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Past Imperfect has another good piece about the Shark swarms that attacked the sailors form the USS Indianapolis after it was torpedoed and sunk in the South pacific in WWII. I knew many of the survivors were eaten by sharks but I did not the estimated number of shark victims was as high as 150 out of the 900 survivors.I cannot even imagine floating around in the water for almost 5 days watching my comrades being attacked and eaten by sharks.
About 900 men, survivors of the initial torpedo attack, were left drifting in groups in the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. And beneath the waves, another danger was lurking. Drawn by the carnage of the sinking, hundreds of sharks from miles around headed towards the survivors.”We were sunk at midnight, I saw one the first morning after daylight. They were big. Some of them I swear were 15ft long,” remembers Cox. “They were continually there, mostly feeding off the dead bodies. Thank goodness, there were lots of dead people floating in the area.”But soon they came for the living, too.”We were losing three or four each night and day,” says Cox. “You were constantly in fear because you'd see 'em all the time. Every few minutes you'd see their fins – a dozen to two dozen fins in the water.”They would come up and bump you. I was bumped a few times – you never know when they are going to attack you.”Some of the men would pound the water, kick and yell when the sharks attacked. Most decided that sticking together in a group was their best defence. But with each attack, the clouds of blood in the water, the screaming, the splashing, more sharks would come. In that clear water you could see the sharks circling. Then every now and then, like lightning, one would come straight up and take a sailor and take him straight down. One came up and took the sailor next to me. It was just somebody screaming, yelling or getting bit.”
Loel Dean Cox, USS Indianapolis survivor.Source
Wow, that is something. So they didn't send a rescue team because the Americans thought the message about a sinking ship was a trick…? Wouldn't there have been other ways to confirm this?
The Indianapolis carried components of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima to some island to be assembled. It was a totally secret operation. No one saved them because no one knew about it.
Ok, but wouldn't someone high up the chain of command been even more attentive to the ship in transit? After all, the more important the mission, the more care is put into it. I can see how those in the lower levels might have been kept in the dark, but someone higher up would have had to keep track of it.
Because this idiot:
Lieutenant Stuart B. Gibson, U.S.N.R., the Operations Officer under the Port Director, Tacloban, was the officer who was immediately concerned with the movements of the Indianapolis. The non-arrival of that vessel on schedule was known at once to Lieutenant Gibson who not only failed to investigate the matter but made no immediate report of the fact to his superiors.
sourceInstead of court martialing him they decided to court marshall the ship's Captain McVay.
