Posted on 09/14/2011 11:54:56 PM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
While Rebel and Union soldiers still fought it out with bayonets and cannons, a Confederate designer had the foresight to imagine flying machines attacking Northern armies. He couldn't implement his vision during the war, and the plans disappeared into history, until resurfacing at a rare book dealer's shop 150 years later. Now those rediscovered designs have found their way to the auction block, providing a glimpse at how Victorian-era technology could have beat the Wright Brothers to the punch. The papers of R. Finley Hunt, a dentist with a passion for flight, describe scenarios where flying machines bombed Federal troops across Civil War battlefields. Hunt's papers are set to go up for sale at the Space and Aviation Artifacts auction during the week of Sept. 15-22...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Myth busters are a bunch o knuckleheads. They take someone’s good idea, apply their lousy engineering skills,fail,and claim it is busted
I mean... not used as a mobile airborne platform for attacking troops.
I think the Union used balloons, during the Peninsula campaign.
Hot air balloons were used for reconnaissance, little more, and weren’t very effective because they were at the mercy of the winds. This discovery (even if it had been within the capabilities of the CSA, or some part of it likely) sounds like literal pie in the sky, a lost-causer dream. The response to the Merrimac was the Monitor, and the response to these things would have been the first anti-aircraft guns. :’)
The Hunley killed far more confederates than it did yankees.
Yep, it did.
It sank repeatedly, killing 13 crewmembers total in two events before it was raised yet again and sortied to sink the Housatonic. One of those killed in those early mishaps was the inventor.
On the sortie which sank the Housatonic, only 5 yankees were killed, but the crew of eight in the Hunley was lost when the sub sank, as well as the submarine.
Considering, though this was the first time a submarine had sunk an opposting naval vessel in warfare, that was an accomplishment. Any fledgling technology will have its mishaps.
I always thought it was a grave tactical error not to pursue sinking the blockading ships in spite of the presence of the Monitor, putting that mission first and foremost, forcing the Monitor to come to those ships' defence.
The Virginia had enough guns to engage both a blockading ship and the Monitor at the same time.
It looks like some sort of radial engine, with a lighter boiler, would it have been powerful enough to get the plane off the ground? Or would it have been employed in a lighter-than-air craft?
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