The USS Indianapolis was an important warship of the US Pacific fleet. It was no ordinary warship as it had been used to carry components of the Atomic Bomb that was then assembled for the strike on Hiroshima. The ship, a cruiser was hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese submarine towards the fag end of the war and sank in 12 minutes. For the last 72 years, a handful of survivors has waited anxiously for news of the warship and the fate that befell their mates. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is an intrepid explorer, and he assembled a team of civilian researchers to scan the ocean bed for the warship.
Success was at hand this time, and the warship was located 18000 feet below sea level resting on the Ocean bed in the Philippines Sea at Subic Bay. This sinking was one of the most tragic sinking’s of the Second World War as the ship suffered enormous causalities. Most of the ship's 1,196 sailors and Marines survived the sinking only to succumb to exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks. Only 316 survived, according to the US Navy and of them, only 22 are alive today. The attack took place on 30 June 1945 just after it had completed its secret mission. This news is reported by CNN International.
Paul Allens discovery
A team of civilian researchers led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered the cruiser's wreckage Friday on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 18,000 feet below the surface.
The discovery brings to a close one of most tragic maritime disasters in US naval history. Others have tried to locate the Indianapolis before, but success eluded them. This time the remains of the cruiser were found on the ocean bed. Paul Allen's team began a search armed with new data which helped them narrow down the search area, yet hundreds of square miles of the Ocean floor had to be surveyed to find the wreck.
Allen was helped by latest state of the art equipment and sensors that could survey the ocean bed to a depth of 6000 meters. His team finally struck gold when they detected the hull of the warship.
Closure of a tragic page
The discovery of the wreck brings to a close one of the most tragic instances in naval history as the war was to end in another few weeks.
The saga has been made into a film by Hollywood with Tom Cruise as the main star. The bravery of the crew of the warship, when adrift in the ocean infested by sharks, cannot be minimized and is a lesson to all who are in the Navy today.
Allen’s team earlier in 2015 after an eight-year hunt had located the resting place of the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Philippines' Sibuyan Sea.
