on ending a war. ua-cam.com/video/dkZs5jjxeQI/v-deo.html
@@tubthump Yeah, problem was, LeMay was an idiot. Look at the policies he espoused, like the daylight bombing campaign.
The Japanese, who actually had a clue as to why they surrendered, were quite clear. They didn't fear the Soviets - the USSR had no capacity to invade the home islands. It was the US nukes that convinced the Showa Emperor to command the surrender.
@@sundoga4961 How about the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet - was he an idiot too? Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz made a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the attack on Nagasaki and stated that "...the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan...".
Dark doc's: battleship
USS Indianapolis: *sad heavy cruiser noises*
maybe its a jet like the Zero haha
What's the difference? :-S
@Woody Last Name OK, thx for the reply :-)
If it has armor and bigger guns, it's a battleship.
If it has no armor but bigger guns, it's a battlecruiser.
If it has no armor and smaller guns, it's a cruiser.
If it has a bit of armor and smaller guns, it's a heavy cruiser.
If it has battleship armor and smaller guns, it's German.
If it has no armor, smaller guns, anti ship missiles, and flight deck, it's Russian.
@@strf90105 if it has an atomuc bomb in the cargo is Brutish.
the lasting effect from the loss of Indianapolis is that every ship submits a movement report (moverep) when getting underway regardless if it is to just shift piers via tug power while in port. no exceptions. required to be transmitted within 15 minutes of shifting colors.
Thanks for sharing the info. The Indianapolis was VERY active in the pacific even before its secret mission...I have only become aware of this because of the PBS doc that I've stumble upon. Every life lost was tragic but those survivors talking about hearing thier mates screaming from being eaten, makes my heart hurt...
The reaction of Navy officials to the sinking of the Indianapolis (the greatest single loss of life at sea from a single ship in the history of the US Navy) showed strongly when they tried to think of a way to charge the Japanese submarine commander with a war crime because the sinking occurred when everyone on the US side was certain that Japan was defeated. They couldn't because it happened under conditions of a declared war.
So, they turned their attention to the commander of the Indianapolis, Captain Charles B. McVay III, whom they convicted of "failure to zig-zag" (when his orders left it up to him to chose whether to or not; the Navy also failed to advise McVay of the fact that Japanese submarines were known to be operating along the Tinian-to-Philippines route). The conviction was so egregious that McVay's sentence was overturned by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Even so, eventually McVay took his own life under the load of guilt Navy families and others directed at him.
Remember that if you aspire to command any military unit, or government unit that might encounter violent criminals.
How emotions can cloud the thinking of even the "top notch" minds of authority figures when they hate someone. Or, instead of the "cloud the thinking" idea, we could cut to the chase and probably be right in calling them true psychopaths.
Read books on the subject e.g.:
"Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man
" Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic, May 21, 2019
"In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
" Doug Stanton, May 1, 2003
@@geoh7777 "In Harm's Way" is an excellent book. What happened to Captain McVay was a travesty, especially after what he and his men had already endured.
Hooper: "Don't tell me.. Mother?"
Quint: "To Hooper that's the USS Indianapolis."
. . . which was a heavy cruiser....not a battleship.
Jaws.
@@stevelindstedt8858 have you seen Jaws?
@@wildkarrde3370 Yes....and, I've read several narratives of the fate of the USS Indianapolis after she delivered the first (Hiroshima) atomic bomb.....Few know that the Indianapolis' Captain McVey committed suicide in the 'sixties, as many were blaming him for the fate of the doomed cruiser.
@@stevelindstedt8858 yes. I'm familiar with all of that but you seemed to be missing the joke.
First time I ever heard of the USS Indianapolis was that haunting recollection by Robert Shaw in Jaws , it made my blood run cold ..
Yes. Same here.
It was a last minute addition that Spielberg and a couple of writers came up with that wasn’t in the script. Brilliant piece of directing adding that in!
Watch the mission of the sharks movie from 1990s it tells the whole story
In their own right, the Seabees were and are a force to be reckoned with. Their actiins during WWII played a crucial part to aid in winning the war. That says alot, coming from an Army soldier...
Japan had nothing comparable. It's one of the reasons they were defeated.
@@misterjag Something else that Japan didn't have that the American's did. Practice putting back together a fleet sunk at Pearl Harbor. There was really no such thing as "Damage Control" before that point. But in Pearl, they transformed the island Oahu from a mid-pacific port to a major naval base rivaling San Diego. The ships were salvaged incredibly rapidly, there is a three video set that is really worth the watch on this. In the process of salvage, they were able to identify the weaknesses and how to improve them, making the resulting, and next class of ships, much more resistant to battle damage. Also quicker to repair and get back into the fight. The island also became a huge warehouse of spare parts and fabrication facilities. As Yamamoto is supposed to have said after learning that due to delays, the attack occurred before a formal declaration of war had been declared in Washington from the Japanese embassy "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Indeed.
