Indianapolis

by Lynn Vincent

  Other families of the dead wrote McVay simply to ask if someone could come and talk to them about their loved ones’ last moments. The captain asked Buckett if he would do that, and the yeoman agreed, traveling to multiple states to visit with wives, children, siblings, and parents. When Buckett had not known a crew member, he went anyway and told the family all he could in an effort to relieve the black pit of grief made paradoxically deeper when left empty of details. Dr. Haynes also invited grieving family members to his home, providing what comfort he could.

  For a certain family, only one thing would provide comfort: to see McVay hang. Thomas Brophy was the father of Tom Brophy, Jr., the ensign who drowned at the cusp of rescue as he tried to swim to Adrian Marks’s plane. When Brophy Senior heard McVay was back in Washington, he sped down from his New York home, presented himself in McVay’s temporary office, and demanded an interview. McVay said that he had an important engagement on his calendar and couldn’t see Brophy.

  That was the extent of the conversation—from Brophy’s point of view, at least. From McVay’s, he had been dealing with angry and distraught family members for weeks. It was late in the day, he was exhausted, and Louise was waiting for him.

  In any case, Brophy was incensed. He got into his car and followed the captain to his engagement, only to learn it was a cocktail party. The father of the dead ensign sat in his car and seethed. How dare McVay be so cavalier when Brophy’s son, the light of his life, was dead? Brophy, a wealthy advertising executive, was an important, well-connected man with seats on several charitable boards and government councils. He knew that legally, McVay was on the verge of destruction. Over the next several weeks, Brophy would use all his influence, contacting Forrestal and even President Truman, to ensure that destruction was complete.

  Although it may have appeared so to Brophy, McVay was not avoiding the difficult task of meeting with family members. In October 1945, Katherine Moore took a train to Washington, D.C. Captain McVay had asked to see her. For most Americans, VJ Day had been a day of celebration. For her, it marked the dawn of widowhood. Like treasures drawn from a hope chest, she found herself pulling out her memories, turning them this way and that. Those precious spring months in 1943, and Christmas the same year. That week in April of 1944, along with the following November. Now she had a new memory to add, the two months at Mare Island before Indy’s last voyage. Katherine’s heart ached. Five sweet parcels of time. Would they be enough to sustain her?

  After the train deposited her in Washington, Katherine sought out McVay, who regarded her sadly. “Mary is an orphan now,” he said of Kasey Moore’s daughter.

  It was true. Mary’s mother had abandoned her years earlier, and now her adoring father was gone forever. Mary was devastated, and literally clung to the last photograph of her father. In it, Kasey looked down at her, knightlike in dress whites, and Mary gazed back up with a loving smile. As for Katherine, she had married Kasey for Kasey—a newspaperman, dashing and independent, with his own convertible sports car. Katherine had hoped to travel with him, see the world. Instead, she was a widow left to raise a daughter not her own.

  McVay then told Katherine of his own grief. “Every day of my life, I will see the faces of the men I lost and realize anew that I lost a $40 million ship that others had commanded successfully and safely. . . . I will probably live a long, long time as punishment,” McVay said.

  He was wrong about that.

  6

  * * *

  AFTER A WEEK’S DELAY, Secretary Forrestal concurred with King’s recommendation for what would be called a “supplemental investigation.” This investigation was assigned to the naval inspector general, Admiral Charles P. Snyder, one of the few flag officers who had been around even longer than King.

  Snyder was no lawyer. Born in West Virginia, he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1900, a year ahead of King, and received his commission as an ensign in 1902. During World War I, he commanded the Pacific Fleet flagship, USS Oregon, as well as a cruiser and a transport. He then climbed through a series of prestigious postings, including president of the Naval War College and then commander of Battleships, Battle Force—second in command of the U.S. fleet.

  The supplemental investigation of the sinking of Indianapolis convened on Wednesday, October 31, at 11:05 a.m. in Snyder’s D.C. offices. Assistant Inspector General Captain Charles E. Coney and Commodore Thomas Van Metre would interview a total of forty-eight witnesses. Their mandate was narrow: to probe the routing chosen for Indianapolis, considerations regarding escorts, and the receipt of Indy’s departure message by Rear Admiral McCormick’s communications staff.

