USS INDIANAPOLIS

Everyone remembers the scene in the movie Jaws when Quint (Robert Shaw) tell Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and Brody (Roy Schneider) about the USS Indianapolis (CA 35).

Well, Sunday commemorates the sinking of the battleship that “delivered the bomb. The atom bomb.”

It was 61 years ago Sunday when the Indianapolis went down, sunk by Japanese submarine I-58, in the Philippine Sea as it returnbed from delivering the atomic bomb that was eventually dropped on Hiroshima to the island of Tinian. Of the 1,199 crew aboard, only 316 survived.

After the ship was sunk, survivors were not discovered until August 2. One of the interesting notes — and differences between the movie and the reality — is that according to testimony, sharks didn’t take most of the men. The initial explosions and sinking, followed by injuries sustained, dehydration, hypothermia and hallucinations did. Only 56 bodies recovered were thought to have been the victims of sharks.