Thank ya, Army, fer yer kind words, from an ol Seabee!
Seabees were different from other units in that they needed bulldozer drivers, skip loaders , crane operators , men who could start a concrete batch plant, surveyors and civil engineers who could with no training START RIGHT NOW . These people came out of America’s construction trades . Unlike most service men they were middle aged these men turned out to be excellent teachers and mentors to the new younger Seabees coming up .
One of my grandfather's was a sea bee
Tinian is such and eerie place to be, I visited a few years ago. Surprisingly the runaways are still used by military aircraft. I'm glad i made the trip through the jungle to take picture of the assembly area which is now just a concrete pad with a crane on it. You can see it in the video its the all metal building. The atomic bomb pits were very creepy to be around felt like looking into a massive grave. It also doesn't help that there is a huge Japanese bunker complex right next to them. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience to visit the island.
First thing I did after watching this was google Tinian pacific island tourism. I’m fascinated with war sites from WW2. Can’t imagine going to the WW1 battlefields in France with the same cheery attitude though.
My dad was stationed on Kwajalein in the US Navy - shortly prior to the A bomb drop - they were preparing for the invasion of Japan. He knew the story of the Indy well and always felt the Captain was a scapegoat for the disaster. He was on Kwaj during this time. He would say that “we were the closest to the sinking and easily could have helped them”. It bothered him thru his life (all this prior to “Jaws” - don’t think my dad even saw that movie).
In early 1976 I was befriended by an older black couple. The husband, Louis G, told me about this from his first had experience. They were floating in life jackets and would pull others into their group for safety, only to have them flip over because it was just the top half of a body. Nights were terrifying. People killed themselves. Bodies were everywhere. He was not a fresh soldier, but had been on Iwo, Mindanao, ... still his wife told me I was the only person he had ever told outside herself.
That's what Quint said. Try and wake your buddy and he just flips end-over, bit right through the middle.
Are they still around? Hit Like to answer.
@@thereisnosanctuary6184 No, sadly he's been gone for a long time now.
Who else immediately thought of Quint and his speech from Jaws?
me
@@michaelpercival7981 Good man!👍🏻
👍👍
@Karl E Paul - That was the very first thing that popped into my head.
*”We delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb”*
From memory, but accurate to experts´ reportage:
The _Indianapolis_ was not the "lone" conveyance of the Hiroshima atomic weapon. The fissile core was carried in another ship, and was _certainly_ not in a "wooden box". Protocol was to weld the steel (and lead?) box onto the deck of the armoured command superstructure, with armed guards posted at all shifts.
If memory serves, it was the _Indianapolis_ that carried the weapon arm system to Tinian. Other components were flown by plane. It was the intention to divide the components up into separate vessels precisely because of such contingencies as the I-58, although that happened after _Indianapolis_ had already delivered its special cargo.
Heh. Sounds like a murder mystery.
The little box that is shown a couple of times and looks so weird was the carrying case for the plutonium pit for Fat Man. It was plywood with a magnesium sheath cover and rubber baby buggy bumpers added for shock isolation. It was transported to Tinian inside a B-29 from Kirtland Airfield. The plutonium and the U-235 used in Little Boy were not radiation hazards; they were well below any sort of radiation hazard themselves until placed within their tampers in the bombs and detonated. There are differences of opinion whether the U-235 for Little Boy was in the Indianapolis shipment or sent by air; no one knows anymore.
I always thought it was odd that they would ship the whole thing together. Do you have any citations for how the parts were shipped?
USS “Indianapolis” was a Heavy Cruiser, as you stated, which is NOT a battleship, my dudes. Beautiful ship, though.
“SeaBees” came from Construction Battalion.
They found her wreck not to long ago. The heavy cruiser ,as you said😬
Was gonna point this out.
@@therogueadmiral same
Exactly my first response when I saw the title
raul duke >> I didn’t know they found the wreck! The sinking was certainly a tragic event, particularly for all the men bobbing about for days & days since she was sailing by herself with no escorts to pick up survivors. The Japanese submarine skipper always claimed he didn’t use his “Kaiten” suicide torpedos to sink her.
