![]() ![]() It is usually the result of a shock wave.” The phenomenon is called “primary blast injury,” a “strange and horrifying fluke produced by the bizarre physics of an explosion. They were not outwardly wounded they were not blown wildly across the room. After the devastating firebombing of Dresden in World War II, victims in bomb shelters and basements were found to have died without moving, without signs of struggle, often still seated in their chairs. Similar symptoms had appeared in other circumstances. “It was implausible that the crew would have stayed peaceful and quiet for this length of time during such symptoms.” As causes of death, the theories of suffocation or asphyxiation were eliminated. It became apparent that the crew would have suffered increasingly difficult, panicky breathing and sharp headaches for 30 to 60 minutes before becoming incapacitated by lack of oxygen and increasing carbon dioxide. Lance created a three-dimensional, volumetric computer model to calculate oxygen levels in the sealed submarine. It’s a lot of any kind of explosive.” The designers believed that the explosion recoil would push Hunley back out of danger. The explosive charge, 135 pounds of black powder in a copper container, was firmly affixed at the spar end 16 feet forward of the bow at a down angle of 45 degrees. CSS Hunley schematic (Smithsonian March 2020) Illustration by Matthew TwomblyĪ period schematic of the claustrophobic iron tube showed seven men sitting in a row hunched over the large crank that turned the propeller with the captain seated just forward, his head in the tiny conning tower. Then she was asked to apply injury computer models to Hunley’s men. Most of their study cases were World War II sailors in the water gruesomely hit by subsurface explosions. Navy building underwater breathing systems. ![]() She also had been a civilian engineer for the U.S. Something that left no trace on the boat or their bones.”Īs a PhD student in biomedical engineering at Duke University, Rachel Lance researched injury biomechanics-the various mechanisms by which human beings are injured and killed-with a focus on explosions. In all these circumstances, the men would not so calmly have accepted imminent death, but no one attempted to escape. Theories posited that Hunley sank with the crew inside either because the torpedo explosion breached the submarine’s hull, or a lucky shot from Housatonic struck, or she collided with another object. Each man was still seated peacefully at his station.” This was against all human instinct. “The crew of the Hunley, however, looked quite different. They expected to find two officers and six crewmen horrifyingly bunched at the hatches attempting to escape or huddled together in the agony of drowning, suffocating, or asphyxiating-as seen in modern submarine sinkings. In 2000, the recovered submarine rested in a huge, custom-built water tank as “archaeologists clad in protective coveralls and wearing respirators sorted patiently through the muck and silt that had slowly filled the hull of the submarine as it lay on the bottom of the ocean floor.” USS Housatonic (Naval History and Heritage Command) The force of the blast rippled through the entire ship, and even the sailors at the bow nearly 200 feet away instantly understood that their vessel would soon be on the ocean floor.” And so would Hunley. The submarine had hit its target, punching a lethal blow through the boat’s underbelly. A spray of shattered wood planks burst upward from the deck of the ship. “As the black powder exploded, the copper casing ripped open, releasing the fearsome pressures of explosive black powder into the water and against the wooden hull of the Housatonic. The author describes the dramatic events of Hunley’s attack. The article is from her new book on the subject published in April this year, which has received excellent reviews. One of the mysteries-how the crew died-was addressed by a fascinating article in the March 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazine by Rachel Lance. The submarine’s remains are on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, the subject of continuing research seeking to understand what happened to her. (See ECW post “ Making Naval History: The CSS Hunley.”) Hunley promptly disappeared with all hands not to be rediscovered until 1995 and raised from the harbor bottom in 2000. On February 17, 1864, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley became the first combat submarine to sink a warship when she snuck up on and rammed her spar torpedo into the hull of the screw sloop-of-war USS Housatonic outside Charleston Harbor. ![]()
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