1. The Crew of USS Indianapolis
In the summer of 1945, the USS Indianapolis was on a secret mission to drop off parts at an army base on the Island of Tinian in the Pacific Ocean. The parts were then used to construct the Little Boy nuclear bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
After dropping off the parts, the heavy cruiser and its 1,200 sailors was heading to Leyte, which is an island in the Philippines. However, they would never make it to their destination, because just after midnight on July 30, 1945, a Japanese submarine fired six torpedoes at the cruiser and two of them hit the ship. It caused the USS Indianapolis to sink in 12 minutes, and at least 300 men died without getting off of the sinking ship.
The problem was that the ship sank so fast that the crew was unable to send off a distress signal. Also, the port where they were heading didn’t record boats coming in, so the Navy didn’t know that the USS Indianapolis hadn’t docked.
Meanwhile, some 900 men were forced into the water. There weren’t many lifeboats; instead, the men were forced to wear life preservers and float. Unfortunately, the loud explosions of the ship sinking and all the blood in the water caught the attention of sharks. On the first day, the sharks just ate the dead. However, they soon turned their attention to people who were wounded. This led to injured men or men with open wounds being quarantined.
Besides the sharks, another problem was food. Not many rations were pulled from the ship before it sank. Even when they did have rations, they couldn’t eat it. For example, when one group of men opened a can of Spam, sharks encircled them. So the men chose not to open any meat rations.
Over the next several days, the men floated in the shark infested waters and baked under the sun. This led to more deaths. It also caused hallucinations, which caused the men to drink salt water, leading to death by salt poisoning.
Finally, four days after their ship went down, a Navy pilot saw the men and radioed for help. Hours later, when a seaplane dropped supplies and rafts, the pilot saw that the sharks were still attacking the men. So against orders, he landed the plane and got the most injured people on board and flew them to safety. The remaining survivors were rescued just after midnight on August 3, after five days at sea.
Out of the 900 men who made it into the water, only 317 survived. It is America’s biggest naval disaster and it is also considered the worst shark attack in history. It’s believed that between a dozen and 150 men were killed by sharks.
(Note: we know that the Jaws speech isn’t entirely accurate, but… come on. It’s still too much of a classic not to include above, right?)
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