“The day wore on and the sharks were around, hundreds of them. You'd hear guys scream, especially late in the afternoon. Seemed like the sharks were the worst late in the afternoon than they were during the day. Then they fed at night too. Everything would be quiet and then you'd hear somebody scream and you knew a shark had got him”
Woody Eugene James, Indianapolis Survivor
Last week we looked at animal attacks: the Tsavo lion attacks, the Kirov wolves and the Battle of Ramtree Island (which should’ve been called “Crocs vs. Japan: The Bitening). This week we’re going to take another look at historic animal attacks, starting with the Indianapolis Incident.
The Indianapolis Incident differs from the animal attacks in last week’s Secret history because it is partly a man-made disaster. The fact that animals, who are known to be selfish and vindictive bastards, took advantage of the chaos simply makes it a whole lot more brutal.
The USS Indianapolis sailed from Hawaii to Tinian with parts and uranium (for the atomic bomb which would soon be dropped on Hiroshima) in July of 1945. On July the 28th, the Indianapolis sailed between Guam and the Philippines, where the crew were going to get extra training.
The Indianapolis never made it to the Philippines.
On the 30th of July, 1948, two torpedoes from an undetected Japanese submarine hit the ship.
Of the crew of 1,196, only 880 men made it off the ship alive. The Indianapolis sank within a quarter of an hour.
Only 316 men survived the next four days.
A severe lack of lifeboats and life jackets, as well as a failure by the US forces in the Philippines to realize that over a thousand men had failed to arrive at their destination, lead to the men being left in shark infested water, with limited food and only salt water to drink.
Dr. Lewis Haynes was the Chief Medical Officer aboard the Indianapolis:
“The water in that part of the Pacific was warm and good for swimming. But body temperature is over 98 and when you immerse someone up to their chin in that water for a couple of days, you're going to chill him down. So at night we would tie everyone close together to stay warm. But they still had severe chills which led to fever and delirium. On Tuesday night some guy began yelling, ‘There's a Jap here and he's trying to kill me.’ And then everybody started to fight. They were totally out of their minds. A lot of men were killed that night. A lot of men drowned. Overnight everybody untied themselves and got scattered in all directions. But you couldn't blame the men. It was mass hysteria. You became wary of everyone. Till daylight came, you weren't sure. When we got back together the next day there were a hell of a lot fewer.”
For four days, the men slowly lost their minds, died from salt poisoning due to salt water in their wounds, fought and killed each other and were attacked by shark swarms.
A shark swarm is a swarm of sharks. Imagine bees in a swarm then replace them with huge, constantly hungry bastards and add 800 bleeding, insane men floating in one area.
Some species of sharks can smell blood in the water from a half mile.
The shark attacks began at sunrise the day after the ship sank and continued even as the men were being lifted to safety aboard rescue ships, almost five days later.
So, in closing: don’t join the navy, help with the destruction of Japanese cities or go anywhere near the ocean.