The locating of famous wrecks in deep water has become almost routine, what with the locating of HMS Hood (they recovered the bell) and the first USS Yorktown CV...there is some good footage of the latter to be found on UA-cam; you can see an undisturbed aircraft tractor & a 1.1 inch AA gun looking like it’s still ready for action.
Cheers!
13:40 The intended target of the second bomb was not Yakushima. The primary target was the industrial city of Kokura, at the northern tip of Kyushu. Yakushima is a remote mountainous island south of Kagoshima, which would make no sense to waste a bomb on such a target. Kokura had the war-making industry of Mitsubishi.
They were going to bomb it but the the cloud cover was so thick they couldn't get the bomb sight on target and had to fly to the secondary target: Nagasaki. The citizens of Kokura were saved from destruction without realizing it, thus producing the term Kokura's Luck. Another interesting fact was that it was were future meteorology legend Tezuka "Ted" Fujita was living at the time, and after Japan surrendered he studied the destruction caused by the atomic bombs. He later used that information while studying the damage caused by tornadoes and after the tornado super outbreak of the 70's he developed the Fujita scale for determining the strength of a tornado by the type of damage it causes. Funny how weather, the thing he would devote his life's work to, most likely saved his life.
You are absolutely correct!!!
Rare information come from this channel
There is quite prolific misinformation.
Yeah ur right man some of the detailes I had never Hurd
The footage is phenomenal too
@@iamcolinwilliams nah
Also poor grammar "comes" from commenters.
The guy that armed both Atomic Bombs was Captain Parson's (Naval Weapons Specialist) in the bomb bay of the Enols Gay - B-29 as it got close to Hiroshima. He was the outgoing Admiral of Cruiser Division 6 when I reported aboard the USS Macon CA-132 in 1953.
B-29
@@jamessimms415 You're correct. Don't know where the 36 came from.
My father was one of the Sea Bees who built the runways on Tinian. He said they blasted coral with dynamite rolled it out for the runways then watered it with seawater keeping the coral alive as it stitched itself back together becoming very tough.
I wonder if the chinese did the same thing when they took over the Sprately islands to use as a base int he South China Sea?
That's interesting as hell! Good way to 'make' a island , harbor ect.
Sounds like utter bullshit. Does all coral not need to be entirely submerged to survive
@Yuck Foutube That was a sarcastic comment dummy. Maybe if get an open mind you'll know what the chicoms are up to.
This is a good one. The streets on Tinian being laid out and named the same as those of Manhattan is kind of adorable.
I’m rather impressed that you somehow found film of Curtis LeMay in which he does not have his ever present stogie clutched in his mouth. Well at least for a few seconds. The battle of Tinian is probably more interesting for what it introduced to warfare. At the time there was a US Army weapons development officer who was about to have his rather clever and simple program shut down. In desperation to preserve what he was sure would be a fantastic weapon system that would save many US lives (and end those of everybody else), he snuck out of Washington and arrived on Saipan just as they were engaged in the mop up operations against Japanese Troops hiding in the mountain caves. This Major (Chan! Chang? I forget) showed them his rather clever concoction of gasoline, petroleum jelly and white phosphorous. Which could be easily used to fill an aircrafts drop tank, setting up an incredibly nasty and efficient fire weapon that could be built in theater from readily available materials. The local generals were impressed, and immediately tested it out by sending flights of P-47’s across the southern straight, to drop the stuff on the well fortified network of Japanese tunnels and trenches on Tinian, just ahead of the Marine invasion forces. It worked remarkably well, driving the Japanese out of their protected caves and into the barrages of naval gunfire. And thus was born Napalm. It wouldn’t be long before the B-29’s from Tinian Guam and Saipan started dropping the stuff on Tokyo itself.
Is this really what happened? I listened to several podcast episodes from Revisionist History (very reputable podcast) that seems to tell a very different story of how napalm was developed. Napalm was developed as part of a design competition initiated by the government. It was developed at Harvard during this competition, and it won the design competion by a wide margin. It was also tested quite a lot on test structures during development. But Im no history buff...
@@hankschwiebert1457 The Napalm program was about to be cancelled. Largely because the Army was not enthusiastic about using it in Europe. One of the Lt Commanders whose program it was got wind of it, and snuck all the way to Saipan with the recipe and a film of the tests to see if he could get someone there to save his project. He felt it would be a good solution to the problem of the well entrenched Japanese Island defenders. They mixed up a few batches, jury rigged some P-47 drop tanks to deliver it, and dropped it on the Japanese positions on Tinian. To rather spectacular effect. James Hornfisher covers it a bit in The Fleet at Flood Tide.
