Japanese submarine I-58

[laughs]

... you know, i- in context, graded on a curve, something good happened, which was that these guys who had been in the water for four days after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, they were finally spotted by a US Navy seaplane.

There's only about 300-odd of these men left at this time from the 800 who went into the water, and to his credit, the pilot of the seaplane, he, he does not mess around.

He goes, "Oh, Jesus, we need to get these guys out of here," and he lands, and he starts, like, strapping these guys to his wings.

They're not entirely sure what the situation is.

They've, they've had a smooth ride to Tinian, but now he's, they've got this onward thing, and he says to Carter, "Look, what's the...

Or what, what have I got to expect out there given the s- situation in the war?" And Carter's response, and this is from the official court of inquiry held by the Navy in August 1945 into this fiasco, he said, "Things are very quiet." This was a lie, and it was a lie that Carter knowingly told to McVay, and that's because Carter had received intelligence reports earlier that week that four Japanese submarines were active in the waters between Tinian and the Philippines.

He also didn't mention, it's kind of, kind of a small thing, but he also didn't mention to McVay that on the 24th of July, that is two days before the Indy arrived at Tinian to deliver the components for the Little Boy bomb that's gonna be dropped on Hiroshima, two days before that, a US destroyer, the Underhill, was sunk by one of these Japanese submarines.

Okay? It's, it's, it's traveling alone through these supposedly safe waters.

And as such it is just after midnight on the 30th of July, 1945 that out of nowhere it gets hit with two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58.

The submarine commander, who's a fascinating guy, we'll get into him, uh, Mochitsura Hashimoto, he claimed that this was the easiest kill he'd ever scored.

In fact, I think it was the only kill he ever scored actually [laughs]

But, but anyway, he said this was, this was the easiest thing he'd ever done.

He rolled up to within 3,000 yards.

No one on board the Indy suspected that the I-58 was there.

Again, we're in the dead of night, no one can see it's a submarine.