[Milsurplus] U.S.S. Indianapolis tidbit note

Hubert Miller Kargo_cult at msn.com
Tue Aug 14 22:11:15 EDT 2018


I recently sold on Ebay a letter written 1941 on U.S.S. Indianapolis stationery.  I exchanged a few notes with the buyer and here are a couple of the last;
maybe some rare person here will find this of interest too; if not, not too much damage done to the group.

"Hue,
Got the photo and the envelope. thank you very much. I will find out what ship that is in the photo and let you know.
As per the Indianapolis. I am always interested in anything Indianapolis so thanks for the heads up on the [ current issues ] ww2 magazine and the archaeology magazine [I used to subscribe to both] - that being said, I am keenly aware of the recount on the number of sailors and marines involved in the Indy story/tragedy. You see, I am friends with a lot of people who have been directly impacted by the sinking. I know and have met 8 survivors and have been to two USS Indy survivor reunions in Indianapolis -the last reunion I attended being this year for the debut of the book Indianapolis where I met five survivors and the authors of the book as well as the grand daughter of the man who sunk her and have quit a bit of Indy stories under my belt but I thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wasn't aware of the two articles but I will save you the scanning time and go after both magazines."

"Sounds like you could do a good article yourself someday.
A sidelight. I am interested in WW2 communications equipment and have quite a bit myself. The collectors have long wondered why larger aircraft ( crewed ) were equipped with low-frequency transmitting radios, which definitely required a trailing wire antenna, compared to short wave radios or VHF that all aircraft carried. When the patrol plane spotted the survivors, if I recall, and it's been a long time since I read about it, they lingered and I believe sent a "homing" signal on LF ( low frequency ) for other search planes to "home in on". Because LF is much more reliable than shortwave for radio direction finding. Other collectors may be puzzled why seemingly gear was carried that seemed to have only rare use, or possibly even never used, but to me its utility and purpose is clear. -Hue "
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