Shortly after midnight on July 30; 1945; the Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea. The ship had just left the island of Tinian; delivering components of the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima. As the torpedoes hit; the Indianapolis erupted into a fiery coffin; sinking in less than fifteen minutes and leaving nine hundred crewmen fighting for life in shark-infested waters. They expected a swift; routine rescue; unaware that the Navy high command didn’t even realize that the Indianapolis was missing. Help would not arrive for another five days. Drawn from definitive interviews with key figures; Fatal Voyage recounts the horrific events endured as the number of water-treading survivors dwindled to just 316. Each gruesome day brought more madness and slow death; from explosion-related injuries; dehydration; and; most terrifying of all; shark attacks. But the pain did not end when the men finally returned home: The Indianapolis’s commander; Captain Charles B. McVay III; was court-martialed for causing the clearly unavoidable disaster. With a new afterword chronicling the fifty-five-year campaign by Indianapolis survivors and their supporters to win public vindication for Captain McVay; this classic is restored; along with memories of the Indianapolis crew.
#574394 in Books Routledge 2014-06-01 2014-05-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x 1.02 x 6.00l; 1.36 #File Name: 0765642018437 pagesRoutledge
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. I recommend history.By Kyle Crabtree"It is easier to describe policy than to explain it." Yes. If you don't know the foreign policy of your own country and its history this explains a lot about the dangers of knowing lessons explained to you in a catch all compendium for no clear purpose. The book claims to cover the 20th century. Before the fall of the soviet union it's a rough world history covering 100 pages for the purposes of a policy described but unknowable and excerpted probably for the latter end of that period for the purpose of the present for a student studying not much at all. Often very opinionated. The author thinks Kissinger is exaggerating Russia's historical relation to the world. Kim Il-Sung is notable for his death in the 1990s. I have two editions of this book. I recommend history.