Key Words

After delivering crucial parts of the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese on July 30, 1945 and sank within twelve minutes; survivors were found four days later, and three hundred of the 1,195 crewmen on board died, making this the greatest loss of life at sea from a single ship in U.S. Navy history. While the story of the sinking and the rescue is well known, until now one final chapter has been overlooked. In this riveting recreation of the disaster and its aftermath, Vincent, co-author of books including Same of Kind of Different as Me, and Vladic, a documentary filmmaker who has been obsessed with the Indianapolis since childhood, draw on original research and interviews with 107 survivors and witnesses to chronicle the crew’s long fight to exonerate their skipper. Captain Charles McVay III was court-martialed for the sinking and, though he was later exonerated, the authors trace a chain of systemic oversights and errors that distorted the true picture of what happened.

LYNN VINCENT:
Lynn Vincent is the #1 New York Times best-selling writer of eleven nonfiction books with more than 16 million copies in print. Her latest book, INDIANAPOLIS: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Navy History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man, was an instant New York Times bestseller, debuting at #5 on the list. INDIANAPOLIS was chosen by Amazon editors as the Best History Book of 2018 and the #3 best book of the year overall. The book was also selected as one of the Best of 2018 by Barnes and Noble, Kirkus Reviews, Military Times, and NPR. Lynn lives in the mountains east of San Diego with Danny, her husband of 30 years (and counting), and their three Labrador retrievers, Riggs, Abby and Treasure.

SARA VLADIC:
Sara Vladic, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, is one of the world’s leading experts on the USS Indianapolis, having become obsessed with the story at the age of thirteen. Over the next two decades, Vladic met and interviewed 108 of the ship’s survivors, and in 2016 she released an award-winning documentary film on the disaster, USS Indianapolis: The Legacy. She has published new research on Indianapolis in Proceedings, the official journal of the US Navy, and appeared as an expert commentator on PBS’s USS Indianapolis: Live from the Deep, which explored the ship’s wreckage. She and her husband, Ben, live in San Marcos, California.