Moved to Science & Technology, where the previously posted article on the subject is.
-- trailing wife at 11:49 EDT |
[10News] Wreckage from a World War II cruiser has been found 72 years after it was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine during the final days of the war.
Research crews discovered remnants of the USS Indianapolis Friday in the Philippine Sea, sitting 5,500 meters below the ocean's surface.
The ship was sunk on July 30, 1945, while returning from a "secret mission" delivering components for the two nuclear bombs to the island Tinian. Those components were, of course, used for the weapons dropped on Japan.
Of the 1,196 service members on board, 317 survived. Twenty-two of those survivors are still alive today.
"To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role during World War II is truly humbling," Paul Allen, owner of the Research Vessel Petrel that found the wreckage, said. "...While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming."
The research team searched 600 square miles of ocean in its latest attempt to locate the naval vessel. Previous attempts have been made, though without the technological developments employed today.
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Heh.
They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y'know, it's... kinda like ol' squares in a battle like, uh, you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin', and sometimes the shark'd go away... sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y'know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then... oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. 
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