Sea of sharks: a sailor's World War II survival story

Caught off Okinawa in the fiercest typhoon in history at the end of World War II.

Elmer Renner, then a young officer aboard a US minesweeper, recounts the horror of his ship sinking.

Renner and eight other sailors clung to a small raft for days, battling thirst, hunger, shark attacks and, eventually, madness.

Renner and co-author Ken Birks describe the men's panic as distant ships seemingly ignore their desperate calls, the sea turning blood red when one of the men loses his life to a shark, and how another slips silently away into the unforgiving Pacific.