Fun fact: despite being considered as heavy cruisers, the Portland class cruisers were lightly armored
It's based on displacement... Bigger guns light side armor. And heavy deck armor.
The "heavy" refers only to the armament. This is typical for cruisers built under the Washington Naval Treaty.
@@MrFinalresistance yep, bloody weight limitations
Fun fact the largest cruisers were actually battle cruisers wich had light armor but very large guns
@@poland5606 they had heavy cruiser armor but were very big, they emphasized in speed to outmatch other battleships
Now imagine if that sub had found the Indianapolis earlier and sunk it.... What an interesting outcome that would be.
You think too much ..
but interesting thought
Personally I wouldn't call a Heavy Cruiser a Battleship. The Captain of the USS Indianapolis was court-martialed and wrongly convicted. Apparently he was not zig zagging when the sub attacked. The subs captain testified for him saying that even if the ship was doing that he would have sunk it anyway. I believe that the zig zagging was disproved as an effective method of avoiding a sub attack. You also left out the part where leaflets were dropped ahead of time warning of an impending attack and the authorities confiscated them and suppressed that information.
World of warships classifys tier 7 indianapolis as Heavy due to its 203mm guns.
Yes, CAPT Charles McVey got shafted pretty badly. He was finally completely pardoned by President Clinton but remains the only US commander to face court marshal for losing his ship in combat.
@@SWIFTO_SCYTHE This is how ships were actually classified. Not just how WG does it.
Uhh, the charges of not ordering the abandon ship were dropped. He was convicted of "hazarding the ship". Admiral Nimitz dismissed his sentence, and he retired in 1949 as an Admiral himself. He committed suicide in 1968. In 2000 congress passed a bill of exoneration in his favor, which was signed by President Clinton.
@@puncheex2 Didn't really matter that the charges were reduced. The Navy had dragged him through the mud to the point where he received hate mail so frequently that it resulted in him shooting himself.
For the record.
"Few survivors managed to escape in rafts"
Of the 1196 men onboard when the torpedoes struck, about 300 went down with the ship. Which left about 900 survivors in the water.
"An distress signal never left the Indianapolis"
The Indianapolis did manage to send out 3 distress signals before she went down, but none of the 3 signal stations which picked them up, took it seriously enough to look into the matter more carefully.
It took 3 days, not 2, before a Lockheed Ventura on a routine patrol, stumbled upon the survivors by chance.
A cruiser, not a battleship!
maybe its a jet like the Zero haha
Before I do a bit of bashing, I wanted to clarify that I am a huge fan of this channel and will continue to be. That said, I can't believe how little detail was put into the U.S.S. Indianapolis. That is arguably THE single most infamous ship sinking of the entire war. How the men were being picked off one by one by sharks... it's a truly horrifying story that deserves a video of it's own. Also, ships did not find the survivors. The crew of a lone plane, a PV-1 Ventura, spotted the men in the ocean. They then radioed the Navy to send rescue. 4 days in the water, just 316 men survived out of 1,196 for a total of 880 sailors KIA. A large portion of those killed were eaten by sharks. It is believed to be the worst shark attack in history.
The large object being moved on the trailer at 1:02 and 7:29 is a steel container named "Jumbo". It was intended to be used to recover the plutonium from the Trinity test bomb if the test failed. The test personnel decided they didn't need it, so it was placed 800 metres away from ground zero. It survived.
Interesting
The B-29 at 04:59 baaaarely made it off the runway in time!
"......At noon, the fifth day, a Mr. Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he saw us. He was a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb." ~ Quint , grizzled seasoned shark hunter
Man, there was that many? One thousand one hundred survived the sinking, many died from their injuries and then many more from exposure.... but how Many became shark snacks...... Wow! The Indianapolis is More famous for that than it's cargo for sure.
@@constitution_8939 ua-cam.com/video/u9S41Kplsbs/v-deo.html
R.I.P. James Gross. CA-35. Gloria told me you were a hero and I still remember the hug and kiss she gave you..Love is eternal Mrs G..
"Mr Hooper, that s the USS Indianapolis. "
" First shark came at daybreak, Tiger, 13 footer
" Sometime the shark goes away, sometimes he doesnt go away."
" I know I ll never put another life jacket on"
I d like to pay my respects and give thanks to the sailors and marines that were aboard the USS Indianapolis, the tough brave American heros.
My prayers for those who gave their lives that night and the days and nights that followed as all endured suffering and sights unimaginable awaiting rescue. God bless you all. We will NEVER forget what you did for us and what you endured for each other.
