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The Story of a Survivor, Chapter 3This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by Amie Kerlin | |
| Tuesday, 12 August 2008 | |
The Rescue....
The old man wiped the moisture from his eyes and adjusted his U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS hat on his head. His last sentence seemed to have put him back in the water and I could see that he was struggling to come back to the now. I ended the interview because I couldn't bear to see him losing it. I acquired the rest of this story from the pilots who were involved in the rescue.
*********************************** Meet Lt. R. Adrian Marks
We were dispatched to lend assistance and send back a report about the call of "many men in the water". My team and I were in a PBY, a seaplane, and we loaded up with a little bit of supplies and a couple of rubber rafts. Of course we had no idea then that it was the U.S.S Indianapolis' men in the water. We had no way of knowing how many there were either. As we were flying out to the coordinates we flew over the U.S.S Cecil Doyle and we alerted the captain of the call we received about men in the water. The captain, on his own accord, decided then and there to change the course of the Doyle to assist. We continued to fly out to the coordinates leaving the slower moving ship behind until we saw them. We were several hours ahead of the Doyle, so we started unloading the rubber rafts and survival gear we had brought with us. We hadn't brought enough rafts or survival gear. Not by a long shot. As we were circling the men dropping off the meager supplies, we saw a couple of men who were on the outskirts of the big group get attacked by the sharks. At first we didn't know what was happening, but we could see the white tips on the dorsal fins and the brief reddening of the surrounding water when they took the men under. We were shocked. We felt helpless. We had been ordered not to land at sea but we couldn't just fly around and watch these men get eaten before our eyes! So my team and I all decided we needed to do something, so we disregarded those orders and landed our plane. We then taxied around picking up those who were at greater risk for the shark attacks--those off by themselves or in groups of two or three. We had radioed back to the Doyle for immediate assistance and to let them know what we'd just discovered, that they were the crew of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Doyle replied that they were already on their way. We put as many men as we could into the small fuselage of the seaplane, but it wasn't enough. So as their fifth night at sea began, we got the parachute lines and started to secure the men to the wings of the plane. They were near death. All of them. They were so dehydrated and starved. Most of them were covered in oil and muck from the wreckage. They couldn't stand, they were so waterlogged. The skin on some of the men looked as if it had been cooked in an oven or barbecue they were so burned from the sun and from the explosions. All in all we rescued 56 of them on our seaplane. Hours later, the Doyle radioed us to let us know they were close enough to lend a hand. They didn't want to run the ship too close because they were afraid that they would run over the men. Instead they had dispatched smaller vessels to gather the men from the water.
Remember now, that when this happened it was wartime. The captain of the Doyle disregarded his own ship and crew's safety and turned on their biggest, brightest searchlight to serve as a beacon for the small vessels to find their way back to the ship in the darkness and to give the men in the water a point to swim for. I heard some of the survivors afterward say that seeing that light was the way they knew someone had finally come for them. That they weren't forgotten, they had survived. ********************************* So this is the story of the U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS. I have tried my best to only put in factual material. The U.S.S. Indianapolis left Guam with 1,196 sailors and marines on board on July 28, 1945. Around three hundred men went down with the ship when it sank on the 30th. About nine hundred men made it into the water. After living through five nights and four days stranded in the water only 317 men were pulled from the water that night by the Doyle and the seaplane. Three hundred seventeen men who had survived shark attack, exposure, indescribable thirst and hunger, and the wounds the explosions on the ship caused lived to be rescued. The men I have mentioned by name are, in fact survivors or were involved in the rescue. The quote from Woody James was taken directly from his account of his experiences. While this has been called one of the worst cases in history of shark attacks on humans, most of the men did not die from shark attack. The sharks were later identified as White Tip sharks which are notorious for feeding on wreckages at sea. The seaplane that Lt. R. Adrian Marks used to rescue 56 men was never able to fly again after having so much weight on her for so long. She had to be sunk. Copyright 2008 Amie Kerlin |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 August 2008 ) |
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