Indianapolis

by Lynn Vincent

  With the faintest scratching noise, Hashimoto’s pencil kept traveling south-southeast until he neared the 140th line of longitude about six hundred miles west of the Mariana Islands. Here, he drew a line due south and then southwest on a heading of about 200, to intersect a small slice of ocean due east of Leyte and just over three hundred miles north of Palau.

  Again, I-58’s track comported precisely with intelligence in the possession of Naquin, Carter, and Gillette, and available to Admiral Murray, in the two weeks leading up to Hashimoto’s attack on Indianapolis. Cady may have read in general terms about this intelligence in the testimony taken by Coney and Van Metre, but the ULTRA intercepts themselves were still highly classified. And so, the significance of Hashimoto’s sketch, developing like a Polaroid in full view of the court, was hiding in plain sight.

  The Japanese commander completed his drawing, tracing a final line that headed about 260, except for an odd jag to the south. This appeared as a sudden “V” in an otherwise westerly course. Hashimoto had also jotted dates along the entire track.

  Cady pointed to the jag in I-58’s route. “I would like to ask you how you know, and how you can remember, this abrupt break, this break in your course at the point marked ‘7/28.’ ”

  This was where, on July 28, he attacked a tanker, Hashimoto said. After sending his kaiten pilots into eternity, and uncertain of the results, he had headed slightly north. The position was more than a hundred miles east of the hunter-killer op kicked off on the 28th by Wild Hunter. If Cady had been on the verge of arguing that the Philippine Sea Frontier had had I-58 in its grasp during the Harris chase, Hashimoto’s chart proved they had not.

  But if Cady had been able to connect the dots, a darker indictment loomed.

  Hashimoto’s diagram of his attack on Indianapolis.

  Along Route Peddie, where Carter had said all was quiet, where Waldron’s routing officers confirmed it by suggesting a speed of 15.7 knots, where Naquin testified that the risk of hostile subs was “practically negligible,” Hashimoto’s chart revealed that there had lurked not one enemy submarine, but two.

  The chart also put the lie to Admiral Purnell’s New York Times musing that Indy had blundered over the top of a sub her officers knew about. Meanwhile, officers on each end of Indy’s route had information on one or both subs and failed to pass it to Cady’s client, McVay.

  At Leyte, Captain Alfred Granum dispatched Harris in response to the Wild Hunter periscope sighting. Harris’s hunter-killer operation spun off a series of messages that bounced between Leyte and Guam and used the terms “highly probable” sub and “propeller beats.” At Guam, Naquin had information on both the enemy subs in Indy’s path: He knew about the Harris chase, as he revealed to Coney when pressed, and he had the ULTRA intel on the Tamon group. Also at Guam, Carter’s and Murray’s offices had the ULTRA intel stating that I-58 was operating west of the Marianas. Murray, who sat in judgment of McVay at the Guam court of inquiry, was the divert authority east of the Chop line. Yet he did not divert Indianapolis, although, as Snyder told King, the Tamon group intel appeared to be sufficient reason to do so.

  Testimony and message traffic proving some of these things were available to Cady, but buried in a five-month tower of evidence. But Murray’s testimony in the supplemental investigation was taking place almost concurrently with Hashimoto’s court-martial appearance, and Carter would not testify until December 18. Thus, Cady did not have all the facts—a direct result of King’s decision to court-martial McVay before all the evidence was in. And so, even as Hashimoto’s sketch laid the truth bare, Cady was unable to connect the dots, and the moment passed.

  Hashimoto’s testimony continued. “I then started to proceed to another point, the intersection of the lines connecting Palau and Okinawa and the line connecting Leyte Gulf and Guam.” It was while patrolling this area, he said, that he encountered Indianapolis.

  Looking on from the press area, Edson could detect in the Japanese officer’s words neither pride nor humility. As he watched this small, soft-spoken man, he kept saying to himself, “Here is a fellow who commanded a three-hundred-foot submarine. Here is the guy who was a constant threat to U.S. shipping and lives.” Edson had to keep reminding himself in order to believe it.

