Fred died on July 30, 1945 when his ship the USS Indianapolis was sunk.
U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS
The sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the subsequent court-martial of its captain constitute the U.S. Navy's worst moral disaster as well as its worst sea disaster.
A Japanese submarine torpedoed the unescorted cruiser in the western Pacific Ocean on July 30, 1945, after the ship had delivered components for the Hiroshima atomic bomb to Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas.
The men initially were confident of rescue, but watched in frustration as planes passed high overhead without spotting them. For the most part, they were without food or fresh water.
Delirium set in after a day, and some men began attacking other survivors. Others died in agony after drinking sea water. Some, believing there was a spigot with fresh water several feet down, tore off life jackets and dove down, never to resurface. Still others swam toward imaginary islands or dove to underwater hotels.
For five days, survivors clung to a few life rafts or bobbed in life jackets as dehydration, exposure and swarming sharks killed hundreds.
Bodies bobbed in the water like corks, shark fins quietly slithering among them.
At first the sharks fed on the dead. Then they began attacking the 800 survivors of the torpedo attack.
The crew floated helplessly for five days, knowing that death could come at any instant. One by one, they were dragged under and ripped apart by count-less blood-frenzied sharks.
"We had no protection from the sharks; hell, half your body was in the water," Giles McCoy recalled. "I kicked them in the nose. I kicked them in the side of the head.
"You would then see their fins disappear, then turn sideways and come in at you and go to strike you."
It was scariest after dark. Each dawn the survivors counted heads to see who had made it through the night.
Despite the violence under the water, the ocean surface was remarkably quiet. Men suddenly disappeared, life jackets and all.
Rescue finally came by accident when a Navy subchaser plane flew overhead and reported the disaster. Eight hundred of the ship's 1,196 sailors and officers survived the sinking; 316 were pulled out of the water alive.
