Key facts
- Name
- Indianapolis
- Namesake
- City of Indianapolis , Indiana
- Ordered
- 13 February 1929
- Awarded
- 15 August 1929
- Builder
- New York Shipbuilding Corporation , Camden, New Jersey
- Cost
- $10,903,200 (contract price)
- Laid down
- 31 March 1930
- Launched
- 7 November 1931
- Sponsored by
- Lucy M. Taggart
- Commissioned
- 15 November 1932
- Identification
- Hull symbol : CL-35 Hull symbol: CA-35 Code letters : NABD
- Nickname s
- Indy
- Honors and awards
- 10 × battle stars
- Fate
- Torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-58 on 30 July 1945
- Class type
- Portland -class cruiser
- Displacement
- 9,950 long tons (10,110 t ) (standard)
- Length
- 610 ft 3 in (186.00 m) loa 584 ft (178 m) lwl
- Beam
- 66 ft 1 in (20.14 m)
via Wikipedia infobox
~39 min read
Encyclopedic overview
USS Indianapolis (CL/CA-35) was a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy, named for the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. Launched in 1931, she was the flagship of the commander of Scouting Force 1 for eight years, then flagship for Admiral Raymond Spruance from 1943 to 1945 while he commanded the Fifth Fleet in battles across the Central Pacific during World War II.
In July 1945, Indianapolis completed a top-secret high-speed trip to deliver uranium and other components for "Little Boy", the first nuclear weapon used in combat, to the Tinian Naval Base, and subsequently departed for the Philippines on training duty. At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “USS Indianapolis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.