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FATAL
VOYAGE - The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
The True Story of the (US)
Navy's Greatest Sea Diaster, A World War 2 Scandal That Still Haunts the
Pentagon.
Atheneum, Macmillan Publishing
Co, New York, 1990. ISBN 0-689-12007-9
Hardcover, dustjacket, 331
pages, mono prints, bibliography, index.
And well it may still haunt
the Pentagon - the situation of the loss of the Indianapolis is perhaps
the most disgraceful marine loss, be it in war or peace, ever perpetrated,
with so many young men lost due to incompetence, ignorance and pure stupidity
of the US Navy and military operations. Shipwreck books are not pleasant
reading. This one will give you nightmares, particularly if you are an
Amercian (or their Allies) and you pray that military attitudes have improved
to this day. I wonder! From the fly: "On a clear morning in 1945, the cruiser
USS Indianapolis unloaded at the tropical island of Tinian the vital parts
of the atomic bomb that would destroy Hiroshima. This highly classified
mission accomplished, Captain Charles McVay turned his ship toward the
Philippines, secure in the belief that the war was virtually over. But,
for McVay and his crew, the ordeal was only beginning - on the overcast
night of July 30, a Japanese submarine took advantage of a momentary break
in the clouds and torpedoed the Indianapolis. In Fatal Voyage, Dan
Kurzman vividly depicts the horrors braved by the shipwrecked sailors:
first the flight from their rapidly sinking vessel, then the frenzied sharks
who feasted on hundreds of injured and defenseless crewen, the five parched
days spent under the killing sun (for the most part, without food, fresh
water, or lifeboats), and the mirage temptations of oasis islands and underwater
hotels. Kurzman reveals in telling detail the bureaucratic snafus that
prevented the Navy from even being aware that the Indianapolis was missing.
By the time the crew was found (a near- miraculous story in itself), only
316 of the original 1200 men were still alive. This was the worst sea disaster
in American naval history, and the Navy high command desperately needed
a scapegoat; they settled on Captain McVay, who, to his astonishment, found
himself the first American captain ever brought to trial for losing his
ship in battle (and, surreally, confronted by the Japanese submarine commander,
who was flown to the U.S. to testify for the prosecution). In a ringing
conclusion, Kurzman shows how the McVay trial was primarily a public relations
gesture, and how the Navy's management of the incident haunts the Pentagon
to this day." [ps] |
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GOODNIGHT,
SORRY FOR SINKING YOU
The Story of the S.S.City
of Cairo.
Collins, London, 1984. ISBN
0 00 216464 7.
Hardcover, dustjacket, 250
pahes, mono pirnts, index.
From the fly blurb:"On 6th
November 1942 the S.S.City of Cairo,. alone in the middle of the South
Atlantic making for Recife in Brazil, was torpedoed by the German V-boat
V-68. She had nearly 300 passengers and crew aboard, who moved quickly
to the lifeboats. Twenty minutes after the first torpedo, KarI-Freidrich
Merten sent another to scuttle the ship; in passing it sank one of the
lifeboats and dam~ged another. As those in the water fought to clamber
into the remaining boats, most of them already overloaded, he surfaced
to identify his kill, to criticise the captain of the Cairo for his lack
of organisation, to tell him how far he was from land, and to wish him
'Goodnight. Sorry for sinking you'. What follows forms one of the greatest
tales of survival and endurance. The Cairo's captain decided that their
only hope was to sail for St Helena, despite the considerable chance of
overshooting and being lost in the ocean beyond. Three boats did become.detached
from the main group, and their story is the most extraordinary of all.
In the weeks that followed, the survivors, growing steadily fewer and weaker,
found and knew the extremes of selfishness and depravity of which human
beings are capable. But they also discovered in some-of their number a
nobility and heroism that defies easy description. It is this latter which
is the lasting impression of this book. " [ps] |
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LANCASTRIA.
Geoffrey Bond.
Oldbourne Book Co. Ltd.,
London. 1959.
Hardcover, dust jacket,
256 pages, mono prints.
From the fly: "It was Monday,
June 17th, 1940. Along the French coast a bewildered, battered army had
crowded the beaches and filled the little ports, waiting to be picked up
and taken back across the Channel. Lying off St. Nazaire was the liner
Lancastria, 16,000 tons of elegance and steel, in which more than four
thousand men, packed into every available inch of space, could be carried
to safety. Between seven and eight that morning the first boats began to
ferry their human cargoes out to the liner: airmen, pioneers, infantrymen,
engineers, gunners, even 38 civilians. Around the Lancastria a group
of ships was lying, all too vulnerable in those shallow waters. The Oronsay
had already been hit. Then, about four o'clock in the afternoon - "at eight
bells, at the end of the after- noon watch" - the Lancastria was struck
by bombs, and turned over and sank. This was, it is true, a maritime disaster
of the first magnitude: and yet, such was the heroism and fortitude it
evoked, that it will always be remembered with a sense of national pride.
