USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. She holds a place in time due to the notorious circumstances of her demise, which was the worst single at-sea loss of life in the history of the U.S. Navy. After delivering the first atomic bomb to be used in combat to the United States land based Tinian Island on July 26, 1945, she was in the Philippine Sea when attacked at 00:14 on July 30, 1945 by the Japanese submarine I-58. Most of the crew was lost to a combination of exposure, dehydration, and shark attacks as they waited for assistance while floating helplessly for several days. (wikipedia.org) The Indianapolis broadcast two distress calls that were received at two separate locations on Leyte, though they were dismissed in both cases as being bogus transmissions due to the Navy's protocol of the time. The subsequent delay of the rescue mission led to the loss of hundreds of sailors. About 300 of the 1,196 men on board died in the attack. The rest of the crew, 880 men, floated in the water without lifeboats until the rescue was completed four days later. 321 crew came out of the water alive, with 316 ultimately surviving. They suffered from lack of food and water, exposure to the elements, severe desquamation, and shark attacks. The Discovery Channel has stated that the Indianapolis sinking resulted in the most shark attacks on humans in history, and attributes the attacks to the oceanic whitetip shark species. The same show attributed most of the deaths on the Indianapolis to exposure, salt poisoning and thirst, with the dead being dragged off by sharks.