RIP Capt. McVeigh and tough crew no longer with us. We love you all.
It also carried a crate of scented toilet paper for General Mac-Cather
He does talk fast. You can actually slow it down
@@chickenfishhybrid44 actually put it on 1.25 playback speed and, you’re right, he does speak quickly.... too quickly to speed up
source?
@@2paulcoyle bro its a joke
What about tampons for Patton?
Bit of an odd story that somewhat relates in a way to the USS Indianapolis.
I had a cat who used to enjoy watching Godzilla movies with me. She passed away earlier this year. As sort of a memorial to her, I have her ashes on my mantle sitting in front of a Godzilla Blu-ray collection we were in the middle of watching when she passed.
Wanting a real-world tie into Godzilla to go with the shrine, I found a place that sold trinitite, the radioactive rock substance left over from the detonation of the first atomic weapon. Because of the timing of her death, when her remains were returned to me (I used an alternative method called aquamation that takes about a week or so), when I got paid, and the fact that the day I got paid I got off of work early, I ended up ordering the trinitite sample on July 16th of 2020.
I didn't realize the significance of this date until I received it the following week.
It was not only the date of the test, but it was the same date that the USS Indianapolis left her port with parts for the bomb.
Grahf,that's a kill of a story .Always remember,there are no coinsedences in life.Most are led to believe in them though.There are unseen reasons for everything that happens.
@@markpaul8178 -- I acknowledge that you believe that... but there's absolutely no way you can prove that... and, by way of all the empirical knowledge the human species has gleaned so far, there doesn't seem to be a single shred of evidence that even remotely suggests you are correct. So, in fact... it does appear that virtually everything really is just random.
Coincidences require careful planning
@@thebonesaw..4634You're trying to hard
@@thebonesaw..4634 It's not my job to prove it.There is a time and unseen reason for everything.Most people can't believe something they can't see,smell,or touch.Faith,for instance.
3 things to point out.
1:McVay was charged with not issuing the "abandon ship" order in a timely manor, but was found not guilty of this charge during the court martial.
2: Men on board the Indianapolis sent out SOS signals until they were unable to. The SOS were just ignored. Declassified naval intelligence in the 90s revealed that US naval command did receive the SOS signals, but they were ignored.
3: While Captain McVay did cease to zig-zag the ship at the time, that is because naval doctrine of the time did not require a ship to zig-zag during moments of poor visibility, to which even the Japanese commander of I-58 testified that visibility was fair at best.
The Indianapolis was targeted and sunk just as visibility began to clear, but the Japanese sub was too close and fired off too many torpedoes for it to make a difference. Plus, the Indianapolis had no sonar or equipment of any kind that could have detected the sub or torpedoes.
The contrary were myths propagated by the Navy to shift blame onto McVay, and he wasn't acquitted until October, 2000.
What's actually kinda heartwarming, is the Japanes commander of the sub spent years aiding the Indianapolis survivors in trying to restore McVay's name, and died 5 days after, meaning he got to see justice for his adversary.
First time hearing about the Pumpkin Bombs. Great work as always!
Of course the Indy sent out a distress signal (possibly more than one, I can’t recall) before she listed and sunk. The message just wasn’t taken seriously, therefore it went unreported.
" Black eyes like a dolls eyes " 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈
I've read that Shaw ad-libbed that entire speech and he was really drunk at the time.
@@lawrencelewis8105 6 you y776 yes u it to+if xf vn but i78787 ur
@@meganjoeyoungblood1833 What?
@@lawrencelewis8105 From what I remember he had flubbed the scene a few times, but in the version they used he came in plastered and did the entire thing in a single take.
@@dyveira That's an even better story!
"How a Lone US Warship Delivered the Atomic Bomb" Then only spend ~4 minutes of the video on said ship. Disappointing, the USS Indianapolis deserved better.
Agreed, to get more info on this, I believe the name of the movie is ''Shark Attack'', it has the fellow in it that was John Boy in the Waltons
As I understand it, there was a distress call put out; one picked up by three different stations. However...
"Captain Charles B. McVay sent out a distress signal as the ship was sinking. Declassified records later showed that three stations received the signals, but none acted upon the call. One commander was drunk, another had ordered his men not to disturb him, and a third thought it was a Japanese trap."
wwmt.com/news/local/on-74th-anniversary-of-sinking-uss-indianapolis-survivor-tells-his-story-at-colon-library
Typical Navy brass screw ups! The Navy should never have sent the ship out with no escorts and no definite schedule of her travel. Those three commanders should have been court martialed and put in prison without parole! But, in true Navy fashion, the whole thing was covered up and classified, a lesson learned from the British so as not to embarrass their Admiralty when it screwed up.
