Posted on 02/19/2020 6:23:52 PM PST by rockrr
The scientist who cracked the 150-year-old mystery of the the sinking of the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine has revealed the painstaking steps she took to demonstrate what killed its eight-man crew.
Rachel Lance, a biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist, describes her breakthrough in the forthcoming book In the Waves: My Quest to Solve The Mystery of A Civil War Submarine, due out April 7.
The Hunley was the first combat submarine to sink an enemy warship, but as soon as it succeeded in its mission targeting the USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor in 1864, it mysteriously sank with all hands lost.
The sub was raised from the ocean floor in 2000, adding to the mystery when it became clear that there was no damage to the hull itself.
While many theories have been put forward, Lance believes that the crew was killed nearly instantly by the pressure wave from their own torpedo.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I don’t post new threads that often but this article had some interesting pictures in it.
Enjoy!
Damn Rebels...
Not sure who's left on FR from the Freeper Convention in Charleston, SC back in July/August of 2001. There was a fairly large group of us who went to see the Hunley as it sat in a salt water tank at that time. It's been so long ago I don't remember why it was kept in that tank though it was before the bodies were removed from the submarine and before any scientific research was done directly on the sub itself. It was very interesting to see along with the exhibit around it. The history of the Hunley is quite fascinating, even for this damn' yankee.
I forgot the Freeper's name, but perhaps he will identify himself in this thread.
It is part of the process for preserving the metal.
How many of those people does one ever meet?
Takes a special kind of courage to crawl into a little metal tube that sank twice before.
Not many from the Jihadi Branch of that speciality.
Why wasn’t the ship considered off-limits as a graveyard? (I mean, there are German subs off the east coast that are afforded that dignity; why wouldn’t these guys have been treated the same?)
From the article...
“The experiment nearly ended in disaster
when Lance and her boyfriend were driving
with 20 pounds of black powder in the trunk of her car,
after a serious crash on the highway right in front of them.
Lance slammed on the brakes and narrowly avoided
being rear-ended by the truck behind her,
a collision that would have likely
triggered a deadly explosion.”
-
Bullshit...
Me and my wife took a trip and saw the Hunley in the tank.
I couldn’t imagine getting in that tiny craft.
Interesting and detailed article. Thanks for posting.
The test used only 20# of black powder.
How many pounds were in the copper keg used against those dang yankees?
In my late teens I worked at a boiler works as a laborer. One of the more prestigious jobs (sarc) was to chip the slag of the newly seam welded boilers. In order to gain access you had to crawl through a tiny porthole - even as a skinny teen I had to squeeze!
Then you had to reach back out and grab your air supply so you didn’t suffocate. After that you were pounding away at the weld with a pointy hammer (imagine how fun that sounded!)
I lasted all of 15 minutes before I got claustrophobia and scrambled out.
I’m in awe of those guys!
She was a remarkable vessel considering the internal combustion engine had not been invented yet. Batteries that were powerful enough to drive a propeller had not been invented yet. Many of the technologies considered essential to operate a submarine had not been invented yet.
There were reports at the time that sentries on shore had thought they spotted a blue signal light from the Hunley after the Housatonic was sunk but her scientific analysis would seem to rule that out. The crew must’ve been killed almost instantly but their own “torpedo”. At the time I doubt anybody had ever tested to see if an explosion this close underwater would be lethal. Those men who risked (and lost) their lives using such cutting edge technology would incredibly brave.
Damn the torpedoes!
Ping, FRiend! Didn’t you have some involvement in this?
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