Project 888
Captain McVay had received orders July 12th that the Indy would perform a special mission. Training for new crew was canceled; to be added at their end destination. (1)
Liberty was suddenly canceled; the crew, spread across the US, had returned - except a few.
Some crew arrived hesitantly. The superstition of luck running out had spread.
A young sail maker (name not revealed) had visited Kasey Moore at his hut asking for a transfer. He explained that many thought the Indy's luck had run out-- no longer Lucky Indy. As a sail maker he would have sewn burial bags for the men killed in the Kamikaze attack. (2)
Leaving the Mare Island Navy Yard on Sunday morning, July 15, 1945, Indianapolis arrived at Hunter's Point in San Francisco the same day having passed within site of the Golden Gate Bridge. A bridge thought to be in the crew's past.
A young crew member, Claud Luttrell, COX captured history while sitting at Hunter's Point in a letter written to his sister:
July 15
Dearest Thelma & all.
I'm sorry I'm so late in writing. Sis, I've been so busy the last week. I haven't written
anyone. We have been bringing on stores and ammunition and getting ready to leave. . .
I have left Mare Island and I'm at Hunters Point.
I expect to leave the states the twentieth unless something is wrong. That's what we are
going to find out today. We are on a trial run. We were doing thirty-two knots this morning and
this thing rattled like a model T. Ford. I had liberty in San Francisco night before last,
is that place ever crowded.
Well, Sis, we are leaving the States the sixteenth of July so I don't imagine I will see
Bill Gentry. We are going from here to Pearl Harbor from there I don't know where. . .
Well, Thelma, I must write mother so I will close, give my love to all and write soon.
As Ever, Claud.
Between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. a large wooden crate was lifted onto Indy's deck by a crane from a railroad flatcar. It was stored within empty starboard airplane hanger. Immediately Marines with weapons were assigned to guard the crate of unknown content.
Only a few officers were aware of the cylinders brought aboard by two escorts who secured the cylinders in a cabin using chains and locks. (3) At this point not even Captain McVay knew the contents of the box. Weeks later he and 316 crew members would know.
Neither the officers nor the enlisted crew, including the Stewards Mates working in windowless quarters below deck, were aware their fate was being cast today.
At 8:00 a.m. the morning of Monday, July 16th, the crew of USS Indianapolis sailed from San Franisco retracing their final path under the Golden Gate Bridge - some with apprehension.
END NOTES
Note: At the 2019 Survivor's Reunion Marine Sgt Edgar Harrell said he was assigned to sit
on the box and shoot anyone who came near it. Edgar, I said, only the crew was on board.
Edgar replied: "That's who I was supposed to shoot." followed by his usual grin. (4)
(1) Oral testimony by Captain Charles McVay, 2018, A Grave Misfortune, Richard A. Hulver, 2018, Chapter 1, page 1.
(2) GOODBYE, Indy MARU, A Navy Wife Remembers, Kathrine D. Moore, April 1991 Publisher: Lori Publications, INC. Knoxville, TN, page 135
(3) Indianapolis, Vincent and Vladic, Simon and Schuster, 2018 pgs 74-75.
(4) Conversation between Marine SGT Edgar Harrell and Marilyn Henry, (daughter-in-law of LCDR Earl Henry, lost at sea) at Survivor's Reunion, July 2019.
