The Worst WW2 Deaths Ever

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Indianapolis Sharks. On July 30th, 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was sailing unescorted through the Philippine Sea. The ship and her crew of 1,196 men had just completed the most classified mission of the war, secretly delivering the core components of the atomic bomb Little Boy to Tinian Island.

[00:00:22]Captain Charles McVey commanded the vessel. 12 minutes after midnight, Japanese submarine I-58 fired six torpedoes. Two struck the starboard side, detonating the forward magazine and rupturing fuel tanks. The ship sank in 12 minutes, trapping 300 men below decks. Roughly 900 men made it into the water with almost no lifeboats. Because the mission was top secret, no distress signal was confirmed received. The Navy did not notice the ship was missing for four full days. Within hours, oceanic white tip and tiger sharks began circling. Over 4 and a half days, an estimated 150 men were killed by sharks, the deadliest shark attack in human history. Delirium from dehydration caused men to abandon life jackets and swim toward imagined islands. On August 2nd, Lieutenant Wilbur Gwyn spotted survivors purely by chance during a routine patrol. Rescuers pulled 316 men from the water. Approximately 879 were dead. McVey was court marshaled for hazarding his ship, received hate mail for years, and died by self-inflicted harm in 1968. Congress postumously exonerated him in 2000. The bomb his ship delivered was dropped on Hiroshima 7 days after the sinking. Chiima cannibalism. On September 2nd, 1944, nine torpedo bombers from the carrier USS Sanjasinto were shot down over Chichima Island in the Bonan chain, roughly 600 m south of Tokyo.

[00:01:51]20-year-old Lieutenant Junior Grade George Herbert Walker Bush bailed out earliest and was rescued by the submarine USS Finnbach. The other eight pilots reached the ground alive. All eight, Floyd Hall, Marv Mchon, Warren Earl Vaughn, Jimmy Dye, Grady York, Glenn Frasier, Jimmy Darden, and Donald Ross were captured, beaten, and tortured. Major General Yoshio Tachibana authorized execution by beheading and ordered the consumption of flesh. Major Souo Matoba hosted officers dinners at which human thyme and livers were cooked with soy sauce. Four of the eight, Hall, Mchon, Dy, and Vaughn, were confirmed cannibalized. No remains were ever recovered. After Japan's surrender, a military commission at Guam tried five officers. Tatibana was hanged. The story was classified for decades until journalist James Bradley published Fly Boys in 2003. Bush, who became the 41st president, did not know the full details until Bradley's research surfaced. Col's sacrifice. Father Maxmleon Maria Colbe, a Polish Franciscan frier, was arrested by the Gustapo on February 17th, 1941 and transported to Awitz. At the end of July, a prisoner from block 14 went missing. SS Deputy Commander Carl Frri ordered 10 men condemned to death by starvation in block 11's underground bunker. Polish soldier Franciscichek was selected and began weeping for his wife and children. Colbe, age 47, stepped forward and asked to take the man's place. Frri agreed. The 10 men were locked in cell 18, a windowless chamber with no food, no water, and no sanitation. Over 2 weeks, the men slowly died. Guards reported Colbeay led the survivors in prayer throughout. By August 14th, four men remained alive.

[00:03:41]Block capo Hans Bach entered with a syringe of phenol. Coobe raised his left arm and calmly presented his vein. He died at 12:50 p.m. Gaynichek survived Awitz and lived to age 93. In 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Colbe as a martyr. The escaped prisoner whose disappearance triggered the punishment was later found drowned in a camp Latrine. 10 men died for nothing. Ramry crocodiles. In early 1945, British forces captured Ramry town in Burma, cutting off approximately 1,000 Japanese soldiers. The isolated force refused to surrender and attempted an 8-mile crossing through dense mangrove swamp to rejoin their battalion. British forces sealed all exits with destroyers, strafed boats from the air, and encircled the perimeter. The swamp was a death trap of deep mud, scorpions, snakes, and disease. On the night of February 19th, saltwater crocodiles struck. These reptiles, Earth's largest, can reach 20 feet and weigh over 2,000 lb. British naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright watched from a marine launch and described screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles and the sound of spinning crocodiles in the pitch black swamp. At dawn, vultures arrived. Of approximately 1,000 soldiers who entered the mangroves, only 20 were taken prisoner alive. The Guinness Book of World Records listed it as the largest crocodile attack in recorded history. By the way, if you find this informative, I cover stories like these regularly. Consider subscribing if you'd like to see more. Thanks. Barry mustard gas. At approximately 7:30 p.m. on December 2nd, 1943, 105 German bombers swept over the port of Barry on Italy's Adriatic Coast completely unopposed. The harbor was crammed with Allied shipping. One docked vessel, the American Liberty ship SS John Harvey, carried a top secret cargo of 2,000 bombs filled with approximately 100 tons of liquid sulfur mustard. The John Harvey took a direct hit and exploded, releasing mustard agent into the harbor water and a dense vapor cloud into the air. Hundreds of sailors jumped into the water to escape burning ships.

