By Alexandra Write On a late July night during World War II, in
the blackness of the Philippine Sea, a Japanese submarine
happened to spot the cruiser USS Indianapolis backlit by the
rising moon. The submarine fired six torpedoes, two of which
struck the Indianapolis. Within minutes, the ship was on its way
to the bottom of the ocean, with 300 men dead and 900 more
spewed into the shark-infested water. No one came to their
rescue. By five days later, when help finally arrived after an
airplane spotted some men by chance, nearly 600 of the initial
survivors had drowned, died of exposure, or been eaten by
sharks. Now scientists say the 1945 tragedy - the U.S. Navy’s
worst disaster at sea - may have been caused in part by the moon
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Researcher Donald
Olson has done some forensic astronomy on that moment, and his
findings help clarify what happened that night. The Japanese
submarine, the Indianapolis and the moon, he says, were roughly
lined up at the moment of sighting.