Just before WWII ended, a ship was sunk by an enemy submarine, and then the survivors were attacked by sharks while nobody even looked for them. The story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the ordeal that the sailors went through in shark-infested waters is one of the wildest stories from WWII.
The USS Indianapolis was a U.S. Navy cruiser built in 1931. The 610-foot-long ship was armed with nine 8-inch guns that packed a punch and could travel at a top speed of 32 knots. The Indianapolis spent the war in the Pacific Ocean and took part in many sea battles as well as supporting the Marines and soldiers that were making amphibious assaults on Pacific islands.
The ship performed well until March 31, 1945. Ahead of the invasion of Okinawa scheduled for April 1st, the ship bombarded Japanese positions so that the invasion force could land with less resistance. However, the battle of Okinawa was where the Japanese began using a deadly new weapon: the kamikaze.
The USS Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb
Airplanes would drop bombs on American ships and then crash into them in a suicide mission. The Indianapolis had fought off kamikazes for 7 days until one kamikaze got lucky and although it missed the ship and crashed into the ocean, the bomb it carried had exploded and severely damaged the ship.
The ship hobbled back to California where she underwent repairs. Just as the Indianapolis was all fixed up and ready to return to the war, she was given a special mission. On the morning of July 16, 1945, the Trinity test happened, which was the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb.
President Truman wanted to drop a bomb ASAP. That same day the Indianapolis left San Francisco with a very special and secret cargo aboard. Half of the world’s enriched uranium was onboard with a destination to the island of Tinian where it would be used to complete the two atomic bombs that would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Indianapolis sped from California to Hawaii and then on to Tinian at record speed, where the uranium was safely delivered on July 26.
The USS Indianapolis had completed one of the most secretive and dangerous missions of the war. Only a handful of sailors knew why they were speeding across the Pacific so most had no idea that they had just delivered the material that would soon end the war. With the secret mission successfully accomplished, the ship was sent to the Philippines to undergo further training in preparation for the upcoming planned invasion of Japan.
The Tragic and Wild Ending of the USS Indianapolis
The war was nearly over, and though the USS Indianapolis was sailing alone, there was little worry about encountering Japanese submarines so far from the home islands. Captain Charles B. McVay III had led the ship in combat since 1944 and was an experienced naval officer. The sailors under his command trusted him to get them through the war in one piece. However, Japanese submarine I-58, commanded by Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, had spotted the cruiser sailing alone and decided to attack.
Just after midnight on July 30, two torpedoes struck the Indianapolis, and within 12 minutes the ship had sunk. There were 1,195 crew members, and miraculously 895 had managed to abandon ship. The ordeal of the surviving members of the sunken Indianapolis had only just begun.
Since the ship had sunk so fast, only a handful of sailors were able to put on life vests or get into lifeboats. Many sailors held onto floating debris thinking that they’d be rescued in a few hours or one day later at most. Sharks arrived at the area soon after the sinking, and once they finished devouring the dead and wounded, they began attacking the sailors who were not in lifeboats.
So many sailors were scattered around and floating in the water that they made easy prey for the hungry sharks. The sailors were helpless to fight off the sharks, and the lifeboats were over capacity, so the sharks had a field day attacking vulnerable sailors.
For three and a half days, the sharks attacked while the survivors in lifeboats were left without water, food, or protection from the sun during the day. The sailors were delirious with dehydration, hunger, sunstroke, and fear of sharks and were losing hope that anyone would come to their rescue. The Navy did not even realize that the ship was late arriving in the Philippines until a plane flew over the group of survivors by accident and reported the incident.
A Late Rescue
By the time the survivors were rescued, of the nearly 900 who had survived the sinking, only 316 were left after nearly four days at sea, with nearly 100 sailors having been eaten by sharks. Captain McVay was one of the survivors and was court-martialed by the U.S. Navy, who blamed him for the loss of the ship even though Commander Hashimoto testified that there was nothing McVay could have done to evade his submarine.
McVay’s record was later cleared in 2001, but the sinking was so disastrous that families of the fallen sailors wanted someone to be held responsible for their sons being left to die in the middle of the Pacific. The USS Indianapolis completed a mission that would ensure an American victory over the Japanese Empire, but due to bad luck it was sunk, and the survivors were left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters for nearly four days.