  Next, Cady elicited a series of technical details about Hashimoto’s attack. He had radar, but didn’t use it. He had sound gear, but it wasn’t working very well. His torpedoes traveled at a speed of forty-eight knots. They were set at a depth of four meters.

  Cady: Was the target zigzagging at the time you sighted it?

  Hashimoto: At the time of the sighting of the target, there was an indistinct blur, and I was unable to determine whether it was zigzagging.

  Cady: Was it zigzagging later?

  Hashimoto: There is no question of the fact that it made no radical changes in course. It is faintly possible that there was a minor change in course between the time of sighting and the time of the attack.

  Cady: Would it have made any difference to you if the target had been zigzagging?

  There was a pause. Cady repeated his question, the fulcrum of his defense: “Would it have made any difference to you if the target had been zigzagging?”

  Hashimoto answered in Japanese, and Bromley translated this way: “It would have involved no change in the method of firing the torpedoes, but some changes in the maneuvering.”

  At this moment, disquiet pierced Hashimoto’s heart. He understood English well enough to think, That’s not what I said, exactly. Bromley’s rendering did not convey to the court what Hashimoto meant: I was in a perfect position. I would have hit the target no matter what.

  After landing in D.C., he had met with Ryan and Cady, separately and in private. Each had posed the same question Cady just asked, and Hashimoto told both men flatly that it wouldn’t have mattered if Indianapolis had been zigzagging. Now, though, instead of asking Hashimoto to clarify, or reframing the question to elicit the answer he’d received pretrial, Cady inexplicably moved on.

  Capitalizing on the moment, Ryan stood. “Did you use radar which was in your ship at any time in relation to the sinking of this ship about which you have testified?”

  No, Hashimoto answered. Radar was not used from the time of the crash-dive until after the attack was completed.

  “Did the radar assist you in any way to pick up this target?”

  Again, the answer was no.

  It was, for Ryan, a bull’s-eye. Admiral Snyder’s earlier analysis had suggested enemy radar may have negated the need to zigzag. But Hashimoto hadn’t used radar either to sight or track Indianapolis. He used only his periscope, the specific tactic for which zigzagging had been designed.

  Suddenly, Hashimoto’s testimony was over. He stood and bowed again to the court. One of the Marine guards, Captain George Cordea, stepped forward to escort him. At six-three and more than two hundred pounds, Cordea was a veteran of the savage battle at Guadalcanal in which Japanese troops killed more than seven thousand Marines.

  Edson heard him say to another Marine, “I gotta take this monkey back.”

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  WHEN THE DEFENSE BEGAN on December 15, Cady immediately attacked the charge that McVay failed to issue a timely order of “abandon ship.” He called to the stand several sailors who testified to hearing the order between eight and ten minutes after the torpedoes struck, and in time to properly execute it. Cady then proceeded to the zigzagging charge, zeroing in on moonlight and visibility. He called to the stand Seaman First Class A. C. King.

  King said he was on the bridge with L. D. Cox at the time of the explosions. Visibility was poor and he never saw the moon.

  Ensign Harlan Twible also took the stand. “It got so dark I had to request that the gun captain inform me if there was a man on the shield looking out over the sea,” he said. When it came time for Twible’s relief, he added, he looked down toward the quarterdeck and could make out only dark shapes, with not even enough de
tail to discern whether a given shadow was one man or two.

  Others testified to their actions that night—John Bullard, a shipfitter striker, Ensign Don Howison, Dr. Melvin Modisher, and more. Compared to prosecution witnesses, the time that defense witnesses spent on the stand was notably brief. Cady moved them in and moved them out. Ryan, meanwhile, asked only scant questions, perhaps remembering a war maxim attributed to Napoleon: Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

  The court recessed on Sunday, December 16. On Monday, Cady called Captain Oliver Naquin to the stand. Coney’s grilling of Naquin in the supplemental investigation had produced ample material for McVay’s defense, and Cady had access to that testimony. It would have been standard procedure for defense counsel to review a witness’s prior statements before calling him to the stand in open court. But if Cady had this information, he did not use it.

