July 30 was the anniversary of the greatest loss of life at sea from a single ship in the history of the U.S. Navy: the 1945 torpedo sinking of the USS Indianapolis in the Philippine Sea.

Hundreds died, including 37 Pennsylvanians. And one, Raymond A. Mehlbaum was from Ashland, Schuylkill County.

Volunteers from the nonprofit Stories Behind the Stars wrote memorials for the fallen, and note that Mehlbaum was born in 1915.

He married Mary Dolores Corrigan in 1942, and the couple welcomed a son in 1943. A year later, Mehlbaum joined the Navy and reported aboard the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis.

Mehlbaum and his shipmates completed delivery on July 26, 1945 of top-secret cargo to the Army Air Force Base on Tinian, which included components of Little Boy, the nuclear weapon later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

The USS Indianapolis then transferred sailors in Guam and set sail toward Leyte Island, Philippines on July 28, 1945.

At 12:15 a.m. July 30, two Type 95 torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 struck the USS Indianapolis in the bow and amidships on its starboard side. Twelve minutes later, the cruiser rolled over completely and sank by its bow. Approximately 300 crewmen went down with the ship. The remainder of the 1,196 sailors - nearly 900 - were set adrift without food or water to await rescue. Rescue did not come for four terrifying days.

Many of the survivors were injured. All suffered from dehydration because of the hot sun during the day and hypothermia at night, from continued exposure to salt water and bunker oil, and from shark attacks. It has been estimated that as many as 150 of the deaths were because of shark attacks.

Some killed themselves or other shipmates because of various states of delirium and hallucinations. Only 316 of the nearly 900 men who were set adrift after the sinking survived.

Mehlbaum was memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, and on the Tablets of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Philippines. He is listed on the USS Indianapolis National Memorial in Indianapolis, Indiana. A cenotaph was placed in his honor at Saint Ignatius Cemetery in Centralia. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

The tragedy of the USS Indianapolis had another dimension to which Pennsylvania is connected. The captain of the cruiser, Charles B. McVay, III, was a native of Ephrata, and attended school there until his family moved when he was a teenager. McVay survived the sinking and became a scapegoat for the tragedy, despite protests by the surviving USS Indianapolis crew. He became the only US ship captain to be court-martialed during World War II. Eventually, he was exonerated of all wrongdoing, but it happened decades after he took his own life.

Stories Behind the Stars memorials are accessible for free on the internet and via smartphone app at grave sites and cenotaphs. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to honoring all 421,000 fallen Americans from World War II, including 31,000 from Pennsylvania. To volunteer or for more information, contact Kathy Harmon at kharmon@storiesbehindthestars.org or visit http://www.storiesbehindthestars.org