USS Indianapolis Lives Lost Due to Alcohol

According to the ship's Wikipedia page, in July 1945 the USS Indianapolis ...

... completed a top-secret high-speed trip to deliver parts of Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon ever used in combat, to the United States Army Air Force Base on the island of Tinian, 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. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 316 survived. The sinking of Indianapolis resulted in the greatest single loss of life at sea from a single ship in the history of the US Navy.

The part about the Navy learning about the sinking four days later was found to be, well, not true! Later in the Wikipedia page, and splattered throughout numerous related historical articles about the USS Indianapolis, we indeed find...

Declassified records later showed that three stations received the signals but none acted upon the call. One commander was drunk, another had ordered his men not to disturb him, and a third thought it was a Japanese trap.

So that's 890 minus 316, or 574 lives lost that could have been saved had that particular station's commander not been under the influence.

More info:

• https://www.history.com/news/uss-indianapolis-sinking-survivor-stories-sharks
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)
• https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/loss-of-uss-indianapolis-ca-35.html