USS Indianapolis

The tragedy at sea that was the USS Indianapolis has greatly changed how the US Navy is seen ever since the exoneration of the ship’s captain, Captain McVay. Most people tend to focus on the case and court martial of Captain McVay instead of the tragedy itself. In recent years the failure of the USS Indianapolis along with the approximate 300 bodies left in the sea with it have been discussed, exponentially so in Left For Dead by Peter Nelson. The information upon the sailors and their deaths can be easily found but yet most do not take the next step to see why these men died the awful, horrendous deaths they did. These men at sea were set up for failure in the boat and in the sea itself after the ship capsized. Truthly these men of America

This would not have been in the best interest of the ship since the night was cloudy and the moon was mostly covered, meaning it would have been easy to have gotten off track to their destination. A last point to why these men died was due to their own unpreparedness. Now the fault of this unpreparedness was not theirs, but the Navy’s. This sinking occurred 3 years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor which left a bad taste of Japanese in the United State’s mouth. Due to this, the United States and its government made the atomic bomb in which it planned to unleash on Japan. The war was being so heavily fought and thousands of soldiers died daily, leaving the military always in need of men for the cause. Due to the military’s haste, many men were sent out without proper training. Some of these men were sent out to sea without any knowledge of how to swim. These men were set to fail by their own country in military due to the lack of detail and preciseness put into the training and education of these men for life at sea.

These scared, unprepared men also faced death due to the ocean that served as several of the men’s graves. The conditions these sailors met in water were awful , due to the high

One of the last, and most prominent, reasons as to why these men died in the sea was the fact that investigation did not occur earlier.

These men were unsure if their SOS had gotten through but they were sure that someone would notice the lack of the USS Indianapolis in port. The men knew that at least someone would get suspicious of the large ships tardiness, but there was a lack of urgency and investigation early enough to save more than 317 people. The late action and lack of urgency to find these men after they did not show to port is what caused to many to die such awful deaths as shark attacks, dehydration, blood poisoning, and even murder.

The inaction and sloppiness of the US government and its military at the time is what caused the USS Indianapolis to fail and for the nearly 900 men to die at sea. If the ship would have been properly repaired and stocked, along with the men on the ship being properly trained for sea life, all those innocent, brave lives would not have died. The ship sank and failed due to the military 's haste upon needing new recruits and the how utterly unprepared the ship was