  Cady: What is your estimate of the risk of enemy submarine activity at this time, at the end of July, along the route the Indianapolis was to proceed?

  Naquin: I would say it was low order.

  Cady: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.

  Naquin: I would say that it was very low order . . . very slight.

  Cady: Was there at any time any question in your mind of diverting the Indianapolis after she sailed?

  Naquin: There was not.

  Admiral Baker and the court intervened with questions of their own.

  Court: You have just stated that your estimate of the danger of submarine attack on the Indianapolis was very slight. Had there not been reports of submarines in that area?

  Naquin: Yes, we had had reports of submarines. At the investigation in Guam in this case, I furnished a chart showing the recent submarine reports.

  Naquin did not mention that this chart was wildly incomplete. Instead, he continued, telling the court that the reports on his chart were not borne out by sinkings and “as a result such reports were downgraded.” Naquin gave his reasons for that, repeating the refrain about jumpy merchant skippers seeing phantom submarines.

  But after the merchant ship Wild Hunter reported back-to-back periscope sightings, the Harris hunter-killer team reported a sound contact in message traffic on which Naquin, at Commander Marianas, was copied. Then Harris also reported a temporary target oil slick slightly north of Route Peddie. An hour after that, the search unit sent another message: “sound contact with engine propeller . . . evaluation positive.” All this message traffic was part of the supplemental investigation. And on December 4, Naquin told Coney under questioning that he gave submarine contacts reported by naval vessels, rather than merchant ships, a “high grade.”

  Why did he not give a high grade to Harris’s “positive” report with propeller beats, ninety miles ahead of Indianapolis’s track? Cady might have asked. Especially in light of ULTRA intel that placed an enemy sub on offensive maneuvers in that vicinity? And when the Harris search unit reported that it had made multiple hedgehog attacks on this submarine before losing contact, how did Naquin grade the sub report then? Given the information at hand, why didn’t he, the divert authority for Route Peddie east of the 130th line of longitude, divert Indianapolis?

  But Cady did not ask these questions. And where he had lodged vigorous objections during the testimony of Ryan’s witnesses, he let Naquin’s testimony stand unchallenged.

  Neither did Cady call to the stand Commodore Norman Gillette, acting commander of the Philippine Sea Frontier. Five days earlier, Gillette had told Coney and Van Metre, “We assumed there were submarines in that area, and we had our patrol vessels that were on submarine patrol in the vicinity of 130 degrees East, 11 North, to proceed to that area.”

  Gillette told investigators he recalled that one of his antisubmarine patrols did “make a report of a submarine contact,” and that the Frontier received ULTRA intel on enemy contacts “continuously.”

  Van Metre: Did all of this activity represent an increase or a decrease from normal?

  Gillette: An increase.

  Van Metre: Did this increase in activity cause you any particular concern?

  Gillette: Yes, sir. We were greatly concerned . . . constantly diverting shipping, increasing patrols in those areas, established a hunter-killer group, sent tankers into the area to fuel the patrol vessels so they would not have to leave their station. . . . [W]e were concerned and we used all the forces we could make available to meet this recognized threat.

  “Recognized threat.” There it was, a phrase that contrasted wildly with Naquin’s assertions of a “practically negligible” and “very slight” risk. It also contrasted with information delivered to McVay in Carter’s office, the routing office at Guam and during Indy’s passage along Route Peddie. A “recognized threat” would likely have figured heavily in McVay’s “discretion” on whether to zigzag.

  Discretion, another word for judgment, can always be questioned, even prosecuted, and the Navy was prosecuting McVay for being negligent in his. But Cady had it right on the first day of the court-martial. “Negligence” implied knowledge that should have been acted on and was not, and there was no proof that McVay had such knowledge. In Gillette’s testimony before Coney and Van Metre, though, was ample proof that others had such knowledge and did not share it with McVay. But again, with just four days to prepare a defense and Gillette’s testimony occurring late in the court-martial, Cady may not have been able to review it.

