Abandon Ship! (Mass Market Paperback)

In July, 1945 a Japanese submarine torpedoed the cruiser Indianapolis with almost 1,200 sailors on board. Eight hundred men made it off the ship, but when recovered four days later, only 300 of the crew were still alive. Five hundred men died of shark attacks, exhaustion, dehydration, drowning, and other conditions related to exposure. The ship's commander, Capt McVay, survived to face court martial charges for actions allegedly contributing to the loss of his ship. The Navy even called the Japanese submarine commander that sank the ship to testify against Captain McVay. This was the only time a ship's captain was court martialed for losing a ship in wartime. After the court martial, the Department of the Navy also publicly assigned blame to other Naval personnel, who weren't even previously considered, for failing to report the nonarrival of the Indianapolis into Leyte. The Navy never admitted to the gaping hole in its policy that allowed the nonarrival of a major vessel to literally "slip" beyond notice. This failure to check up on the ship's nonarrival contributed to the majority of the Indianapolis' crew dying through exposure and shark attacks. The men were in the water for four days until a US plane sighted them by chance. No resuce efforts were launched until then. The architects of this policy were the Navy's highest ranking officers, and they weren't ever considered for punishment.

Newcomb succeeds in piecing together the roles of several dozen key participants in the tragedy to explain what happened and why. His long experience with military organizations also enables Newcomb to translate the events for the lay reader. The book does suffer in its narrative prose at times due to Newcomb's colorful and fanciful phrasing, but in key passages it soars. Newcomb weaves over a dozen different perspectives of the sinking by crewmen in various parts of the ship to paint a vivd picture of what the ordeal was like. He also captures the atmosphere of Captain McVay's court martial and puts it in context with the average American's view of the sinking. At these times, the book crackles with tension. Newcomb's description of the sailors' ordeal in the water is lacking some realistic details, probably in deference to readers' sensibilities. After all, Newcomb wrote this only 13 years after the sinking. Many relatives and loved ones were still alive, and perhaps he wished to spare them anything graphic.

Newcomb has clearly done his homework through countless interviews and exhaustive research. However, his access to Navy records was severly limited due to the relative freshness of these events in the public and the Pentagon's eye. With over 50 years between the sinking and now, the story of the Indianpolis bears a second look.

Until then, this books still stands as an informative and riveting work.

The survivors represented 40 of the then 48 States of The Nation. It is not much of a stretch to say that the nearly three fourths of the men that died would complete the list of 48 States, Native American Reservations, and possibly other locales as well. As this is the largest loss of life from a single ship, it may also be unique in that families in every single State were affected, I don't know this, I am making a presumption. I have often read of this ship when the subject of its cargo was raised. For this book, and the men that died and lived, what it carried is meaningless relative to their ordeal. To use this issue to glorify or to denigrate the sacrifice of these men is equally obscene, and misses the point.

This is a book about human nature at its most brilliant, and its most pathetic. It is a story of a crusade that survivors carried on until the spring of 2000, the story of a 9th Grader who was integral to their efforts, and the bureaucracy that lobbied 55 years after the sinking to minimize any blame they deserved. The part of the Navy that is obsessive about placing blame as far from the top as possible appears to still be in working order. A few years ago a gun turret exploded on a battleship with loss of life, who was to blame, the easiest scapegoat they could find.

I mean no disrespect to The Navy as a branch of armed forces that have defended us for hundreds of years. This is not about the "Navy" the institution; this is about the Navy as headed by insecure, politically paranoid, career bureaucrats. You will read of a four and one half day length of torture that is nearly unimaginable. Hundreds of men, many wounded, with virtually no food or water, and sharks and other flesh-eating creatures sharing their space. Reading about men, who wore life preservers that slowly drowned as the 48-hour useful life of the device ran out, is painful. What follows is even worse.

The moronic policies, the preoccupation with placing blame on the most irrelevant of players, and the 55 year odyssey to clear the Captain's and the crew's name, is nauseating at its best. That after half a century the Navy was still more concerned with its history than the truth, is whatever comes after nauseating.

The Captain took his own life in 1968 about an hour from where I write. The Navy had so vilified him that the letters accusing him of murder that continued for decades must have become too much. Only 134 of the original crew lived to see a Congress pushed, kicked, and dragged into passing resolutions that were the result of outrageous behavior 55 years before. And even when the resolution was passed, it was a resolution watered down by The Navy.

The Navy that was protecting what? Tradition? What Tradition? The only people that were deluded enough to think that what was done in 1945 was legitimate sent sacrificial lambs to face the questioners, the accusers. The transcripts of some exchanges are included, and are so ridiculous as to be farce, and are in the best traditions of nothing.

"Flags Of Our Fathers" is another book that has enjoyed well-deserved success. This story was originally published in 1958, and is as important now as it was then, perhaps more so. Time never runs out for the truth, no matter how blockaded it may be by self interested parties that are supposed to serve those they vilify or fail to vindicate.

A spectacular book about amazing men.