At 9:00 A.M., on Thursday, August 2, securely strapped in the pilot’s seat, Lieutenant (jg) Wilbur C. Gwinn pushed the throttles forward, brought the motors of his twin-engine Ventura bomber to an ear-splitting roar, and raced down the Peleliu runway. His mission was a regular day reconnaissance patrol of Sector 19V258. He was to report and attempt to sink any Japanese submarine in his area. The route for the outward leg of his journey just happened to have him flying directly over the heads of the dying men of the Indianapolis. At the very rear of a Ventura is an antenna that trails behind the aircraft. It is used primarily for navigation. In order to keep the antenna from whipping around in the wind, which would make it useless, a weight (known as a “sock”) is secured to the end. Once Gwinn gained enough speed to get airborne, he pulled back and the nose of the bomber pointed up toward the blue sky. At the same time, he lost the weight from his navigational antenna. With this “trailing antenna sock” gone, he had two choices: turn around and get it fixed, or continue on patrol and navigate by dead reckoning. Because the weather was excellent, Lieutenant Gwinn decided to go on, took the plane up to 3,000 feet, and over a glassy sea began looking for enemy submarines.
Dead reckoning navigation is not very accurate, and over the Pacific Ocean it is neither a very comfortable nor enviable position to be in. At 11:00 A.M., about an hour and forty-five minutes out of Peleliu, Gwinn figured that since caution is the better part of valor, the whipping antenna being pulled behind the plane should somehow be anchored down. Because the radioman was busy with something else and his co-pilot was concentrating on filling out a weather report, Gwinn resolved to repair it himself. Crawling through the after tunnel of the Ventura, he reached the narrow end and stared at the long, slender, thrashing piece of metal, wondering how to fix it. While attempting to come up with some creative solution to his problem, Gwinn happened to look down from his 3,000-foot perch into the Philippine Sea. At that precise moment, he saw it. The thin line of oil could only have come from a leaking submarine, and the startled pilot rushed back to his left-hand seat and began flying the airplane. At 11:18 A.M., he changed his course so as to follow the snake-like slick. Not being able to see very well, he brought the bomber down to 900 feet. Mile after mile the slick continued, never seeming to reach an end. Five miles later, he suddenly saw them—thirty heads wrapped in a twenty-five-mile orbit of oil. Many were clinging to the sides of a raft, while others floated and feebly made motions to the plane. Gwinn had a funny feeling in his gut—the slick was enormous but he had no report of a large ship having gone down. Who in the world could these people
be? At 11:20 A.M., about two minutes after sighting what had looked like black balls on the water, the pilot dropped down to a wave-skimming 300 feet. He ordered his radioman to get a message off, and at 11:25 A.M., the following transmission was sent: SIGHTED 30 SURVIVORS 011-30 NORTH 133-30 EAST DROPPED TRANSMITTER AND LIFEBOAT EMERGENCY IFF ON 133-30
