Complete Civil War submarine unveiled for first time
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful combat submarine, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time on Thursday, capping a decade of careful preservation.
"No one alive has ever seen the Hunley complete. We're going to see it today," engineer John King said as a crane at a Charleston conservation laboratory slowly lifted a massive steel truss covering the top of the submarine. In the summer of 2000, an expedition led by adventurer Clive Cussler raised the Hunley and delivered it to the conservatory on Charleston's old Navy base, where it sat in a 90,000-gallon tank of fresh water to leach salt out of its iron hull.
That plan wasn't totally thought out. As a sub, ramming another ship with a depth charge, you should know the concussion is going to hurt you worse. Then again who knew what a depth charge did to a submarine in the 1860's.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
FredHayek wrote: That plan wasn't totally thought out. As a sub, ramming another ship with a depth charge, you should know the concussion is going to hurt you worse. Then again who knew what a depth charge did to a submarine in the 1860's.
The Hunley was used to plant the torpedo on the hull of the ship.
Contact: Below the waterline - as bullets bounced off its cylindrical body, the H.L. Hunley rammed her long metal spar into the stern area, planting a 135 pound torpedo into the Warship Housatonic. The men inside the Hunley lunged forward from the impact, then quickly backed their sub out as the 150-foot attached detonation rope played out. Within seconds, the world rocked and every man, above and below, became enveloped in a concussion of destruction.
