A Feast for Sharks
Posted: May 7th, 2008, 7:50 pmI'd never heard of this US history story 'till t'day.
The story goes something like this:
During WWII, US naval sub "USS Indianapolis CA-35" was sent on a mission without a destroyer escort and its path crossed two Japanese submarines. Subsequently, it was torpedoed and sank. 900 of the crew of ~1200 managed to make it to the surface. So why did only 317 of those men survive?
There was a delayed rescue-- that almost didn't even happen had it not been for a patrol plane. That in conjunction with the sharks resulted in the diminished number of survivors!
Can you believe it? Sharks!
The story goes on... the captain of the Indianapolis ended up being blamed for the whole thing. Grrr!
I thought it was an interesting story. There are more details on the story here: http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm
The story goes something like this:
During WWII, US naval sub "USS Indianapolis CA-35" was sent on a mission without a destroyer escort and its path crossed two Japanese submarines. Subsequently, it was torpedoed and sank. 900 of the crew of ~1200 managed to make it to the surface. So why did only 317 of those men survive?
There was a delayed rescue-- that almost didn't even happen had it not been for a patrol plane. That in conjunction with the sharks resulted in the diminished number of survivors!
Can you believe it? Sharks!
The story goes on... the captain of the Indianapolis ended up being blamed for the whole thing. Grrr!
I thought it was an interesting story. There are more details on the story here: http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm