How eight crew members on board the Confederate H.L. Hunley submarine were killed by their OWN torpedo after they sunk a Union warship in 1864

Daily Mail ^ | February 19, 2020 | Keith Griffith

[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.

[Tallguy]

Takes a special kind of courage to crawl into a little metal tube that sank twice before.

The Hunley crew lost on the combat mission sailed with the knowledge that their vessel had already claimed the lives of 2 other crews. Incredible bravery.

[rlmorel]

"...Left my dolphins on Lt. Dixon’s grave..."

THAT is a great gesture, FRiend.

And thanks for serving.

Funny, my wife asked me out of the blue the other day (I don't know why) if I would have wanted to serve on a submarine, and without any hesitation I said "Oh, God no!" but then quickly added "I could do it, but never had even the slightest inclination or desire. I think those people who do it really start out with that, and that's important."

I have always had a great deal of respect for men who serve in the submarine force.

[Tallguy]

The jury is still out on that one:

Our SCUBA club had a presentation last year by a forensic pathologist who ran some experiments on the crew remains. He was specifically looking for signs of CO2 buildup in their body tissues. His tests were inconclusive but tissue samples were preserved in such a way as to permit future testing by other researchers. I guess at some date — possibly very soon — we will have a conclusive answer as to whether it was the explosion or CO2 poisoning as the primary cause of death.

[rlmorel]

My guess it it would be two-fold: First, they are our sailors (Americans) so we can raise them and inter them if it is practical, as we normally try to do if it is possible.

If they are sailors of another country, we generally would not do that. There are exceptions, such as the case of the raising of the Soviet submarine K-129 in Project Azorian, and we gave the remains of the Soviet submariners we recovered in the wreckage a burial at sea with full and formal military honors, videotaped it, and sent it to the Soviets. I am told that while the raising of the sub raised communist hackles a great deal (understandably, but they would have done the same if they could have gotten their hands on one of our sub wrecks) the formal services rendered the remains generated a great amount of goodwill.

Of course it isn’t always possible to recover remains of our KIA, and the bodies that remained entombed inside the USS Arizona are a good example of that.

Secondly, The Hunley is a significant historical wreck, not just any wreck. Pretty much the first “real” submarine. I can see how it would be treated a bit differently.

[rlmorel]

I have always found it eerie to hear of the discovery of human remains in shipwrecks.

One of the most poignant to me was in the search for the wreck of the Bismark, they found an area nearby where there was a circle of boots and pieces of metal all resting on the ocean floor.

Apparently, the german surviors from the sinking of the Bismark had fastened themselves together with clips on their lifejackets, all died of exposure, then slowly sank to the bottom of the ocean which removed traces of everything except those metal clips and the leather boots.

My God. Can you imagine being the person to see that on the video screen for the first time?

[Captain Walker]

My guess it it would be two-fold: First, they are our sailors (Americans) so we can raise them and inter them if it is practical, as we normally try to do if it is possible.

That's a good point.

[Captain Walker]

A friend dived on the wreck of the USS San Diego off Fire Island; the ship had been torpedoed by a German sub in 1918. Almost everyone survived, but the sailors still took off their shoes before abandoning the ship, and pairs of leather shoes are still found on the ocean floor around the ship.

Apparently leather just doesn't degrade at any noticeable rate.

[Redleg Duke]

My knowledge is from non-politically correct history books, but I believe the attack profile was to ram the keg into the target ship, causing a point on the keg to impale the ship. Then the Hunley wss to back away from the target ship to a distance of some 100-yards, the length of the tigger lanyard, where upon, the warhead (keg) would detonate.

Apparently, the lanyard was tangled and detonated the warhead while the Hunley had just started to back away.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy!” Von Moltke the Elder.

[Dacula]

https://imgur.com/gallery/6mgk50F

[75thOVI]

My wife forwarded me that cartoon not long ago. It brought to mind the fine brown fog rolling across the deck in berthing after Mexican Night on the mess decks. May we have a moment of silence for the poor bastages in the lower bunks.

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "Lance believes that the crew was killed nearly instantly by the pressure wave from their own torpedo."

taxcontrol: "Takes a special kind of courage to crawl into a little metal tube that sank twice before."

