Fatal Voyage

The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis

By: Dan Kurzman

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

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.

Critic reviews

"Mr. Kurzman’s description of the Indianapolis…lingers in the memory…A well-told–and disturbing–disaster story."
--New York Times Book Review

"Kurzman’s gripping book paints a…horrible scene. The sinking of the Indianapolis was–and remains–perhaps the most shameful naval disaster in American history."
--People

Outstanding book

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants the truth and see historical facts about the US Navy and the selflessness of a band of brothers.

Very - Very -Well Done!

Complete Reading Experience First Class-
Especially Words used to Narrate the Story!
GOOD GOOD JOB!

Our history

It’s a real shame on our government that it takes so long for the truth to come out. People covering up the truth. Man cannot govern themselves

garbage

the author is a racist, destroys the story, like how he tells he says when the sailor Adolpho was onboard the rescue vessel and they where cleaning the oil off his skin they could never scrub it to be white, im paraphrasing but you get the bias and it made me want to vomit