On This Day in History: July 30

USS Indianapolis is sunk

Subscribers can listen to the audio version of today’s post here.

After Jaws, everyone was afraid of even taking a fucking bath because they might get turned into great white poop. But the mega-toothed murder fish from that movie doesn’t kill many people. The shark that kills the most by far is called the oceanic whitetip. Their range is far from shore, and they feast upon the survivors of shipwrecks like the USS Indianapolis. 

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 30, 1945--

The Indianapolis was a heavy cruiser that had just completed a top-secret mission: delivering the enriched uranium to be used in “Little Boy” to vaporize the fuck out of Hiroshima. Four days after the delivery, on July 30, 1945, the ship got blowed up. 

The ship was traveling from Guam to the Philippines. It was just after midnight when a Japanese submarine fired two torpedoes at Indianapolis, sending her to the bottom of the Philippine Sea in 11 minutes, along with approximately 300 sailors. Another 900 ended up in the water. There was fuck all for lifeboats, and many didn’t even have lifejackets. So that sucked. 

The Navy didn’t know the ship had gone down, so no one was looking for them. For over three days they were adrift, dying from exposure, dehydration, and salt poisoning. And fucking sharks. Sharks ate them too. Mostly the whitetips, but possibly some tiger sharks got in on the frenzy. That must have super sucked. You’ve been floating in the water for days and the sun is beating down and you’re dying of thirst and then a shark takes a big chunk out of you. 

On August 2 an amphibious patrol plane spotted the survivors and radioed for help. The pilot then landed his plane in 12-foot swells and maneuvered it close enough so that 56 survivors could climb aboard. Several hours later the first of the rescue ships arrived to pick up the remaining survivors. A quarter of the original crew, 316 sailors, were pulled from the water. Two died a short time later. 

It’s believed that the sinking of the Indianapolis represents the single greatest loss of life from shark attacks. The oceanic whitetip is referred to as “opportunistic and aggressive.” So when presented with the opportunity of tasty humans just floating there in the water, it gets aggressively hungry. Jacques Cousteau referred to the whitetip as “the most dangerous of all sharks.” 

Indianapolis wasn’t the only whitetip feast of World War II. RMS Nova Scotia was sunk by German torpedoes off South Africa in 1942 with over a thousand people on board. Eight-hundred-fifty-eight didn’t make it; many of them eaten by whitetips. But this is nothing compared to what humans have done to them. The oceanic whitetip is now labeled “critically endangered” because assholes like lopping off their fins and making them into soup. 

Thanks to Marylandfor the suggestion of today’s topic. 

Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.