Episode 265: The Sinking Of The USS Indianapolis

Not Today

Society & Culture, Comedy, True Crime

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2026

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On July 30, 1945, The USS Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, which took down the ship in only minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen, ~900 entered the water, facing sharks, painful dehydration, and exposure for nearly five days before they were finally rescued. It was the U.S. Navy's single worst loss of life at sea.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, I'm Steph.
0:01.0	I'm Alex.
0:01.4	And this is not today.
0:19.9	And we're live. Hi. Hi. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. What are we doing today?
0:27.4	We're talking about war. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've got an intense story today. Okay. But before we get into that, intense.
0:36.8	The vineship is insane. Well, you asked me what
0:41.2	we're talking about today. We're talking about war. A ship went down and some really, really crazy
0:46.8	stuff happened. But before we get into that, bonus episode number 47 is out. It's been out for
0:52.7	about a week. We talked about Dean Fiello over there. I do remember that. Go check it out. It's an insane story. It truly is. You kind of just, I mean, we've told the number of them that are like this, but you just kind of keep going, huh? You mean just like the shock value? Yes, the shock of it all. Yeah, because I feel like we haven't told a ton of fraud doctor stories. Well, no, but I'm saying that we've told the number of stories where you just continually are shocked. Well, sure. Yeah, that's how I mean they're similar. So let's pretend that that makes sense and move on. Okay. Sounds good. Well, if you want to get a bunch of bonus episodes and vote on stories you want to hear, head over to patreon.com slash not today podcast. Bonus episode number 48 poll should be dropping very soon. So if you want to vote on that, head over there. But I think that's all I have to say about that for now. It's crazy. It's almost four full years, Patreon.
1:46.4	It's true.
1:46.9	There's a lot of content over there.
1:48.6	But why don't we jump into the story I have for you today?
1:51.2	Because we have a lot to discuss.
1:53.7	Let's do it.
1:54.7	Okay.
1:55.8	The USS Indianapolis was a Portland-class cruiser of the U.S. Navy that was launched on November 7, 1931.
2:04.9	It was originally designed as a light cruiser in 1930 because of her thin armor, but was later
2:10.8	reclassified as a heavy cruiser in 1931 because of her eight-inch guns capable of hitting a target from 17 miles away.
2:20.6	Whoa.
2:21.1	For defense, it was armed with more than 40 anti-aircraft guns and a trio of float planes
2:27.6	equipped with pontoons that served as scouts and long-range spotters.
2:32.6	This was a massive ship, a big Navy warship.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Not Today, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Not Today and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.