Damn I'm STUCK on this guy's channel! One of the best on UA-cam, keep it up please!
The amount of episodes you guys crank out is amazing!
Unfortunately it comes at the cost of blatantly misidentifying things like ship types.
"Anyway, we delivered the Bomb", Quint in Jaws.
This movie was where I first learned about the USS Indianapolis. I've read more about it too. Like many people, I found the book "In Harm's Way", by Doug Stanton, to be so riveting.
RIP to those sailors.
My great uncle, Al Morris of Norton, Ohio passed away about a year ago leaving only 19 uss Indianapolis survivors at that time. He had just started watch duty on deck when the torpedo struck. Said that a cigarette saved his life because he left is rack early to have a smoke. No other men in his sleeping quarters survived the attack. He was scared from the chest down from floating for days in fuel oil and saltwater and still had nightmares of men screaming from delirium and shark attack. Many dove beneath the surface to reach cooler water in the tropical heat and never returned.
God bless you, uncle Al...
God Bless McVay! Also it was a PBY Catalina that spotted the survivors flown by Lt Cmd Adrian Marks that saved several sailors before a ship every arrived.
Either I've had way more to drink than I realize, or this guy is talking way too fast... it could be either.
Random pauses in speech too
Way too fast + way too long of pauses mid-sentence. If he'd work out his voiceovers, these would be exceptional. The information and footage is pretty solid.
Turn his playback speed to .75 makes it way easier
Fun Story, My dad used to teach me how to drive at the same runways used by these bombers, I almost crashed the car I was driving at the bomb bay.
How old are u
For those who like to know you can visit the aircraft that dropped the bombs in museums. Boxcar is at the National Museum of US Air Force in Dayton OH. Enola Gay is in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
Mostly great Dark Docs. Double check your facts on how the fissionable material was transported on Indy. It was kept in the private quarters of the officers accompanying the cargo. Also there is an error when describing the rescue of the Indy's survivors. 5 day at sea, spotted by a plane. No one knew they were missing.
There are enough of both inaccuracies and accuracies to make this both debatable and interesting,
Very good.
Got to visit the lab Los Alamos. My High School History teacher was on the Indianapolis but got a form of Poison Ivy and was sent to the Hospital and did not make the final voyage. He had survivor mental issues the rest of his life. Great Man
There is some information missing. The great artist supposed to be the bomb dropper. However, the captain drop the pumpkin bomb to empire palace on purpose. So they switch to enola gay for the mission. Previously, enola gay did not have a name.
My Grand dad was a SeaBee in the Pacific.
Prior to the war he worked for a highway construction company.
After Pearl Harbor an officer from the US Navy showed up at their company and told them they were now part of a Navy Construction Battalion.
The Navy comandeered all the equipment and drafted the all the workers.
They were not all volunteers.
My Grandmother told me they were given 1 week before they shipped out to get their affairs in order.
Shawn R ....and that happened as it should've happened. If one can live in the U.S., and take advantage of the opportunities it offers, then one damn sure can answer the call when the US needs them...I enlisted after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, served two combat tours in Iraq, so I'm not talkin outta the side of my neck....
@@branon6565 Thank you for you service.
@@branon6565 Thanks fer alla yer Service, an Sacrifice, Brother, from an ol Air Det Seabee!
Mark Felton sent me. Kudos and thank you 🙏
I have been to that island as well as both cities in Japan while serving in the Navy in the 80's. The Japanese protested our ship when we pulled into Sasabo and they blamed us still for dropping the bombs on them. Some of us were feeling guilty until our Lt. Commander reminded us of what the Japanese did to the world and that his father was being prepared to invade Japan. So dropping the bombs saved American lives of a war the Japanese started. He also reminded us of our visit to Pearl Harbor and our ceremony at the USS Arizona. I did all the touristy things there.
Did he tell you that that the US government mainly did it because it was a perfect opportunity for a proper live fire test and to try and scare the Soviets into compliance
my uncle was on the USS Indianapolis when it was sunk, he had 4 ships knocked out from under him in the Pacific during WW2, that was the last one and luckily he survived and the navy sent him home after that,
Not only was the "Indy" not a battleship; it did not deliver the "atomic bomb."
It only delivered the fissile core. The rest of the first, uranium bomb was airlifted to Tinian.
If you watched the video you'd know that's what they said.
