Science Illustrated's history section ran an article on the USS Indianapolis. Horrible story.
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Fact is the Navy LOST the Indianapolis for almost a week after she delivered the A-Bomb to Tinian. They forgot about her and her crew. When she didn't show up for a gunnery exercise, oops! nobody noticed. So they floated under the blistering Pacific sun for several days watching their buddies being eaten by sharks, and succumbing to exposure one by one. My numbers are probably off here, but of a crew of 1200, 900 survived the torpedoing and went into the water, and I think only some 300 survived the next several days at sea. It was only by pure luck that they were spotted by an aircraft. The Navy wasn't even looking for them.
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Yup. Their mayday was picked up by three people, none of which responded. One operator launched a Search-And-Rescue operation, only to have it cancelled by his superior because there was no
second mayday from the ship.
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This is really atypical of the US armed forces, who usually bend over backwards to rescue servicemembers in harm's way, Indie's crew just was lost in the paperwork shuffle. It was tragic. Even more tragic was how they scapegoated the Captain. The surviving crew stood behind him to a man, but the brass responsible for "losing" a heavy cruiser needed their scapegoat, and they hung him out to dry.
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Funny thing is how they brought in the CO of the Japanese submarine that sunk the ship to testify. They clearly expected him to say that since Indianapolis was running straight rather than zig-zagging, he had an easy shot, but he surprised them by stating that he'd have hit anyway (the article didn't say why, but it was probably due to the short range). Not that it made a difference, as the court's mind was made up from the start.