CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – (CLARKSVILLENOW) A very special guest speaker visited the Clarksville Rotary Club for their weekly meeting Wednesday. It was Edgar Harrell, who shared the amazing, even though tragic, story about the sinking of the U.S. Navy Cruiser, USS Indianapolis in World War II.

Harrell, who is 92-years-old, lives in Clarksville and served as a U.S. Marine in the Pacific during the war and was on board the ship when it was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea on July 30, 1945.

There was a packed house at the Clarksville Country Club to hear Harrell speak and the veteran received a standing ovation both before and after he spoke. The story of the Indianapolis involves the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy.

There were 1,197 men aboard the Indianapolis and approximately 300 went down with the ship with close to 900 going into the water and spending four days suffering from exposure, saltwater poisoning, dehydration and shark attacks.

Harrell said the ship sunk so fast no distress signal was sent out and the Navy was not aware of the Indianapolis sinking until the survivors were discovered by an aircraft on a routine patrol flight. The pilot of another aircraft, a PBY Catalina flying boat, disobeyed orders and landed near the survivors.

They were able to get 56 men out of the water and Harrell was one of them. Once the inside of the plane was full, some of the men were tied to the wings of the aircraft. Harrell said he has a buddy living in Chattanooga who was one of those men.

All total, 317 survivors of the USS Indianapolis were rescued and Harrell said of those survivors, 22 are still living today.

Harrell also shared with Rotary members another side to the story of the USS Indianapolis that is a very important part of American history. Days before the ship was sunk, it traveled from San Francisco to Tinian Island in the Pacific and transported components and enriched uranium for the atomic bomb which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6 1945.

Harrell’s story is chronicled in his book “Out of the Depths”.