  Coney was a veteran of much tougher duty than this. As former commander of MacArthur’s flagship, the light cruiser Nashville, he’d carried the general into many battles and was in command in October 1944 when MacArthur landed in Leyte, fulfilling his most famous promise, “I shall return.”

  Now in Snyder’s offices, Coney interrogated his first witness: Captain William Smedburg, combat intelligence officer working for Admiral King. Coney asked Smedburg just six questions before learning of the chart Smedburg’s office had prepared in early July, the one showing the position of the Tamon group submarines.

  “We knew there were at least four Japanese submarines operating in the general area between the Japanese Islands, the Marianas, and the Palau group and the Philippines,” Smedburg said. “We had the positions of those submarines rather closely estimated, we think. One of our estimated positions was so close that the point which was the center of her estimated patrol station was within a very few miles of the position where the DE Underhill was sunk on the 24th of July, 1945.”

  Coney replied, “I note from your chart that the Japanese submarine I-58 is apparently the one which was closest in proximity to the point where the Indianapolis was eventually sunk. Is that correct?”

  “That is a position that we have assigned to I-58 based on information that we had at the time. . . . We have learned that the submarine I-58 reported to her commander that she sank a ship . . . on the 29th of July. We don’t know from her report what ship she sank.”

  Over the next three weeks Coney and Van Metre interviewed a range of witnesses, including Commander E. S. Goodwin, operations officer for the Chief of Naval Communications, and Indianapolis officers Blum, McKissick, Woolston, and Haynes. A number of enlisted men also testified during this period, including Chief Gunner Harrison.

  Coney and Van Metre drilled hard and deep, their questions at turns probing and challenging. During the investigation, information emerged that the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Bibb and a Navy cargo ship, Hyperion, received fragmentary distress signals on the night Indy sank, and these reports were made part of the investigation.

  As the inquiry proceeded, Van Metre sent Snyder, the inspector general, periodic updates, which Snyder then assimilated into progress reports for Admiral King. Both Van Metre’s and Snyder’s prose and conclusions were unflinching. Neither man hesitated to report facts that might not bode well for the Navy.

  On November 8, personnel chief Admiral Denfeld wrote to Forrestal. In light of emerging testimony, he recommended that McVay’s court-martial be delayed until the supplemental investigation was complete.

  On November 9, in his own memo to Forrestal, Admiral King concurred. The calendar then rolled forward one day, and in that twenty-four hours everything changed.

  • • •

  On November 10, Snyder received a memo from Van Metre. By then, thirty-five Indianapolis survivors had been questioned, including eight officers. Their testimony, Van Metre wrote to Snyder, made it “necessary to call as witnesses officers attached to the Headquarters of the Commander Chief Pacific Fleet, officers on the staff of the Commander Naval Base Guam, on the Staff of the Commander Naval Base, Leyte, on the Staff of the Commander Philippine Sea Frontier; and possibly from the Staff of the Commander Marianas. . . . It now also seems possible that Rear Admiral Oldendorf may be required to report before this investig
ation, and certainly Rear Admiral McCormick will be interrogated.”

  Van Metre expected these interrogations would not be completed until sometime during the first half of December. McVay himself had not been interviewed, Van Metre wrote. That interview was to take place on the coming Wednesday, November 14.

  Upon receiving Van Metre’s memo, Snyder wrote immediately to King. Testimony from Captain Smedburg and officers of the Navy intelligence section “indicates a failure in the naval organization in Guam and Leyte to use resources and information at their disposal.” Snyder ticked off examples:

  • Guam failed to provide escort, although they had information of active submarine operations in the area to be traversed.

  • Guam failed to take action on a Fleet Radio Unit Pacific intelligence coup, which indicated a Japanese submarine had sunk a vessel in the vicinity in which the Indianapolis was known to be.

