W.W. McClyde

Nov 13, 1942. A single torpedo sinks an American cruiser in about 20 seconds. Five brothers from Iowa go down with her. George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert Sullivan grew up in Waterloo, Iowa. George and Francis had already served a hitch in the Navy. After Pearl Harbor, where a friend of theirs was killed aboard USS Arizona, all five brothers decided to enlist together. They had one condition. They wanted to serve on the same ship. The Navy agreed, and in early 1942 all five were assigned to the brand-new light cruiser USS Juneau. On the night of Nov 12 to 13, Juneau was part of the outgunned American force that sailed into Ironbottom Sound to stop two Japanese battleships. In the wild close-range brawl that followed, a Japanese torpedo hit her. She survived, but she was badly damaged, low in the water and limping. The next morning, the battered survivors of the fight headed southeast for safety. Juneau steamed along with San Francisco, Helena and a few destroyers. Just after 11 a.m., the Japanese submarine I-26 fired a spread of torpedoes at the group. One of them, probably meant for San Francisco, hit Juneau near the magazine that had been weakened the night before. She exploded. Witnesses said she broke in half and disappeared in about 20 seconds. The senior officer present, Captain Gilbert Hoover of Helena, believed nobody could have survived, and he was afraid the submarine would strike again. His ships were crippled and short of escorts. He kept going. He signaled a passing American bomber to report the sinking and the location. That report never got through to anyone who could act on it. But around 100 men had survived the blast. They were in the water, many of them wounded, clinging to rafts and floating nets. No one came. Day after day they drifted under the tropical sun. Men died from their wounds, from thirst, and from exposure. Some lost their minds and swam off. Sharks circled the rafts and dragged men away. By most accounts, at least one of the Sullivans, George, survived the sinking. He reportedly searched the rafts for his brothers until he couldn't go on. Eight days later, planes finally spotted the last survivors. Only 10 men were rescued. Nearly 700 of Juneau's crew were dead. Back in Waterloo, Thomas and Alleta Sullivan noticed the letters from their sons had stopped. In January 1943, three men in uniform came to their door. According to the family, Thomas asked which one. The officer answered: all five. The Sullivans' loss stunned the country. The Navy named a destroyer USS The Sullivans in their honor, christened by their mother. It is preserved today as a museum ship in Buffalo, New York. A Hollywood film about the brothers came out in 1944. The tragedy also changed how the military thought about families. In the years that followed, policies were put in place to protect the last surviving son of a family from being sent into combat. In March 2018, a research ship found Juneau's wreck nearly three miles down at the bottom of the Solomon Sea.

United States battleship USS Wisconsin at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base tying up alongside the hulk of the battleship Oklahoma, which had been decommissioned just two months earlier, 11 November 1944. Note the difference in size between the battleships