WWII Navy chaplain posthumously awarded Navy Cross for comforting fellow sailors in ‘shark infested waters’ January 13 Secretary of the Navy Kenneth J. Braithwaite speaks during a Navy Cross award ceremony for Navy Chaplain Lt. Thomas M. Conway at the Basilica of Immaculate Conception in Waterbury, Conn. The Basilica was Conway’s home parish before joining the Navy. (MC2 Alexander C. Kubitza/Navy) A Navy chaplain who helped comfort shipmates when the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk in “shark infested waters” during the last days of World War II was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the service announced Saturday. Lt. Thomas Conway, a Catholic priest, was assigned to the heavy cruiser during its top-secret mission in July 1945 to deliver parts of the atomic bomb “Little Boy” to the U.S. Army Air Forces Base on the island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas. The bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.
The Rev. Thomas Conway, the heroic chaplain of the ill-fated USS Indianapolis, was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously on Friday for his selfless courage.
Seventy-five years after the end of the war in the Pacific, the Department of the Navy posthumously awarded the Navy Cross to a World War II Chaplain.,