  • At Leyte, the Philippine Sea Frontier organization failed to keep track of the Indianapolis and take action when that vessel failed to appear after a scheduled time, even though it was known to them through Fleet Radio Unit Pacific activities and other intelligence reports that submarines were operating in the area where the Indianapolis was and that a report of a sinking had been made by a Japanese submarine.

  It is unknown whether King already had the information that Leyte knew of a sinking. Snyder learned of this from Van Metre on November 2. Within a half hour of the recorded time of Indy’s sinking, the skipper of the Japanese submarine, I-58, Snyder wrote, “which was known to be operating in the general area through which Indianapolis was then passing,” sent a message to his headquarters that he had sunk an American warship.

  Under questioning, Smedburg had told Van Metre that he introduced into the intelligence machinery a paraphrased copy of the dispatch:

  From Captain Sub I-58 . . . attacked and sunk one (two unrecovered groups). Sinking confirmed. Obtained three torpedo hits. Position (unrecovered grid).

  Translated, this meant that the magicians had not “recovered,” or intercepted, information on the type of ship sunk or its location. Nevertheless, Van Metre wrote to Snyder, “Since information of this importance is immediately transmitted by Combat Intelligence to the Commander of the area in which the occurrence took place, it became apparent that if the customary procedure was followed in this case, this important intelligence should have been passed to CincPac for further investigation.”

  Following up on this testimony, Van Metre visited Commander Goodwin at the Combat Intelligence Center on Massachusetts Avenue. Goodwin consulted the record and provided Van Metre with a timeline of how I-58’s intercepted message was tracked. After it was first received, it was “immediately put into the mill for processing.” After a “check translation” to ensure it had been decrypted and properly translated from Japanese, it was delivered to Smedburg in Combat Intelligence, to Commander 7th Fleet, and to at least two other international stations.

  Goodwin’s info made clear to Van Metre that Nimitz’s intelligence staff had the information of a reported sinking by July 30 at 4:46 p.m. local time, in the area where the ship went down. At this time, the men of the Indianapolis had been in the water for less than one day.

  About ten hours later, news that a sinking had occurred reached the offices of Admiral King. That occurred the day Indy was supposed to arrive in Leyte, July 31—two days before rescue began. It is unclear whether King himself received this intelligence.

  In Van Metre’s opinion, these revelations threw “new light on the matter of the delay in making the search for the survivors of the Indianapolis, which seems to involve deeply the headquarters of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.”

  In plain English, Nimitz’s combat intelligence staff, as well as King’s own, had clues that Indianapolis was down within hours of the event. Though critical information was missing—the type of vessel and its location—it was no great stretch to check on the welfare of ships passing through the area where I-58 was known to be.

  In his November 10 memo to King, Inspector General Snyder passed along Van Metre’s assessment of the additional witnesses he felt it necessary to call: “[I]t now appears to be necessary to interrogate a number of officers, including some of considerable seniority . . . as to why action was not taken on certain information which apparently was in their possession relative to the non-arrival of the Indianapolis in Leyte, and the failure of the organizations under their command to take appropriate action in the case.”

  Someone, Snyder or Van Metre perhaps, created a chart in pencil showing just how high up the food chain these interrogations would go:

  At Pearl Harbor: Rear Admiral McCormick and Commodore E. E. Stone, Nimitz’s assistant chief of staff for communications.

  At Guam: Vice Admiral Murray, commander of the Marianas, who had sat in judgment at the court of inquiry in Guam.

  At Leyte: then-acting Philippine Sea Frontier commander, Commodore Norman Gillette.

  At San Diego: Rear Admiral Oldendorf and Commodore Carter, who had told McVay that all was “quiet” in the Philippine Sea.

  At Washington: Nimitz’s chief of staff, the well-respected Vice Admiral Soc McMorris, and Nimitz’s combat intelligence officer, Captain Edwin Layton.

