This date in history

[Aktungbby]

One of the aspects of this thread, started 10/14/2013, was the impact of history on the poster themselves if any. For 171,278 captains: largely descended from libidinous Neanderthals who got lucky with an attractive less-than-willing Cro-Magnons, today is the Day of Days! 1864: Charleston, South Carolina harbor: the theory Works!! A submarine can sink a warship! The W L Hunly goes forth and sinks the USS Housatonic with a black powder spar charge: creating the military concept of 'offset undersea warfare against a greater surface Naval power power. Germany will expend valuable resources to the concept from 1914 to 1945 to gain Kaiser Wilhelm's' and Adolf Hitler's place in the sun and The United States will adapt the lessons learned, and carry the battle to the Japanese Empire after Pearl Harbor and willy nilly by and by a now frigid Houstononic naval enthusiast will create and vôila! here we are: in our Mancaves digesting this post! THe W.L. Hunley never returned from it's mission and thereby hangs a not so great mystery. Submarine warfare, even on its first outing, is DANGEROUS For openers, the Hunley was an unstable platform, and had killed its two previous crews during testing and development incl. the Man himself: WL Hunley. Equipped with a reduction geared cranking system and rudimentary twin-pipe schnorkel device when submerged beneath the surface. to allow air to 8 men hard at work a-crankin', a wave or passing ship's wake could send it to the bottom.. The other great mistake was : Submarine warfare is based on stealth: the Yankee fleet blocking Charleston Harbor was perfectly aware of the existence of the Hunley ie: the element of surprise was lost.

Two tragedies had now befallen the H. L. Hunley. The sinkings and visible recovery efforts that followed had created quite a stir in Charleston. It was not long before Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, the head of the Union blockading fleet, learned of the diving submarine from Confederate deserters. In response, Dahlgren ordered his blockading squadron to anchor in shallow water, hang ropes and chains over their sides as defensive measures, and deploy picket craft to keep torpedo-bearing boats away. These clever tactics were also the genesis of anti-submarine countermeasures. It wasn’t a sneak attack, CSA deserters and spies told the US about the sub and all picket ships were warned to take precautions.
Quote:
As night fell, Pickering ordered hammock netting to be deployed around Housatonic’s hull below the waterline as a measure
to foil subsurface attacks. He also ensured that the vessel could quickly slip its moorings and initiate evasive maneuvers in
the event of an enemy assault. A small detachment of sailors was placed near the shackle holding the anchor chain.
The anchor shackle was fitted with a wooden pin so it could be easily discarded, and the ship’s engines were set in reverse.
Additionally, the stokers in the boiler room maintained a steady head of 25 lb.* (11.34 kg) of steam in the boilers between
6p.m. and 6 a.m. so that the engines could be started immediately. Pickering also ordered Housatonic’s crew to maintain a
vigilant watch at all times.

THe mystery of her disappearnce contines to this day even as the restoration of the vessel is ongoing and slow.

It was originally thought that H.L. Hunley was sunk as the result of her own torpedo exploding, but some claim that she survived as long as an hour after destroying Housatonic. Support for the argument of H.L. Hunley's brief survival is a report by the commander of Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island that prearranged signals from the sub were observed, and answered; he did not say what the signal was. Further support comes from the testimony of a lookout on the sunken Housatonic, who reported seeing a "blue light" from his perch in the sunken ship's rigging. There was also a post-war claim that two "blue lights" were the prearranged signal between the sub and Fort Moultrie. "Blue light" at the time of the Civil War was a pyrotechnic signal in long use by the US Navy. Modern claims in published literature on H.L. Hunley have repeatedly and mistakenly been that the "blue light" was a blue lantern, when in fact no blue lantern was found on the recovered H.L. Hunley, and period dictionaries and military manuals confirm the 1864 use and meaning of "blue light."
This was the last time H.L. Hunley was heard from, until her recovery from the waters off Charleston, South Carolina. While returning to her naval station H.L. Hunley sank for unknown reasons. However, a team of historians managed to examine the submarine's remains, and theorized that a crewman on Housatonic was able to fire a rifle round into one of H.L. Hunley's viewing ports. A film entitled The Hunley was made about the story of H.L. Hunley and the sinking of the submarine H.L. Hunley.
New evidence announced by archaeologists in 2013 indicates that H.L. Hunley was less than 20 feet (6.1 m) away from the point of detonation – much closer than previously realized – and thus the explosion probably damaged the submarine as well as its target, although it was impossible to tell at the time due to concretion covering the hull. Later studies showed that the crew was probably instantly killed through blast injury caused by the close proximity of the torpedo.

