Name of World War 2 ship carrying bomb that was sunk?

Answer 1

You're probably thinking of the USS Indianapolis. This was a heavy cruiser that had just delivered the bomb to Tinian Island, in the Marianas. The ship was proceeding to the Philippines and was not zigzagging. Sailing with unpredictable, irregular zigs and zags to each side of the base course was a standard tactic to throw off the attacks of any submarines, but it made the trip much longer than just sailing along a straight course. At any rate the commander of the Japanese submarine which sank her was captured at the end of the war and testified that in this instance, it would have made no difference in his attack, as his sub was so positioned that he would have been able to torpedo her anyway. Japanese submarines had been sighted in the area but this information was not relayed to the USS Indianapolis. The ship was torpedoed and sank. It was about four days overdue in the Philippines before the naval authorities remembered to wonder what had become of her, which is inexcusable. About 880 or more of the crew went into the water, and over the next four days a huge school of sharks was attracted and ate hundreds of the men floating in their life jackets. After the floating survivors were accidentally spotted by a patrolling flying boat, 316 survivors were finally rescued. In the finest traditions of the US Navy, somebody had to pay, and its best if it can be the party LEAST At Fault in a disaster, so the captain of the USS Indianapolis was court-martialed, the only commander in the entire history of the US Navy to be court-martialed for losing his ship in wartime. He was charged with dereliction of duty for not having the ship zigzag. It eventually came out that the three distress radio signals sent by the Indianapolis after being torpedoed were received, though at first the Navy claimed they were not. These signals were not acted on because the first commander responsible was drunk, the next had told his men not to bother him, and the third decided it must be a Japanese fake. To protect all the pinheads who did not warn the captain of Japanese submarine activity in the area, and forgot to even wonder where this major ship was until reports came in of hundreds of US sailors being pulled from the water, (is anybody missing a ship?), and ignored the ship's distress calls, the captain, Captain Charles B. McVay III, was convicted and his career ruined. He committed suicide in 1968. The US Congress passed a resolution in 2000 and President Clinton signed it, which said "he is exonerated for the loss of the Indianapolis" and his record should so state, but the Navy has done nothing and so far as the records of the Navy reflect, McVay is still guilty.

The ship's story and the ordeal in the water have been told several times in movies and books. Robert Shaw's character in the 1975 movie "Jaws", the shark hunter, in a monologue relates that he was a Survivor and the endless shark attacks were his motivation to become a shark hunter.