Wwii Pilot Who Risked Life To Save Shipwreck Survivors Dies
Adrian Marks, a Navy pilot who rescued 56 sailors struggling in the shark-filled Philippine Sea after the cruiser Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in July 1945, died on March 7 at Clinton County Hospital in his hometown of Frankfort, Ind. He was 81.
Marks was flying a seaplane designed for landings only in calm water. He had been ordered never to touch down on the high seas. But on what he would remember as “a sun-swept afternoon of horror,” he disregarded his orders, risking his life and the lives of his eight crewmen, and began a dramatic mass rescue following the worst disaster at sea in American naval history. The attack took almost 900 lives.
Marks later had the Air Medal pinned on him by Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet.
The Indianapolis, unescorted and carrying 1,200 men, was en route to the Philippines from Guam, having delivered atomic-bomb components to Tinian, when it was spotted by the Japanese submarine I-58 around midnight of Sunday, July 29.
The submarine skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto, ordered the firing of six torpedoes; two struck the Indianapolis. Rocked by the explosions, it rolled over and sank in 12 minutes. Some 400 men were lost outright, but 800 others scrambled into the water as SOSs were radioed.
No one ever heard the distress calls, so far as is known. And because of slip-ups and bureaucratic lapses, Navy commanders did not think to look for the Indianapolis even when it became officially overdue at Leyte Gulf, the Philippines.
All through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the survivors of the torpedo attack - suffering from injuries, sunburn and dehydration and menaced by sharks - thrashed about in the sea. By Thursday, Aug. 2, only 320 of the men were still alive. Then, at about 10 a.m., a Navy pilot flying a routine mission spotted figures bobbing in the water.
Marks, summoned from the island of Peleliu, piloted the first rescue plane to arrive. He dropped three life rafts, but one broke up when it hit the water. He then polled his crew members about whether they should make a dangerous open-sea landing that was forbidden by regulations.
When they agreed, he set down his PBY5A Catalina plane, known as a Dumbo, amid 12-foot swells. The plane bounced 15 feet in the air after hitting the waves, but incurred only slight damage.
Speaking at a reunion of Indianapolis survivors exactly 30 years later, he remembered his crew members’ realization that they could not rescue everyone. “We would have to make heartbreaking decisions,” he recalled.
“I decided that the men in groups stood the best chance of survival,” Marks said. “They could look after one another, could splash and scare away the sharks and could lend one another moral support and encouragement.”
Marks’ crewmen first picked up the men who were alone, throwing life rings attached to ropes to the men. Soon there were two survivors in each bunk on the plane, and then men were lying two and three deep in all the compartments. Marks later shut off the engines and put additional survivors on the bobbing wings, tying the last of the 56 men down with parachute material.
And then night came. “Even though we were near the equator, the wind whipped up,” he remembered. “We had long since dispensed the last drop of water, and scores of badly injured men were softly crying with thirst and with pain. And then, far out on the horizon, there was a light.”
It was the destroyer Cecil J. Doyle, the first of seven rescue ships belatedly dispatched.
The survivors were hauled onto the Doyle, followed by Marks and his crewmen, and the Doyle and other ships later fished others out of the water. The next morning, the Doyle sank Marks’ plane, too damaged to fly again.
Twelve days later, Japan surrendered, ending World War II.
The skipper of the Indianapolis, Capt. Charles McVay III, was court-martialed in December 1945 and found to have left his ship vulnerable to torpedoes by maintaining a straight course rather than zigzagging. He was allowed to remain on duty, but his career was ruined.
Robert Adrian Marks (he did not use his first name), a native of Ladoga, Ind., and the son of a lawyer, had graduated from Northwestern University and Indiana University Law School before the war. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. He later attended flight school, became a pilot and served as an instructor at the Pensacola, Fla., naval air station before going to the Pacific.
After the war, he returned to his Frankfort home - some 40 miles from Indianapolis - and opened a law practice, specializing in real-estate titles and deeds.
He is survived by his wife, Elta; a son, Robert, of Bellevue, Wash; three daughters, Pamela Levine of Lakeville, Mass., Alexis Shuman of Enumclaw, Wash., and Lynn Larson of Olympia, Wash., and a foster son, John Barlas of Mercer Island, Wash.
Over the years, Marks never let the events of Aug. 2, 1945, leave him.
“I met you 30 years ago,” he said at the 1975 survivors’ reunion. “I met you on a sparkling, sun-swept afternoon of horror. I have known you through a balmy tropic night of fear. I will never forget you.”