Through a blog post by a friend on Yahoo 360
Click here: Yahoo! 360° - tanker's Blog - Entry for September 18, 2007 - Tom Goff - Survivor/Hero
I learned that Monday, the oldest survivor of the sinking of the
USS Indianapolis passed away.
And from this article
Click here: Ohio.com - Oldest survivor of sinking of USS Indianapolis dies
I learned that he is being laid to rest today.
I was rather upset, after I read my friend's original blog post about Tom Goff, that I did not see more about this either in the news or on blogs.
While I have to admit that, ironically, my first recall of hearing about the USS Indianapolis is from the reference to it's sinking in the movie "Jaws"
I had just recently watched the Discovery Channel show about that sinking
The passing of yet another member of the 'Greatest Generation', particularly of someone who was a survivor of the USS Indianapolis tragedy, I think deserves a bit more of a mention than I've seen thus far.
If you don't know the story of the sinking? The Wikipedia entry is worth a read. Briefly, on July 30, 1945, the ship was struck by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine and sank within 12 minutes. 300 men died in the initial explosion, 900 men went into the water....and rescue was delayed for 4 days.
The USS Indianapolis was the ship that delivered the atomic bomb that was later dropped on Hiroshima.
Of the 900 men who went into the water the day of the sinking? 321 were picked up when they were finallly rescued, with 317 ultimately surviving.
Tom Goff, at age 100, was the oldest living survivor of the sinking. He was a Marine, one of only 6 or 9 survivors (I've seen different numbers on the actual Marine survivors) of the ship's 39 Marine detachment on the day of the sinking.
Today, he is being laid to rest in Ohio.
Godspeed,Tom Goff, and may you rest in peace.
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The official website for the USS Indianapolis Organization is here
and the website for the national memorial in Indiana is here
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Two other blog posts that I did find about Mr. Goff's passing are here
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