The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man
by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic
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Published Jul 2018
592 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A human drama unlike any other: the riveting and definitive full story of the worst sea disaster in United States naval history.
Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, days after delivering the components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands in the most highly classified naval mission of the war, USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she is struck by two Japanese torpedoes. The ship is instantly transformed into a fiery cauldron and sinks within minutes. Some 300 men go down with the ship. Nearly 900 make it into the water alive. For the next five nights and four days, almost three hundred miles from the nearest land, the men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 will survive.
For the better part of a century, the story of USS Indianapolis has been understood as a sinking tale. The reality, however, is far more complicated—and compelling. Now, for the first time, thanks to a decade of original research and interviews with 107 survivors and eyewitnesses, Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic tell the complete story of the ship, her crew, and their final mission to save one of their own.
It begins in 1932, when Indianapolis is christened and launched as the ship of state for President Franklin Roosevelt. After Pearl Harbor, Indianapolis leads the charge to the Pacific Islands, notching an unbroken string of victories in an uncharted theater of war. Then, under orders from President Harry Truman, the ship takes aboard a superspy and embarks on her final world-changing mission: delivering the core of the atomic bomb to the Pacific for the strike on Hiroshima. Vincent and Vladic provide a visceral, moment-by-moment account of the disaster that unfolds days later after the Japanese torpedo attack, from the chaos on board the sinking ship to the first moments of shock as the crew plunge into the remote waters of the Philippine Sea, to the long days and nights during which terror and hunger morph into delusion and desperation, and the men must band together to survive.
Then, for the first time, the authors go beyond the men's rescue to chronicle Indianapolis's extraordinary final mission: the survivors' fifty-year fight for justice on behalf of their skipper, Captain Charles McVay III, who is wrongly court-martialed for the sinking. What follows is a captivating courtroom drama that weaves through generations of American presidents, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, and forever entwines the lives of three captains - McVay, whose life and career are never the same after the scandal; Mochitsura Hashimoto, the Japanese sub commander who sinks Indianapolis but later joins the battle to exonerate McVay; and William Toti, the captain of the modern-day submarine Indianapolis, who helps the survivors fight to vindicate their captain.
A sweeping saga of survival, sacrifice, justice, and love, Indianapolis stands as both groundbreaking naval history and spellbinding narrative - and brings the ship and her heroic crew back to full, vivid, unforgettable life. It is the definitive account of one of the most remarkable episodes in American history.
"Starred Review. A gripping study of the greatest sea disaster in the history of the U.S. Navy and its aftermath." - Kirkus
"[A] gripping narrative, a convincing analysis, and a pitiless exposure of institutional mendacity... This exposé will be valuable for scholars and general readers alike." - Publishers Weekly
"Valuable and illuminating. Vladic and Vincent's work brings to life the history of this valorous and extraordinary ship." - Doug Stanton, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of In Harm's Way, Horse Soldiers, and The Odyssey of Echo Company
"Our hearts quickened while racing through this page-turning book..It is astonishingly rare when such a significant work of history also brings tears to your eyes. Vincent and Vladic's ultimate tale of redemption accomplishes just that feat." - Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthors of Halsey's Typhoon, The Heart of Everything That Is, and Valley Forge
"Vincent and Vladic have rendered this long-overdue story in a way few writers of narrative nonfiction could ever achieve...Few other books will satisfy a reader's longing for a true and truly great story more than Indianapolis." - Gary Kinder, New York Times bestselling author of Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
"This is an absorbing book. The attention to detail is superb, the clear result of lots of plain hard work. Yet the detail doesn't get in the way, but rather serves, along with a driving narrative, to get the reader as close to experiencing this most tragic episode of World War II as is possible without living through it." - Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn
"Ultimately, Indianapolis is about the sacrifice these men made for our country at a time of unparalleled risk and of their lifelong search for justice for the captain of their ship. It's a beautifully told and incredibly detailed narrative that brings this famous disaster to life." - Kate Andersen Brower, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women
"This is a brilliant, highly readable, and ultimately groundbreaking account of a proud ship's life and times, not simply a rendering of her tragic ending. Absolutely superb." - James Stavridis, U.S. Navy Admiral (Ret.), Supreme Allied Commander at NATO (2009-2013), and Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lynn Vincent, a US Navy veteran, is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and coauthor of eleven nonfiction books with more than sixteen million copies in print. Her best-known titles are Same of Kind of Different as Me (with Ron Hall and Denver Moore) and Heaven Is for Real (with Todd Burpo). A veteran journalist and author of more than 1,000 articles, her investigative pieces have been cited before Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. She lives in the mountains east of San Diego with her husband and their three Labrador retrievers.
Sara Vladic, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, is one of the world's leading experts on the USS Indianapolis, having become obsessed with the story at the age of thirteen. Over the next two decades, Vladic met and interviewed 108 of the ship's survivors, and in 2016 she released an award-winning documentary film on the disaster, USS Indianapolis: The Legacy. She has published new research on the USS Indianapolis in Proceedings, the official journal of the US Navy, and appeared as an expert commentator on PBS's USS Indianapolis: Live from the Deep, which explored the ship's wreckage. She and her husband, Ben, live in San Marcos, California.
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