I cannot accept this last theory.
https://www.blueandgrayeducation.org..._19-Jun-20.pdf

Flemming was 22- year-old African-American marble cutter
from Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, who had enlisted in the Navy on either June 22, 1862, or
May 14, 1863. That gave him between nine and 20 months of sea experience by the time the
Housatonic was sunk, depending upon which enlistment date is accurate. His keen eyes were
the first on his ship to detect the approaching sub (another fact), which should dispel any doubts
about his observational skills. There was no social status so low as an African- American
landsman on a U.S. warship, yet while deposed by a white superior officer in an investigation
that might have assigned him some blame for the Housatonic’s loss, Flemming was
unintimidated and offered his unsolicited comment about the blue light. I find him to be a
courageous and reliable witness.

Let us look at the testimony in its unedited form, which supports the submarine as the source of
the blue light. The examining offer asked: “Did you see this object (the submarine) at any time
after you fired at it?” Flemming answered: “I did not. When the Canadaigua got astern, and lying
athwart of the Housatonic, about four ships lengths off, while I was in the fore rigging I saw a
blue light on the water just ahead of the Canandaigua, and on the starboard quarters of the
Housatonic.” Flemming could have stopped his answer after saying “I did not,” but he added,
without being prompted, his statement about the blue light. He was obviously eager to tell the
officer that he didn’t see the sub itself, but he sure knew where it was, because its position was
marked by the blue light. He couldn’t see the sub for the same reasons he didn’t see it approach
his ship until it was too late for the Housatonic to defend itself or escape: The sub was black,
quiet, its hull barely awash, and it was over 800 feet (“four ships lengths”) from his observation
point on the sunken ship. It was a stealth vessel, invisible to Flemming even on a night brightly
lit by an almost full moon. The attack took place between approximately 8:45 and 9:00 PM. The time that the blue signal light was witnessed and answered by Battery Marshall may have been sometime around 9:30 PM, which is when a blue light was observed on the water near the assisting USS Canandaigua by Seaman Robert Flemming, who had climbed up into the rigging of the settling Housatonic

Clearly Landsman Flemming had seen the Hunley, well away from its victim, having cranked off several hundred yards from his stricken vessel. With the missing propeller shroud and propeller scoring on the remnant shroud I think the USS Canadaiuga, rushing to assist the stricken USS Housatonic, struck and forced the unstable Hunley, probably more by its passing wake, under; where, having lit an inbound candle and a blue signal lamp, simply ran out of precious oxygen (est. 2 hrs. tops for 7 crankmen! )waiting on the bottom for the inbound tide with its anchor deployed against a strong outbound tide that had been critically instrumental in carrying the sub to its target. When rediscovered, the schnorkel was not deployed.... https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1635/upload...367_-61492.pdf

In retrospect, the Confederate submersible operations, and specifically H.L. Hunley‘s successful engagement of Housatonic, had several significant effects on U.S. Navy operations. They acted as a powerful psychological warfare tool, causing fear among the squadrons, particularly within the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron following the Hunley‘s action. They caused expensive and logistically intensive modifications to Federal blockading strategies through causing heightened security in the vessels on station, requiring them to be ready to get underway at all times, and forcing them to be redeployed further offshore at night, which in the case of Charleston perhaps allowed a greater possibility for blockade runners to get through to that besieged port. Finally, they may have provided the impetus for accelerated Federal attempts to gather intelligence on such craft, conduct their own research, and develop similar weapons. But while such attempts had been underway as early as 1861, it was the H.L. Hunley‘s attack on the Housatonic that defined to the U.S. Navy the danger of the submersible torpedo craft in Southern waters, and demonstrated to the world the vast potential of the submersible vessel in future naval strategy.

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1879 Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi is awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty.

1884 General Charles Gordon arrives in Khartoum.

1901 Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the British House of Commons.

1915 Germany begins a blockade of Britain.

1916 The last German garrison in the German colony of Cameroons surrenders.

1921 British troops occupy Dublin.

1977 Space Shuttle above a Boeing 747 goes on its maiden flight.

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1910 Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is freed from her first period of forced isolation and goes on to cause several further outbreaks of typhoid in the New York area.

1914 Four-year old Charlotte May Pierstorff mailed by train from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away in most famous 'child in the post' instance.

1915 British fleet opens fire on Dardanelles coast.

1942 About 150 Japanese warplanes attack the Australian city of Darwin.

1942 FDR orders detention & internment of all west-coast Japanese-Americans.

1944 U-264 sinks off Ireland/

1945 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma.

