Congress awarded the crew of the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis its Congressional Gold Medal this week, honoring their sacrifice during one of the most tragic incidents of World War II.
A Japanese submarine sank the heavy cruiser during the final days of the war, but the secrecy surrounding its mission—delivering parts of the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Japan—meant survivors of the sinking were forced to wait a week before their rescue. Nearly 600 members of the crew died after the sinking, many of them killed by sharks.
The USS Indianapolis was a Portland-class heavy cruiser. Since the high-speed cruiser could make 32.7 knots, or 37.6 miles per hour, it was chosen to carry parts and nuclear materials for the “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” atomic bombs from San Francisco to the island of Tinian in the Pacific.
The U.S. used Tinian, which it captured from Japan in the summer of 1944, as a staging area for U.S. Army Air Force bombers raiding the Japanese mainland. Once the Indianapolis delivered the bombs to Tinian, the Air Force assembled the weapons and loaded them onto B-29 bombers before dropping them on the islands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.