— 610-feet long and weighing nearly 10,000 tons — and its crew of about 1,200 were headed to help invade Japan.

Fourteen minutes after midnight, an inferno lit the night sky.

Two Japanese torpedoes hit the ship, tearing through the bow and exploding near a fuel tank and powder magazine. Power and communications were lost. The vessel started to roll starboard.

An order to abandon ship came like an echo, passing from sailor to marine to sailor.

"I made my way to that rail, and looked into the blackness of night and I thought, 'This is the end of life. Life is over,'" Harrell said. He prayed he would get home to his family in southwest Kentucky and a certain brunette who said she would wait for him.

Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes.be a foe. And there were the sharks.

"I often say it's much easier to die than to live," Harrell told FLORIDA TODAY. "You have to struggle, you have to work to live, but all you have to do in that open sea is give up and allow your head to drop into the water, which many men did."

Harrell said sharks never came for his group and only attacked if a man swam off for a phantom oasis.

The senior medical officer, Capt. Lewis Haynes, only saw one shark, but felt bumps in the dark that led him to wonder, according to a retelling of his story available online, "maybe the sharks were satisfied with the dead; they didn't have to bite the living."

Smithsonian Magazine said the ordeal was considered