8:27
No, it apparently delivered all the pieces for the Little Boy bomb. There is some controversy over whether the shipment contained the U-235 pieces.
Heavy cruiser . But good info ! Love your videos ! The title is only wrong ! In the video it’s identified properly.
To be fair heavy cruisers and fast battleship is virtually interchangeable. The semantic difference is simply to get around the battleship treaty limits. So it’s a cruiser now lol.
@@manofcultura except it's really not. The generally accepted definition of a heavy cruiser is something armed with 8" guns. Now of course there's some ambiguity when you go to larger calibers (for example German pocket battleships armed with 11" guns vs the American Alaska-class "ultra-heavy cruisers" armed with 12" guns (which I would argue were in fact battlecruisers, regardless of what the navy called them)), but by the time you get up to something armed with 16" guns like the WWII-era American battleships, you're pretty unambiguously looking at a battleship (or at least a battlecruiser).
@@manofcultura "To be fair heavy cruisers and fast battleship is virtually interchangeable. "
It is hard to describe how wrong that is. 10,000 tons vs 32,000 to 45,000 tons for a Battleship. 8" guns vs 14"-16" guns for the main battery. Armor about a foot thick on a battleship. On a cruiser? Some. More than a destroyer at least.
Go find Drachinifel's channel as he'll educate you.
Click Bait no mistake.
IMO. 🖖
Most of your videos highlight fascinating or even vital missing pieces of history, but this one I found to be the most interesting so far, as an almost totally looked over aside to such a well known series of events.
Yessss. This is such a dramatic story. This boat has such a history
There are many inaccuracies and left out info here....
Dark Docs producer(s) like to play games with the portrayal of history. For example; at 1:00 and again at 7:30, this vidoe shows a team of bulldozers dragging a large cylinder across a flat desert while the soundtack talks about the Bomb. The takeaway is that this is the atomic bomb. To the uninitiated history student, this could not be more misleading. What DarkDocs is showing in those scenes is the Jumbo. When the scientists decided to try to explode the plutonium-rich implosion device, the military command insisted on hedging their bet that the bomb test would result in a partial failure known as a "fizzle". This is where the the outer casing of conventional explosives fire but fail to cause the nuclear material to reach critical compression (critical mass) and form a fast nuclear reaction (BOOM). A fizzle would release and scatter the very valuable plutonium into the atmosphere. The concern was not so much about the radiation contamination but an economic consideration.It was argued that if they could contain the bomb in a way that would blast apart if the bomb worked but caught the debris if it didn't, they could retry it at a later time with the millions of dollars of captured material. Hence, they built the Jumbo. Its walls were on the range of 14 inches thick and was to be hung vertically from a massive derrick frame construct that was able to support the 214 ton Thermos-like bottle. The closest rail depot was an abandoned one at Pope N.M,. some forty miles from the Trinity site. Just finding a shop that would tackle the manufacturing task was a challenge. Many miniature "Jumbinos" were built and tested before the final design was apporoved and in May, 1944, those bulldozers dragged the heaviest object ever carried on American rails to the test site. By this time, the Los Alamos scientists were cofident that the test would not fizzle and declined to use the Jumbo. On test day, it hung 800 yards for the Ground Zero tower and survived the blast, although it's suport tower was essentially atomized. The Jumbo and small pieces of the tower are still laying in the desert soil and anyone can look at it during the twice-yearly opening of the Trinity site. As for DarkDocs, please be a bit less misleading about history, lest someone mis-tell your story.
My uncle Tom survived the USS Indianapolis as well as another sinking of a smaller craft as a civilian. He told me stories of both when I had gotten out of the Navy.
Of human history, few moments match this time. Thanks, DD. Merry Christmas.
Greetings from Tinian!
Two family friends were involved in this story : NJ Mims, ground crew at Tinian- said he never knew details about the bomb until afterward. He was later an insurance agent with my grandfather.. And Micheal Emanual, an officer who survived the sinking of the Indy. He was a partner in the Carlton Fields law firm in Tampa, passed away in 92 of pancreatic cancer. Both men were very good to me as a child.
I admit I’m biased, but you should look into doing some videos about us Seabees. We’ve cut the tops off of mountains to make air bases, we’ve installed and operated a nuclear reactor in Antarctica, and we’re that last ones to steal an enemy train at Inchon Harbor.
Great report w/lots of detail I'd never known. Thank you.
Then sink. So secret no one looked for days while they were eaten by sharks. Quints story in jaws.
"Y'know, the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes."
It would of been called the Indiana if battleship....come on man
Cool, didn't know that.
