re: WWII: Would You Choose the Pacific or Europe?

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It happened to the USS Indianapolis right after she delivered the A-Bomb to Tinian.

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In a 2007 Press-Register interview, Bell recalled being a seaman first-class aboard the Indianapolis when the heavy cruiser was struck on the bow by a Japanese torpedo: "Sunday night, just a few minutes after midnight, there was a loud explosion. That was the first thing we knew about a submarine."

A second torpedo smashed into the ammunition supply.

With its 1,197 crewmen and officers, the Indianapolis -- which had transported the first atomic bomb to the U.S. airbase at Tinian Island -- sank in about 12 minutes.

The next five days, as Bell explained, were a nightmare, with men dying from drowning, exposure and shark attacks.

Only 321 would be pulled out alive.

Bell told of men going "out of their head" -- some who tried to drink the seawater thinking it, in their delusions, to be fresh water, others who floated off alone. "I swam out 20 to 30 feet and got ahold of one man and brought him back in. A shark could have got me," he said.

Bell had not talked openly about the horror until 35 or 40 years after returning home.

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