  On that score, the admirals still taking their turns before Coney and Van Metre across the base were busy blaming each other. Gillette said it would have been Guam’s responsibility to divert Indianapolis. Murray said Indy had passed into Leyte’s jurisdiction—this, though he later said that “technically,” the ship was still in his area. Murray also averred that he did not know about the four submarines of the Tamon group, though Commodore Carter’s combat intel officer, Captain Layton, said Murray had that information. Neither was Murray informed of the Wild Hunter sighting and Harris’s antisubmarine operation, he said.

  But if McVay was to be held negligent for not acting on information he did not have, should Murray not have been held negligent for not acting on information that he did have? Murray didn’t seem to think so. He suggested that McVay’s lack of information was his own fault. He should’ve come to Murray’s offices and asked his staff for additional intelligence to supplement his routing orders. Lots of skippers did, he said.

  Admiral Soc McMorris, however, would later say that he considered it “sufficient” for McVay to have visited only the routing office. He did not “feel it should have been necessary” for McVay to pay a second visit to Murray’s staff.

  Meanwhile, Murray said, communications personnel on Carter’s staff had tried to raise Indianapolis to test radio-teletype gear and were not successful. “Therefore, the knowledge of the movement of the Indianapolis and its failure to establish communications with CincPac’s headquarters was known by personnel other than the intelligence personnel, but so far as I know, no one on my staff.”

  Translation: Murray’s staff didn’t know Indy might be missing, but Carter’s staff should have. At the same time that the admirals were blaming each other in secret, the court-martial of Captain McVay was proceeding in public. Whether or not it was King’s intention to protect other admirals by trying McVay before Coney and Van Metre finished grilling them, the decision was bearing fruit.

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  FOR ALL THE ANEMIA of the defense so far, Cady had an ace in the hole: Captain Glynn Robert Donaho. A fifteen-year submarine veteran and wolf pack commander, Donaho had sunk twenty-eight enemy vessels and in 1942 was awarded the Navy Cross for offensive action as skipper of USS Flying Fish. Cady established these bona fides before the court, and Donaho was accepted as an expert on submarine operations.

  Cady: Did you ever fire at a vessel which was not zigzagging in these patrols you have made?

  Donaho: Not to my knowledge.

  Cady: Did you ever
fire at an unescorted target?

  Donaho: Yes, one.

  Cady: Based on your experience as outlined above, what is your opinion on the value of zigzagging as affecting the accuracy of torpedo fire?

  Donaho: With our modern submarines, fire control equipment, high speed torpedoes, a well-trained fire control party, and with torpedo spreads, I didn’t find that zigzagging affected the results.

  Ryan stood to cross-examine the witness.

  Ryan: Can you state whether or not the Japanese submarines had as good fire control and tracking equipment as you had in our submarines?

  Donaho: I know they had high speed torpedoes, radars, and I know they had . . . six torpedo tubes. . . . [W]e always gave the Japanese credit for having as good equipment as we have had.

  Ryan: You mentioned radar as one of the bases for your statement. Would you have used radar in tracking the target and obtaining data for your attack?

  Donaho: It all depends on the range. It depends on the visibility.

  Ryan: Assuming you did not have the use of radar, would you still answer as you did, for the question of ten thousand yards and being ahead of the target at night?

  Donaho: I would.

  Ryan fine-tuned his question: Without radar, at ten thousand yards and a target speed of twelve knots, would it have been more or less difficult for Donaho to obtain the proper firing position if the target had been zigzagging?

  Donaho’s answer seemed clipped and a bit impatient, as though he were educating a dilettante. “We started off this war without radars. We were sinking ships without them. There were many times when we did not have radars due to matériel damages, breakage, failures on patrol, and we sank ships just the same. Being on the track of a target with . . . periscopes and sound gear, and spreading out torpedoes, I think the results would have been the same.”