@@theplinkerslodge6361 all battleships are named after states
Gotta love the seabees. Go navy
Love the longer format !
Excellent book I recommend reading about the USS Indianapolis ''In Harm's Way''.
The movie indianopolis was awsome too
Yes I’ve been waiting on this episode
First reply on first comment
@@brodie_friesen yes
Another great video! Thank you!
Another,another,and another one of my favorites!Thanks DARK DOCS.
"Tinian, an island coincidently shaped just like Manhattan."
It might be good time to schedule that annual eye exam. Perhaps after the hectic holidays are over. Happy holidays!
My Dad was on Tinian and helped load out the Enola Gay.
Stacey Keach & Nicolas Cage played Capt McVey in 2 movies about this..On a side note some say a kaiten was used to sink the ship cos the holes were just too large for torpedoes.
You should put the audio from your vids out as a podcast too. Interesting to listen to while driving.
Haven't watched yet, but this is coincidentally relevant to current times. Just last week, it was revealed that the U.S. DoD was upgrading all of the airfields at Tinian to be able to accommodate more modern air assets in case Guam were to be targeted in a Chinese missile strike. Tinian would be utilized as a fallback forward base.
D 349 Interesting, thanks. Yesterday I read China is carrying out exercises related to an invasion of Taiwan.
Burns are some of the worst injuries in war ,sailors coming out of a ruptured boiler room scalded like lobsters were given morphine double stat and that’s all they can do !
"I'll never put on a life jacket again."
My great grandfather served in the navy during WW2 and I remember him telling me a story about how he was on this boat and it was his job with a few others to guard whatever’s in the crate at all costs... He said he didn’t know that the atomic bomb was in the crate he was guarding till after it dropped.
This was a big gold of historic shots during the atomic bomb.. it must be share before forgotten.
Heavy cruiser, NOT battleship. This sounds like a similar news post about finding the Karlsruhe wreck and calling it a battleship as well.
[Edit] He fixed to warship.. thought he'd change it to heavy cruiser, oh well good enough.
Well.. its a ship for battle. A battle ship. Its just a classification. Yikes.
6 torps in 18 mins? More like 6 seconds. And the ship sank in 12 mins. Not to mention that the Indy DID get a mayday off and it was picked up by 3 stations. One dismissed it as a ruse by the Japanese, one CO was asleep and the last was drunk, so they were all ignored. Lastly, it was a patrol plane that happened upon the survivors and reported them, not ships. Also, why show pics of battleships and light cruisers instead of just pics of the Indy? I only saw a few of her and more of BBs and Cleveland class light crusiers.
Thank you for these fantastic docos
The sailors were in the water for over four days. They were not found “2 days later by chance by ships.” They were found by a airplane that was getting ready to drop a bomb on them.
You should do a part 2 about the Court Marshall of the Captain of the Indianapolis in which the US Navy had the Commander of the Japanese sub testify!
There was a pretty good movie, starring Stacey Keach, about the Indianapolis and the subsequent court martial, worth looking up.xx
@@susanlansdell863 I'll check it out.😀
Heavy cruiser not battleship
maybe its a jet like the Zero haha
Thank you! :)
They are Dark, but I don’t know of a better historical video channel on the web.
Kudos on another great one.
Happy Holidays to All 🙏
You have GOT to be kidding me... ua-cam.com/channels/4sEmXUuWIFlxRIFBRV6VXQ.html
... here's just a sample of some of my favorites of late: ua-cam.com/video/eMGog4QJsIs/v-deo.html
... ua-cam.com/video/Kqqy6ZyWYjc/v-deo.html
... ua-cam.com/video/JKM0OiQZe4g/v-deo.html
... ua-cam.com/video/Rqpk6RolUNk/v-deo.html
@@thebonesaw..4634 what only history guy why not mark felton?
@@Humbulla93 -- I'm subscribed to Felton too... but I felt my job here was to point out a single example of someone who takes history way more seriously and who's far less likely to get so much wrong, the way that all the "Dark" channels do. Plus, Felton is almost exclusively interested in WWII history only, where as THG is interested in all of it.
@@thebonesaw..4634 makes sense, but those events happened also in WW2, and you´re right besides that he speaks like being in a hurry and a bit mumbly
never knew of the pumpkin bombs.
wish YT would give us a "Love this" button. cause i love it.
“So, 800 men went into the water, 300 came out. Sharks got the rest”
Anyway..we delivered the bomb..
You should do a documentary on the Indianapolis. The aftermath of the sinking and how they Navy covered the truth til the 90s is wild