INTO THE JAWS OF HELL

In the final days of World War II, a US Navy crew endured unimaginable horrors when they were left stranded in the waters of the Pacific, facing hypothermia, madness and sharks. Jonny Wilkes tells the story of USS Indianapolis, and reveals how its sinking inspired a speech in a Spielberg masterpiece

- Jonney wilkes

"That's the USS  Indianapolis," mumbles Quint as he points to a scar on his arm; a tattoo he had removed a long time ago. The very name stops Hooper's laughter. The jovial mood is lost and the men's drunken, one-upping exchange of stories about their shark-inflicted wounds abandoned. A look of pained understanding now on his face, Hooper can only say: "You were on the Indianapolis?" So begins a monologue by the grizzled, briny and fanatical shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975), a chilling three and a half minutes that have gone down in cinema lore.

At the core of the scene was a real ship, a heavy cruiser sunk by the enemy in World War II after completing the most top-secret of missions. And that was just the beginning of a traumatic ordeal, the worst disaster in US naval history. While not everything said by Quint - played to perfection by Robert Shaw - was factually accurate, the scene captured the tragedy with harrowing authenticity. It got survivors who saw Steven Spielberg's movie talking about what they went through, many for the first time, and helped ensure the Indianapolis would not be forgotten.

By mid-1945, USS Indianapolis, or 'Indy' to the crew, had earned 10 battle stars serving in the Pacific Theatre, but its war looked to be over when damaged by a Japanese kamikaze fighter off Okinawa. Instead, while at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay, orders came in to transport a mystery cargo with all haste to the island of Tinian. No one, including the captain, could know what was inside the two cylindrical containers and large crate brought aboard and kept under armed guard at all times.

TORPEDO TERROR