[00:05:51]The harbor was now a lethal mixture of fuel oil and dissolved mustard. Oil drove the chemical deep into men's skin.

[00:05:57]Rescuers wrapped survivors in warm blankets, unknowingly accelerating absorption. All 81 crew members who knew about the cargo had perished, so no one could warn the doctors. Symptoms appeared hours later. mysterious blistering, blindness, and respiratory failure. Chemical warfare specialist Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Alexander identified the cause and reported it.

[00:06:18]Churchill ordered the incident classified. British medical records were altered. The truth was not acknowledged until 1986. 83 servicemen died from mustard exposure. Alexander's autopsy findings revealed that mustard selectively destroyed white blood cells, an observation that became the direct foundation for nitrogen mustard chemotherapy, one of the first cancer treatments in history. Unit 731, Vivisections. In 1936, Lieutenant General Shiro Ishi established a secret biological warfare complex in Pingfong Harbin, Manuria. Disguised as a lumberm mill, prisoners were called Maruta, meaning logs. The facility held 200 to 400 subjects at any time. No documented survivor ever emerged. Experiments included deliberate infection with plague, chalera, and anthrax. Frostbite studies, hypobaric chamber tests, and explosive fragmentation on living subjects. The most horrifying procedure was vivisection on fully conscious prisoners without anesthesia. Ishi believed anesthetic would contaminate samples. Researcher Okawa Fukumatsu later confessed on video that he vivisected a pregnant woman. As Soviet forces advanced in August 1945, Ishi ordered the facility destroyed and remaining prisoners executed.

[00:07:35]MacArthur's command granted complete immunity to all researchers in exchange for their data. Ishi died free in Tokyo in 1959. An estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people died inside the facility.

[00:07:48]Biological weapons deployed across China killed at least 200,000 more. HMS Barham explosion. On November 25th, 1941, 26-year-old German submarine commander Hans Dietrich von Tesenhausen maneuvered U331 through a British destroyer screen in the Mediterranean entirely undetected. He closed to under 750 m and fired four torpedoes at the battleship HMS Barham. Three struck amid ships on the port side. The ship immediately listed to port. All power failed. Men ran along the tilting hull trying to reach the water. 4 minutes after the torpedo strike, a magazine fire reached the main 15-in shell stores and detonated, obliterating the ship in a single blast. The entire sequence was captured on film by Path A News cameraman John Turner from the deck of HMS Valiant. It remains one of the only film destructions of a capital warship.

[00:08:42]Of roughly 1,200 men aboard, 862 were killed, including Captain Jeffrey Cook.

[00:08:48]The Admiral suppressed the sinking for weeks and instructed families to keep the news secret. Oroyoku Maru, hell ship. On December 13th, 1944, 1,619 Allied prisoners of war were loaded into three cargo holds of the Oryoku Maru in Manila Harbor. The ship carried no Red Cross markings. Hold three packed 800 men into a space with no light, no ventilation, and no sanitation. By the first night, 50 men had died of suffocation and heat stroke. On December 14th, carrier aircraft from USS Hornet attacked the convoy, unaware prisoners were below. Japanese guards refused to open the hatches. On December 15th, a second attack forced guards to order prisoners to swim ashore. Guards opened fire on some of the swimmers. Survivors were herded onto a tennis court at the naval station and left in the open sun for days. The remaining prisoners were loaded onto two more ships. On January 9th, 1945, American aircraft attacked the Anora Maru in Taiwan, killing 300 more. Across the full three ship voyage, more than 1,000 Allied prisoners died.

[00:09:57]Baton box car deaths. On April 9th, 1942, Major General Edward King surrendered 76,000 men on the Baton Peninsula. the largest surrender in American military history. The men were already starving and riddled with malaria. Japanese guards marched them north toward Camp O'Donnell, 65 to 70 miles away, in temperatures exceeding 100°. Prisoners received no food or water. Guards beat, bayonetted, and shot those who fell. After approximately 55 m, survivors arrived at San Fernando and were loaded into steel box cars. 100 men crammed into cars designed for 40. The doors were sealed. In the Philippine heat, the steel interior became an oven.

[00:10:39]Men died of suffocation and heat stroke standing upright. The dead could not fall because the living were pressed so tightly together. Captain William Das, aged 25, survived and later escaped captivity to provide the first eyewitness account. He was killed in a training crash in December 1943 at age 27. An estimated 500 Americans and up to 10,000 Filipinos died during the march at Camp O'Donnell. Thousands more perished. General Masahadu Homa was executed by firing squad on April 3rd, 1946. Every April, the Baton Memorial Death March is held at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. If you want more content like this, subscribe so you don't miss our uploads. See you next time.