He only spoke of it once. A horrifying tale. I cannot imagine having that on your mind every day for forty years. He passed in the 80s but I'll never forget that story and how he told it with such excruciating detail.

One of his commanding officers took pictures and had copies made for many of those officers under him, so that "they'd never forget." (I've run into another person or two over the years who had these pictures in their families), My dad never talked about it---ever. I found the pictures tucked away when I was a kid. No comparison, of course, to surviving a horror such as the Indianapolis. PST was never "discovered" until my generation, but I've often wondered how many veterans of my father's generation suffered from it. I'm sure he did, considering the depression and alcoholism that claimed him AFTER he'd worked hard and raised a family. He retired in his late fifties and then, instead of enjoying life, basically just gave up.

Perhaps it was made for TV, I don't know. I missed the first part. The movie was at the point where the sailors were abandoning ship. It ended with the unsuccessful court marshall, IIRC.

Those poor men.

Captain Charles B. McVay III, who had commanded Indianapolis since November 1944, survived the sinking and was among those rescued days later. In November 1945, he was court-martialed and convicted of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag". Several things about the court-martial were controversial. There was evidence that the Navy itself had placed the ship in harm's way, in that McVay's orders were to "zigzag at his discretion, weather permitting". Further, Mochitsura Hashimoto, commander of I-58, testified that zigzagging would have made no difference. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz remitted McVay's sentence and restored him to active duty. McVay retired in 1949 as a rear admiral.

While many of Indianapolis's survivors said McVay was not to blame for the sinking, the families of some of the men who died thought otherwise: "Merry Christmas! Our family's holiday would be a lot merrier if you hadn't killed my son", read one piece of mail. The guilt that was placed on his shoulders mounted until he committed suicide in 1968, using his Navy-issued revolver. McVay was discovered on his front lawn with a toy sailor in one hand. He was 70 years old.

......

In 1996, sixth-grade student Hunter Scott began his research on the sinking of Indianapolis, which led to a United States Congressional investigation. In October 2000, the United States Congress passed a resolution that Captain McVay's record should state that "he is exonerated for the loss of Indianapolis." President Bill Clinton signed the resolution. The resolution noted that, although several hundred ships of the U.S. Navy were lost in combat in World War II, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed for the sinking of his ship.

In July 2001, the United States Secretary of the Navy ordered McVay's official Navy record cleared of all wrongdoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)#Court-martial_of_Captain_McVay

fil's two childhood/lifelong friends (yes two!) survived the sinking of the ISS Indianapolis.

Mr Kuryla and Mr McGuiggan and their wives attended my and hubs wedding. Lovely people.

The navy had a few weird cases like that in WWII... I remember another incident where some captain or whoever wanted to charge some men with wrongfully abandoning ship when an explosion literally blew them off the deck...

in war. I used to love listening to the stories told by WWII Veterans. Their experiences were the prime reason I never wanted anything to do with war. The horrors those men faced. How so many of them went on to live normal lives is beyond me.

Thanks for the link, Steve. There are so many things I would miss if I didn't monitor this site.

"Isn't that the ship in Jaws that was sunk and sharks attacked the survivors?". Then I read on. Thanks for posting the additional info.

This is a really great find. Hearing the stories from people that were on submarines in the second World War is really harrowing. I remember hearing about a British ship that was hit with torpedoes and the survivors were attacked by a bunch of different creatures leaving lots of strange marks.

The German Blockade Runner SS Rio Grande was found at 18900 ft about 20 years ago