Remembering The USS Indianapolis: The Worst Naval Disaster in American History
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, The USS Indianapolis left Guam in July 1945 after delivering critical cargo connected to the Manhattan Project. But before she could make it to her next destination, a Japanese submarine would strike the cruiser, leaving hundreds of sailors and Marines sinking in shark infested waters. While the story gained popularity from Jaws, the details itself are more harrowing from the men who lived through it.
The story later reached a wider audience through Jaws, but the details come from men who lived through it. The late Edgar Harrell, the last surviving Marine from the downed ship, shares the real-life story of that fateful day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:25.6 | And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the story of America's worst naval disaster. |
| 0:32.2 | It took a movie about a shark terrorizing a small New England town in the summer of 1975 for millions of |
| 0:40.2 | Americans to discover the story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. It was the night scene |
| 0:46.8 | in jaws in the cabin of the orca, as the intrepid shark hunters used some much-needed downtime |
| 0:52.6 | to drink some booze and swap some fish stories. |
| 0:56.8 | It's a scene anyone not living under a rock for the past half century has seen, and it's |
| 1:02.4 | worth sharing before telling the rest of the story of that hateful day back in late July |
| 1:08.4 | of 1945. |
| 1:10.7 | In the cabin sharing those fish stories was the town cop |
| 1:13.7 | played by Roy Scheider, the New Age shark hunter played by Richard Dreyfus, and the old |
| 1:19.0 | school sea captain named Quint played by Robert Shaw. The scene begins with some laughs, |
| 1:25.4 | but when Quint tells the guys he'd been a crew member of the USS Indianapolis, everything turned somber. |
| 1:32.8 | He proceeded to tell the boys one of the most brutal fish stories of all times. |
| 1:38.4 | Here's Robert Shaw. |
| 1:41.0 | 1,100 men went into the water. |
| 1:46.0 | The vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. |
| 1:51.0 | Tiger, 13 foot of. |
| 1:54.0 | Very first leg, chief, sharks come cruising. |
| 1:59.0 | So we formed ourselves into tight groups the idea was |
| 2:04.1 | shark comes the nearest man that man he started pounding and hollering and screaming |
... |
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