  It is unclear whether Admiral King saw this penciled chart, but with Snyder’s enumeration of failures, he could have created his own. What is clear is that on the same day that King received Snyder’s memo, he revised his earlier opinion and dashed off a handwritten note to Snyder:

  Comment on the feasibility of bringing C.O. Indianapolis to trial now.

  7

  * * *

  FOR DECADES, HISTORIANS WOULD wonder why King reversed himself. Perhaps families of the lost, such as the influential Brophys, brought pressure, wanting McVay to be held accountable. But King was not known as a man to bow to pressure. In fact, when pushed, King pushed back—harder. Also, he had already made the decision to court-martial McVay.

  Historians would entertain a second possibility: As a young officer, King was reprimanded by McVay’s father while serving under him in the Asiatic fleet. Some, including old Admiral McVay himself, wondered whether King was seizing the chance to settle an old score. He was known to be vindictive. But if motivated by vendetta, why order additional investigation into the sinking of Indianapolis? The Guam court of inquiry had delivered to King any warrant he might have needed to provide cover for revenge. In ordering the supplemental investigation, which would rove far and deep, King seemed genuinely to be trying to get to the truth.

  Snyder replied to King’s one-line note the same day. He believed, he wrote, that McVay wished to have the court-martial delayed because he felt that the Navy’s investigation would reveal information “in his interest” and “additional facts favorable to his case.” Nevertheless, Snyder added, “Should you desire to bring Captain McVay to trial before my investigation is completed it is, in my opinion, entirely feasible to do so.”

  Snyder suggested that a summary of the case completed to date could be prepared, together with a list of witnesses still to be interrogated, along with a brief explanation of the reason for calling them. These could be submitted to Admiral Denfeld. Any outstanding witnesses could then be called by either the prosecution or the defense during the court-martial.

  It is impossible to know what additional information King received, whether by phone or personal meeting, the day he reversed himself. But Snyder’s word that day on timing seems relevant. Van Metre would probably not finish interrogating the senior officers on the penciled list until sometime during the first half of December. Those officers had belonged to the “same small club” for decades, and King belonged to it, too.

  Before World War II, the United States Navy was a small, insular organization, chummy and even a bit decrepit. Although families moved often, they tended to sail in and out of one another’s orbits through common postings at the major ports, or on staff duty in Washington. Annapolis was the primary source of co
mmissioning, and most Academy grads made the Navy a career. Most officers knew most other officers to one degree or another, and they eventually served with one another, too. Their families also knew each other—their children attended school together and grew up romping in the backyards of “Officers Country” at naval installations around the world. As one historian wrote, “They formed a close, intimate community with common interests and enduring friendships.”

  The men at whose feet Snyder had laid potential culpability read like a Who’s Who of that intimate community:

  Charles “Soc” McMorris had been a distinguished cruiser commander at Guadalcanal. In 1943, King bumped aside an underperforming admiral in charge of cruiser-destroyers and subbed in McMorris, who had just received his flag. Later, McMorris relieved Spruance as Nimitz’s chief of staff. He was there at the reorganization of Pacific Fleet forces into the 3rd, 5th, and 7th Fleets under Spruance in August 1943.

  At Guadalcanal, McMorris served under George Murray, commander of Task Force 17. Murray, a consummate gentleman with a near spotless record, was “Naval Aviator No. 22” and instrumental in the emergence of carrier air. Both he and King were in the same 1927 “class,” as it were, of carrier air leadership that burst onto the scene after Congress authorized its formation in 1926. Murray commanded the carrier USS Enterprise during key Pacific battles. A year before Indy sank, King hand-selected him as Commander Air Forces Pacific. Murray had relinquished that post only weeks before he assumed command of the Marianas, where he was serving when Indy sank.

  Jesse B. Oldendorf, commander of Task Force 95, was a battleship commander of the old school who had also been a key commander at Guadalcanal and Saipan. Oldendorf assisted in the merging of the battleship squadrons and the new carrier air wings, taking the fleet into a new age. He fought his ships at the Marshalls, Palau, the Marianas, and Leyte, and he was wounded at the Battle of Okinawa.