On July 30, 1945, an American warship was hit by two Japanese torpedoes, sinking her in a mere 12 minutes. 900 sailors survived the disaster, but they couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief: burnt, mutilated and with their limbs cut off, the men were soon faced with a swarm of sharks. Even according the most conservative estimates, at least 150 of them were killed by the animals before help arrived four days later.
Image credit: 126 Club
The USS Indianapolis had just delivered the components of the first operational atomic bomb to a naval base on the Pacific island of Tinian. On August 6, 1945, the weapon would level Hiroshima. But now, on July 29, the Indianapolis was sailing from Guam, without an escort, to join the battleship USS Idaho in the Philippines’ Leyte Gulf and prepare for an invasion of Japan.
The day passed uneventfully, with the Indianapolis cruising at about 17 knots through five to six-foot waves in the seemingly endless Pacific. As the sun set over the ship, the sailors were playing cards or reading, and some of them were chatting with the ship’s chaplain.
The USS Indianapolis (CA-35) off Mare Island on 10 July 1945. The photo was taken before the ship delivered atomic bomb components to Tinian and just 20 days before she was sunk by a Japanese submarine.
Shortly after midnight, a Japanese torpedo hit the starboard bow of the unsuspecting American vessel, right where the ship’s fuel was stored: about 3,500 gallons of it spilled into the water, where it immediately ignited, shooting up flames that were several hundred feet high.
A second Japanese torpedo then hit closer to midship, causing fuel tanks and powder magazines to explode. The chain reaction could not be stopped, the Indianapolis was ripped in two. The ship, which was still traveling at a high speed, got filled with water in a matter seconds and sank in just 12 minutes. About 900 of the 1196 men survived the series of explosions and got into the water alive. Many thought they could breathe a sigh of relief, but the worst part of their ordeal had only just begun.
“When I looked down at myself, I noticed I was covered in this oil and the first instinct is to get away from it, you know, because if it catches on fire then you are really in trouble. The first impulse is to swim away from it, so I swam away, and this was a little after midnight when it happened. And then by probably about 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning, I was still swimming. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t even have a life jacket, so I was swimming from midnight to 5:30 in the morning,” survivor Lyle Umenhoffer, Seaman First Class, told History.
As the sun rose on July 30, in addition to a few pieces of wreckage still floating and dozens of corpses, it shone down on hundreds of tortured survivors with severed limbs and burns, for most of whom there was no room on the few life rafts available. Many did not even have life jackets, so they pulled them off their dead comrades.
Scene from the 2007 US documentary “Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever”. Source
In the hope that they could maintain some order, several smaller and one larger group of more than 300 people were formed. Soon enough, two enemies bore down on the increasingly exhausted men: thirst and sharks.
The animals were attracted to the scene by the noise of the explosions, the sinking ship, the spilled oil and, of course, the blood. Among the many shark species living in the open ocean, none are considered as aggressive as the oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus). The first targets of these marine predators were the floating corpses, but later even more sharks appeared, and they began to target the constantly moving people struggling to survive on the surface of the water.
According to the recollections of survivors, the men scattered over an area of hundreds of square meters were attacked by dozens or even more than a hundred predators. Since they were mainly attracted by the blood, everyone tried to swim away from sailors who were injured and bleeding.
Scene from the 2007 US documentary “Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever” Source
“All the time, the sharks never let up. We had a cargo net that had Styrofoam things attached to keep it afloat. There were about 15 sailors on this, and suddenly, 10 sharks hit it and there was nothing left. This went on and on and on,” survivor Eugene Morgan, Boatswain’s Mate Second Class, told History.
Most soldiers froze in fear and could not think logically. Some of them made the mistake of opening a can of Spam – but before they could eat any of it, the meat drew a swarm of sharks around them, prompting them to throw away their rations.
“While I was completely coherent, this was my thought: Keep struggling and stay alive. It was very miserable because of the sun burning the skin, one could not escape it. It was like having your head in a hole in the middle of a mirror, with all this sunlight being reflected and burning your face. So hot, it was miserable – like hell. You couldn’t wait for the sun to go down. When the sun went down it was a relief. Then it would get cold and you would start to shiver, and you couldn’t wait for the sun to come back up,” Paul McGinnis, Signalman Third Class, told History.
As the days passed, despair overtook more and more of the sailors: they began to hallucinate because of the heat and thirst. Many couldn’t take it anymore and drank from the salty seawater – a sentence of death by salt poisoning. These sailors soon slipped into madness and went again their companions with foaming mouths, swollen lips and tongues. They often posed an even greater threat to the survivors than the sharks circling below – with many dragging their comrades underwater with them as they died.
“Men began drinking salt water so much that they were very delirious. In fact, a lot of them had weapons like knives, and they’d be so crazy, that they’d be fighting amongst themselves and killing one another. And then there’d be others that drank so much [salt water] that they were seeing things. They’d say, “The Indy is down below, and they’re giving out fresh water and food in the galley!” And they’d swim down, and a shark would get them. And you could see the sharks eating your comrade,” survivor Granville Crane, Machinist’s Mate Second Class, told History.
Even the fortunate survivors had to be hospitalized.
The carnage lasted for four days: although three radio stations of the US Navy received news of the disaster, none of them transmitted it to their superiors: the commander of one station was drunk, while another commander at another station had forbidden his subordinates to disturb him. The third commander thought it was a Japanese hoax and also ignored the alarm. In the meantime, the sailors learned that their best chance of survival is to gather in a group, and if possible, to be in the middle of the crowd, since predators could reach them more easily from the edges.
On the fourth day, at 11 a.m., a Navy patrol plane spotted the survivors and radioed for help. A few hours later, a seaplane appeared and dropped makeshift rafts and survival kits among the sailors. A few minutes after midnight, the warship USS Doyle finally rescued the survivors.
Only 317 of the Indianapolis’ crew of 1,196 survived. According to estimates, at least 150 people were killed by the sharks, while the rest died of insanity, thirst and fatigue. It was the worst shark attack of all time, and also the most shocking maritime disaster in the history of the US Navy.
