The Last 12 Minutes of the USS Indianapolis (Real Time, 1945)

Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 and sank in twelve minutes. Four days earlier she had delivered the components of the Hiroshima bomb to Tinian. Nearly 900 of her 1,195 men went into the Pacific alive. And then — nothing. No distress response. No search. Her absence at Leyte set off no alarm at all. SOURCES Built from the official record: the 1945 court-martial file and Navy Court of Inquiry, U.S. National Archives (NARA) and Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) photographs and documents, the October 2000 Congressional resolution and the Navy's July 2001 amendment of Captain McVay's record, and the 2017 wreck survey by the research vessel Petrel. Archival photographs are credited on screen. ABOUT THIS DOCUMENTARY Reconstruction imagery is computer-generated and deliberately shown in colorless grey so it can never be mistaken for real footage; archival photographs remain untouched black-and-white. Every date, number and document shown is drawn from the record. Where no reliable figure exists, this film does not invent one.