Geoffrey Bond tells the whole story for the first time. He follows individuals
and units across France to St. Nazaire; he tells what these people were
doing when the bombs struck; he follows them into the water, and - for
the lucky ones - to England and safety. All the records of the Lancastria
Survivors' Association have been opened to him. In addition he has personally
interviewed hundreds of men, of all units, who were there. His story is
factual, intensely moving, gripping as the tension mounts page by page.
Here, in clear, compelling prose, is the very stuff of war-a full record
of tragedy, irony, infamy and human bravery." [ps] |
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OUT
OF THE SMOKE
Ray Parkin. With an Introduction
by Laurens Van der Post.
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The Hogarth Press, London.
1960. Hardcover, 310 pages, no index, several drawings. ((Black dustjacket).
William Morrow and Co.,
New York, 1960. Hardcover, 310 pages, no index, several drawings. ((Blue
dustjacket).
On the night of Sunday,
March 1, 1942, the Australian cruiser Perth, accompanied only by
USS Houston, ran into the huge Japanese fleet escorting the enemy's
invasion forces through the narrow Sunda strait between Java and Sumatra
to their chosen Javanese beachhead. Perth, already strained by long months
of unrelieved war service in the Mediterranean and South-East Asian approaches,
had only just come from the Battle of the Java Sea. Her ammunition was
nearly exhausted and yet there was not a moment's hesitation as to what
she would do. Her captain set her straight at the Japanese battleships...
until, ammunition spent, he went down with his ship, its colours unstruck.
This is one of the great stories of war at sea, and here for the first
time it is told in full from the beginning, and from within the doomed
ship herself, by the man who steered her for a great part of her last commission
as well as through the final battle in the dark on the coral waters of
those volcanic islands. This in itself would be stirring enough, but there
is more to the story than even that, for the author goes on to tell how,
swimming ashore on one of the islands within sight of the apocalyptic Fire
Mountain of Krakatoa, they re-rig a derelict ship's boat and try to sail
her to some port still in Allied hands. Hungry and thirsty, their pores
blocked by fuel-oil, at the mercy of storm and calm at sea and threatened
by the hostile and cruel Bantamese when they try to land, the writer and
his companions, sustained only by their indomitable will, driven by their
common love of the ship and exalted by the spirit of her end, sail all
that is left of her, the boat Anzac, safely at last to a port-only
to find i it in enemy hands.
Note: The Perth has
been dived. I am not sure about the Houston. [ps-both] |
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THE
CRUELEST NIGHT
Christopher Dobson, John
Miller, Ronald Payne.
Little, Brown & Co,
Boston, Toronto. 1979. Library of Congress Catalog 79-91329.
Hardcover, dustjacket, 223
pages, a few mono plates, index.
From the fly:
The Cruelest Night reveals,
for the first time, the full story of the worst of all sea tragedies, the
sinking by a Russian submarine of the German ocean liner Wilhelm Gustloff
in the Baltic Sea in 1945. At least seven thousand military personnel and
civilians in flight from the avenging Red army perished - nearly five times
the number who died on the Titanic. The subsequent loss in the same operation
of two other overladen German liners, the General Steuben and the Goya,
brought the devastating toll to eighteen thousand. This book describes
the background of the whole affair: the amazing episode of "Germany's
Dunkirk," Admiral Doenitz's evacuation of nearly two million Germans who
lay in the path of the Russian advance as the eastern front collapsed.
On January 30, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff, a Nazi pleasure liner built
to hold two thousand, set sail trom the port of Gdynia with approximately
eignt thousand aboard. In part to prevent even more of the refugees clamoring
at the docks from boarding, the liner departed hastily - without proper
escort, suitable crew, or enough lifeboats, and so overloaded that it could
not follow the precautionary zigzag course through the mine and submarine
infested Baltic. The next night, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed. Incorporating
horrific accounts by survivors, the authors provide vivid cinematographic
descriptions of the desperate crush to board the ship, the pandemonium
at sea, and the re- morseless struggle by soldier, sailor, and civilian
alike for a place on the lifeboats. Dobson, Miller, and Payne outline the
naval and political implications of the events and reveal the suppressed
story of Captain Alexander Marinesko, the hard-drinking, flamboyant Soviet
submarine ace responsible for the sinking, who was later disgraced and
banished to the dreaded labor camp at Kolyma. Here, too, is the mystery
of the whereabouts of the famed Prussian "Amber Room" and the extraordinary
story of Gauleiter Erich Koch, the Nazi war criminal, whom the authors
discovered alive and imprisoned in Poland. The Baltic ordeal was the greatest
seaborne evacuation in history, as well as the biggest sea disaster. Incredibly,
the story has never been fully told until now. [ps] |
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THE
SURVIVORS
Ronald McKie.
The Bobbs-Merrill Company,
Indianapolis and New York. 1953
There is sure to have been
a British edition.
Hardcover, presume dustjacket,
246 pages, drawings, no photos.
The definitive work on the
loss of HMAS Perth and USS Houston in the Java Sea, March 1942.
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