One of my favorite stories of the Civil War. Built like a sardine can, with a crank for forwards and backwards. Crew of 8. Sunk the first time, 5 dead. Fished it back out, fixed it, sunk again, killing the next 8 (including the namesake and inventor of the submarine). Fished it out for the third time, managed to make it work. They piloted it towards the ship that it was after, aiming for the hull. The goal was to spear the ship with a long rod with an explosive charge on the end, pulling away, and detonating it to sink the ship. They made contact, successfully attaching the spar. As far as I remember, they couldn’t back off, being stuck on the ship, so they elected to detonate it. Unfortunately for them, the blast was powerful enough to instantly kill the crew of the Hunley from the pressure waves due to the short length of the spear. The ship they attacked was sunk, but the total casualties from the Hunley’s saga were greater than any Union loss from it.
Please correct me if I missed anything, it’s been a hot minute since I went through this story.
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One of my favorite stories of the Civil War. Built like a sardine can, with a crank for forwards and backwards. Crew of 8. Sunk the first time, 5 dead. Fished it back out, fixed it, sunk again, killing the next 8 (including the namesake and inventor of the submarine). Fished it out for the third time, managed to make it work. They piloted it towards the ship that it was after, aiming for the hull. The goal was to spear the ship with a long rod with an explosive charge on the end, pulling away, and detonating it to sink the ship. They made contact, successfully attaching the spar. As far as I remember, they couldn’t back off, being stuck on the ship, so they elected to detonate it. Unfortunately for them, the blast was powerful enough to instantly kill the crew of the Hunley from the pressure waves due to the short length of the spear. The ship they attacked was sunk, but the total casualties from the Hunley’s saga were greater than any Union loss from it.
Please correct me if I missed anything, it’s been a hot minute since I went through this story.
Looney-Tunes ass suicide boat lmao