Customer Reviews

All the Drowned Sailors: Cover-Up of America's Greatest Wartime Disaster at Sea, Sinking of the Indianapolis with the Loss of 880 Lives Because of the Incompetence of Admirals, Officers, & Gentlemen

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On July 30, 1945, four days after the USS Indianapolis delivered the first operational atomic bomb to the island of Tinian (and exactly a week before that bomb would be dropped on Hiroshima), the unescorted heavy cruiser was torpedoed on its way to the Philippines by a Japanese submarine. The Navy never noticed that the ship did not reach its destination; 300 sailors went down with the ship, and 900 others floundered in the water for four days -- starving, drowning, and attacked by sharks, before being accidentally spotted by a passing bomber. Only 316 members of the original 1,196-man crew survived.

Several books have been published about the hapless ship, and how the Navy courtmartialed and blamed its captain so that he died a broken and alcoholic man. This is the only one I have read, so I don't know how it compares, but it's competently written and the tale is irresistable.

Some of the images make indelible imprints on the mind: "The doctor [Lt. Cmdr. Lewis Leavitt Haynes] continued to pronounce men dead. He would remove their jackets, recite the Lord's Prayer, and release the bodies. The water was very clear, and Doctor Haynes remembered the bodies looking like small dolls sinking in the deep sea. He watched them until they faded from sight."

A fine web site, lists information about the ship, its fate, a survivor's story, and current attempts to pass legislation that would clear the captain, the late Charles Butler McVay III, of his scapegoat conviction.

The book is simply a detailed story of the sailors aboard the USS Indianapolis. It would be an excellent reference for someone researching the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis' last voyage, and the book is also great for someone who wants to know what happened.

The book is well thought out and very through. It covers the tragedy from beginning to end. It talks about the sailing orders, the route on the vessel's last journey, what happened from the US and the Japanese point of view, stories from sailors who survived the attack, the alleged errors made by the Navy, and the trial of Captain McVay.

While I perceived the book as highly factual, it was hard not to be saddened by the stories told by the surviving crew. My heart felt heavy while reading stories of sailors wounded during the initial torpedoing of the ship who never had a chance as the ship sank beneath them, stories of sailors who made it out only to suffer from sun exposure, dehydration, starvation, and photophobia. The book had stories of men who died heroically trying to save others and men who died as they lost their mental reasoning and tried to swim to far away places.

This book is great! It has the facts behind what happened so you can draw your own conclusions about who was at fault, and it had the testimonies of horror experienced by the people who survived

This may be the most poorly written historic non-fiction book I have ever read. It's amazing that any publisher would agree to print this dull rehash of a subject covered so much more successfully before and since, including a national best seller.