USS Indianpolis shipwreck found 72yrs later

LAX772LR · Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:21 pm

The secret shipwreck made famous in "Jaws" was finally found, 72yrs after it sank, 18,000ft below the Philippine Sea.

It was delivering components for the atomic bomb, when it was sank by a Japanese submarine. The mission was top secret, so the ship was never missed when it didn't arrive at port. No distress call ever went out.

More than 800 survived the sinking, but only ~300 survived the 4 nights at sea before rescuers came on the scene... dehydration and sharks finished off the rest.

Paul Allen's private search made the successful find
Gives me hope that MH370 will eventually be found.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wreckage-found ... d=49313017

mmo · Sun Aug 20, 2017 6:00 am

Just to clarify, the components had already been delivered. It was sunk enroute to it's new patrol area.

Kiwirob · Sun Aug 20, 2017 7:41 am

LAX772LR wrote:

Paul Allen's private search made the successful find
Gives me hope that MH370 will eventually be found.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wreckage-found ... d=49313017

I doubt it, 9000 tons of steel is going to be much easier to find than a 200 or so tons of aluminum.

cjg225 · Sun Aug 20, 2017 3:13 pm

Fascinating find. Excellent photographs, too.

Paul Allen is the man for bankrolling these kinds of expeditions to find these pieces of history. That's the 3rd World War II shipwreck his team has helped to find in the last two and a half years. He bankrolled expeditions to find the IJN Musashi and an Italian destroyer, the IT Artigliere.

If I hit the Powerball, I'd like to use some money to do something like this. So much history lies beneath the waves. I wonder if it might be slightly beyond current technology, but being able to search for and locate any of the wrecks from the Battle off Samar would be fascinating.

LAX772LR wrote:
No distress call ever went out.

Which is incorrect, so it's kind of weird for Naval History Heritage Command to say otherwise. Subsequent investigations determined that the Indianapolis did make a distress call that was received by several ground stations, though none acted on the call for various reasons.

Thunderboltdrgn · Sun Aug 20, 2017 4:34 pm

Kiwirob wrote:
I doubt it, 9000 tons of steel is going to be much easier to find than a 200 or so tons of aluminum.

and they likely had much more precise location coordinates for USS Indianapolis then what we have for MH370.

cjg225 · Sun Aug 20, 2017 5:42 pm

Thunderboltdrgn wrote:
Kiwirob wrote:
I doubt it, 9000 tons of steel is going to be much easier to find than a 200 or so tons of aluminum.

and they likely had much more precise location coordinates for USS Indianapolis then what we have for MH370.

The latest information narrowed the search area to a 600 square-mile plot, so, yeah, overwhelmingly more precise, relatively speaking.

casinterest · Sun Aug 20, 2017 11:19 pm

The whole story is still summed up best here , and probably the scariest thing of the whole movie. At least it is the part that has stuck with me the longest,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO60RohuARY

2 minutes in.

Black eye, like a doll's eye.

USS Indianpolis shipwreck found 72yrs later

USS Indianpolis shipwreck found 72yrs later

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