INDIANAPOLIS -- The USS Indianapolis sank 71 years ago Saturday, but the search for the ship hasn't ended.
According to the United States Naval Institute's news service, researchers found a new lead, which could end up pointing to the ship.
Researcher Richard Hulver found a log from a different ship, the USS LST-779. The LST-779 passed the USS Indianapolis just 11 hours before it was hit and sunk by a Japanese submarine.
“The deck logs make it possible to better understand exactly what natural circumstances Indianapolis encountered— new data that can help researchers better determine where Indianapolis would have been when torpedoed and how survivors in the water would have been at the mercy of the movement of the sea," Hulver wrote in an analysispublished by the Naval History and Heritage Command.
National Geographic is mounting an expedition to try and find the ship, which will take place in spring of 2017.
According to Hulver, the previous trips to try and find the USS Indianapolis -- most recently in 2001 and 2005 -- failed because people were looking in the wrong place.
The USS Indianapolis sank a few days before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ship was hit by two Japanese torpedoes and sank in minutes.
If surviving the blast and the sinking wasn't enough, sharks began to attack the sailors in the water.
A movie was made about the ship, called "USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage."
