"The Good of the Service"

The silence of the court could mean only one thing: guilty. On one of the two counts, "culpable inefficiency" (failure to abandon ship promptly) in the torpedoing of his ship, the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the court had acquitted Captain Charles B. McVay III, U.S.N. But the court's silence on the charge of "negligence" (in his failure to zigzag his ship) meant that on that count the court had found McVay guilty. Last week, as the Navy prepared to review its court's findings, McVay faced a bleak future.

He had been the victim of phenomenally bad luck, both in & out of court. Wearer of three rows of ribbons, including a Silver Star for gallantry in the Solomons, a topnotch officer (according to Admiral Raymond A. Spruance), handsome, 47-year-old McVay had had his ship--and perhaps his career--shot out from under him 16 days before the end of the war.

Machitsura Hashimoto, commanding the new Japanese submarine I-58 (TIME, Dec. 24), had surfaced for a breath of fresh air, had seen a "dark object" on a converging course. Fair across the "Indy's" bow, all Hashimoto had to do was fire six torpedoes (five of them had magnetic warheads), sit back and wait for the explosions. There were still unanswered questions: more than 800 of the Indy's crew had got off the ship--why had there been no search planes for four days? Who on the Leyte, communications staff had bungled in failing to report the ship overdue?

As McVay left the courtroom at the Washington Navy Yard to await the verdict, the trial judge advocate, Captain Thomas J. Ryan Jr., a friend of 25 years, said: "Charlie, I want you to know there was nothing personal in this and I wish it had come out the other way."

Said Captain McVay steadily: "Whatever the verdict, it is for the good of the service."

Not all Navymen were prepared to agree that it was for "the good of the service." Many argued that no amount of zigzagging would have saved the Indianapolis. Said a U.S. submarine commander: "The Jap had a dream dropped in his lap. It's just sheer bad luck for McVay."

Many U.S. submariners, who should know, look upon zigzagging generally as just a waste of time and fuel. During McVay's trial, Captain Glynn R. Donaho, submarine skipper with a long list of kills, told the court flatly that zigzagging is "of no value" in evasive action. In ten seconds, he said, he could correct for a target's change of course. The dubious protection that zigzagging gives a ship is offset by the fact that it allows slower-moving subs to keep up.

Why is zigzagging still in the Navy's book? A submariner explained acidly: "The Navy zigzagged in World War I. So they'll be doing it for the next 150 years."

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