Posted on 12/17/2019 12:40:01 AM PST by Swordmaker
But the technology wasn’t quite ready for Robert E. Lee’s air cavalry
It’s the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and Union forces on Cemetery Ridge await the final Confederate assault. But instead of witnessing serried ranks of rebels marching across a mile of open ground into the maws of Yankee cannons, the bluecoat regiments are shocked to hear the thud of rotor blades.
It is the the sound of Confederate general George Pickett’s 13,000-strong division landing behind Union lines.
Is this a neo-Confederate dream? The Red Badge of Courage meets Apocalypse Now?
No, it turns out that a Confederate engineer actually did design a helicopter back in 1862.
William C. Powers was an architectural engineer in Mobile, Alabama. Frustrated by the Union blockade of Mobile and other Southern ports, which prevented the Confederacy from exporting cotton and importing weapons, Powers resolved to devise a way to destroy Union ships.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
It’s odd because the South was utterly crushed in patents and new technology by the North, especially before the war. During the war, northerners invented (thanks to Dr. Richard Gatling) the Gatling Gun; then the Parrott Gun, the Dahlgren Gun; had a much more advanced submersible than the “Hunley” in the “Intelligent Whale,” had the Sharps breechloader (before the war) and the Spencer repeater in 1862, not to mention countless innovations in railroad technology; the first steam-powered ironclad in history with a revolving turret; and so on.
They also had a somewhat successful submarine, the Hunley which is credited with the first sinking of a ship (USS Housatonic) by a sub.
Unfortunately for the Hunley they didn't realize the effect the explosion would have on the sub. It is speculated the entire crew was killed instantly by the concussion. When the sub was raised in 2000 all hands were still at their stations. What sunk the Hunley
Kinda like all the "flying cars" (people carrying drones) many say are "just a few years away". In reality, they're just a few years from dying on the front steps of the FAA building in DC.
...we might still have a republic?
...we might still have a republic?
Before their fall, apparently Rome was close to developing a rudimentary steam engine. That would have been interesting.
The Confederate submarine H.L.Hunley did manage to sink the Union vessel Housatonic. Hunley itself sank more than once while in service—submarines are tricky in that way. It is a fine line between doing it on demand, or just because!
It just has to go by the F-4 Phantom rule: if you put a big enough motor on it, it can fly.
Well, there's your problem right there.
But the CH-47 Chinook proves even a building can fly with generous applications of T55 turboprops.
Humanity lost eight-hundred years of advancement to the Dark Age, from the fall of Rome, until the Renaissance began within Italy.
Hunley sank twice before it’s sole successful mission.
Hunley was hand powered. Was the Confederacy going to build a hand powered helicopter too.
you mean a cast iron steam engine and boiler would not have worked?
Always annoying when I read that. People always leave out the fact that the Union had 4 to 5 times the population to call upon for soldiers than did the South, and that doesn't include all the newly arriving Irish pressed into service by the Union.
Manpower wins infantry engagements. The North had manpower, the South did not.
Equal manpower resources, and the South would have won quickly and decisively.
There was a German or Austrian noble who had been pulling manned gliders behind a motor boat for quite awhile before the Wright Brothers. He contracted with a German or Austrian engine company to build a gasoline engine to his specifications to power his glider.
When the engine arrived, it was grossly overweight, and could not produce enough power to compensate. Had they built the engine to his specs, he would have been the first to fly a self powered heavier than air machine.
Didn’t some Greek guy have the steam engine idea?
Hero of Alexandria
That article doesn't actually cover the cause of the sinking of the Hunley. There is a freeper here that actually worked on the project, (I forget his name.) and he has made it clear what sunk the Hunley a year or so before they released their official statement on the matter.
That "torpedo" was not lanyard activated. It was contact activated, and the Hunley was using a 20 foot long iron pole to supposedly keep the submarine at a safe distance during the explosion.
What no one knew at the time was that the force traveling down the iron pole would kill them merely from the shock. The instantaneous shock jelled their brains and they all died in the explosion.
That you are perpetually annoyed is a given...
It's a function of seeing people repeat so many lies without any concern for getting it right.
Yes, they constantly do that.
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