Tailguy: "The Hunley crew lost on the combat mission sailed with the knowledge that their vessel had already claimed the lives of 2 other crews.
Incredible bravery."

rimorel: "I have always had a great deal of respect for men who serve in the submarine force."

Submariner duty was always very dangerous:

"During World War II, the U.S. Navy's submarine service suffered the highest casualty percentage of all the American armed forces, losing one in five submariners.[3]
Some 16,000 submariners served during the war, of whom 375 officers and 3131 enlisted men were killed.[4] "

The US lost 52 submarines during WWII and, by my count, 67 total since the Brits sank the Turtle in October 1776.
Sadly, at least a dozen of those were accidental collisions, foundering, friendly fire and up to four were sunk by our own torpedoes circling around!

The CSS Hunley's contemporary & similar design, the USS Alligator foundered & sank in 1863 without having done damage to anyone but itself.
As best I can tell, the first US Navy submarine to sink an enemy ship was US Gudgeon, which sank a Japanese submarine in January 1942.

USS Alligator, foundered & sank in 1863 off Cape Hatteras, about 200 miles from the Hunley.

[Tallguy]

Interesting.

[75thOVI]

When I was about 5 or so, I had a Little Golden Book about submarines. It had the dolphin insignia inside the front and back covers. I had no idea at all what they meant, but I knew I wanted them. Growing up, the crew of the Hunley, Gunther Prien, and Mush Morton were my heroes. My experience has been that Bubbleheads of all stripes are just a little bit “Weird”.

[rlmorel]

LOL, I am not a Bubblehead, but I know who both of those guys were!

I’ll bet you appreciate Das Boot too!

[windcliff]

ping

[TXnMA]

FReepMail for you -- and a regular e-mail, as well...

TXnMA
  

[TXnMA]

"The researchers found the coin with the indention that saved Lt. Dixon's life at Shiloh on his body inside the Hunley. That in itself was quite remarkable."

Yep!

TXnMA
  

[75thOVI]

Went to se Das Boot in Norfolk. Most of the audience were Bubbleheads. I think it was entirely inappropriate when the theater erupted in cheers when the tanker got torpedoed. Don’t care, cheered right along with them. There really are only two kinds of ships, Submarines and Targets. We were wandering aimlessly about the Arabian Sea one time. Came to PD, and just within sight of our scope, was more tanker tonnage than the entire US Navy sank during WWII. The captain had to go have a lie down. Muttering, “Just ONE! They wont miss just ONE! I only want ONE!”

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

In the TV movie “The Hunley” (1999) Lt. Dixon was given the coin by his wife. He was never married. In the movie he had visions of her ghost in the movie. His real girlfriend Queenie Bennett died in 1871. She gave him the coin.

[rlmorel]

I understand completely the concept that makes a soldier cheer at the destruction of an enemy...I saw a video a while back of a bunch of Marines in Iraq (during the Fallujah campaign, maybe) who were all huddled behind a berm calling in an airstrike on a house with a bunch of jihadis in it.

When the JDAM came down and blew the buildings to smithereens, you would have thought they were at a football game, they were jumping around, whooping, hollering, and giving high fives. Some people were horrified by that, but...I think I understand it. They looked and sounded like they were 19 year old guys.

And I can see a sub crew going bonkers when they hit an enemy ship.

I forget where I read it, though, about a UBoat that sank a ship and the crew cheered wildly, but as the ship began to go down, they could hear the screeching and screaming of the metal as it rent, twisted and broke...they could hear the compartments imploding and the bulkheads collapsing and pancaking onto each other, the death throes of the doomed ship, seeming to scream horribly in pain as it began to descend. The person describing it in the book said that after the initial jubilation wore off, almost at the same time, every man could envision himself in that sinking ship, trapped, going to their imminent death only seconds away, and it was clear they were all thinking the same thing, and it wasn’t jubilation any more. It was the reflection that they had to do it, but it could just as well be them taking that terrible ride to the bottom. He said you could see it on the face of every man.

I suspect you probably get that.

There is a famous quote by then Captain John Woodward Philip of the cruiser USS Marblehead after they pounded the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya during the Spanish American War and it was aflame from stem to stern, upon hearing his men cheering wildly he was hear to say “Don’t cheer, boys. The poor devils are dying.”

I get that too, though I believe I would initially cheer pretty wildly.