1945 US 5th Fleet launches invasion of Iwo Jima against the Japanese with 30,000 US Marines.

1964 UK flies ½ ton of The Beatles wigs to the US

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1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has appeased Nazi Germany.

1947 Earl Mountbatten of Burma appointed as last viceroy of India to oversee the move to independence.

1947 State of Prussia ceases to exist.

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1916 Battle of Verdun begins with a German offensive, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties and becomes the longest battle of the entire war (9 months)

1917 British troopship SS Mendi sinks off Isle of Wight, 646 die.

1964 UK flies 24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper to US

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1797 The Last Invasion of Britain, launched by the French during the Revolutionary Wars, begins near Fishguard, Wales.

1825 Russia & Britain establish Alaska-Canada boundary.

1909 Great White Fleet, 1st US fleet to circle the globe, returns to Virginia.

1915 Germany begins "unrestricted" submarine war.

1940 German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing 578 (Operation Wikinger)

1942 President Franklin Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defences collapse.

1944 US Army Air Forces accidentally bomb Dutch town of Nijmegen, around 800 civilians die.

1967 25,000 US and South Vietnamese troops launch Operation Junction City against the Viet Cong. Largest US airborne assault since WWII

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1836 Alamo besieged for 13 days until March 6 by Mexican army under General Santa Anna; entire garrison eventually killed.

1942 Japanese submarine fires on oil refinery in Ellwood, California.

1945 US Marines raise American flag on top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Photo of which by Joe Rosenthall later became iconic, inspiring the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture.

1998 Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.

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1917 German plan to get Mexican help in WW I exposed (Zimmerman telegram)

1942 The "Battle of Los Angeles" takes place, a series of anti-aircraft engagements over the city in response to a rumored but false Japanese attack. It would last until the morning of the following day.

1981 Britain's Prince Charles announces engagement to Lady Diana Spencer.

2008 Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba due to ill health after nearly fifty years.

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1916 German troops conquer Fort Douaumont without firing a shot, the largest and highest fort defending the city of Verdun during World War I

1932 Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship.

1933 First genuine US aircraft carrier named, USS Ranger.

1939 First Anderson bomb shelter in Britain erected in an Islington garden.

1964 Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] wins his first world heavyweight boxing title when Sonny Liston fails to come out for round 7 at the Convention Center, Miami Beach.

1991 US, barracks in Dhahran Saudi Arabia, hit by scud missile, kills 28

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1797 Bank of England issues first £1 note.

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100 day re-conquest of France.

1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff, Belfast.

1915 Malancourt, Argonnen 1st (German) flame-thrower.

1916 Germans sink French transport ship Provence II, killing 930

1924 Trial against Hitler for treason in "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich begins.

1935 German Luftwaffe is re-formed under Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering.

1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) first demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt.

1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb.

1952 PM Winston Churchill announces Britain has its own atomic bomb.

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1933 The Reichstag, German parliament building, destroyed by fire; possibly set by the Nazis, who blame and execute Martin van der Lubbe, a Dutch Communist.

1942 Battle of Java Sea began: 13 US warships sunk and 2 Japanese.

1990 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal New Zealand Navy.

2012 Wikileaks begins disclosing 5 million emails from private intelligence company Stratfor.

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1933 On Adolf Hitler's advice, German President Paul von Hindenburg signs the Reichstag Fire Decree after the building is destroyed by fire in Berlin; this eliminates many civil liberties in Germany.

1967 A West German court rules that impostor Anna Anderson failed to prove that she was missing Russian duchess Anastasia Romanov, ending a legal case that lasted almost 30 years.

1971 A British soldier dies in Derry after his vehicle had been attacked with petrol bombs (he died as a result of inhaling chemicals from fire extinguishers that were used to put out the fire)

1995 The US Pentagon announces that it monitored Iranian installation of surface-to-air Hawk missiles in the Strait of Hormuz.

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1854 SS City of Glasgow leaves Liverpool harbour with approximately 480 passengers and crew; she was never seen again.

1913 David Beatty becomes Rear-Admiral Commanding the Royal Navy's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron.

1916 Germany begins attacking ships in the Atlantic.

1939 Japanese Imperial Army ammunition dump exploded at Hirakata, Osaka, Japan, killing 94

1941 Himmler inspects Auschwitz concentration camp.

1942 3 day Battle of Java Sea ends, US suffers a major naval defeat.

1954 US explodes Castle Bravo, a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, which accidentally became the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the US

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1836 Republic of Texas declares independence from Mexico in Columbia.

1882 Queen Victoria narrowly escapes assassination when Roderick Maclean shoots at her while boarding a train in Windsor.

1943 First transport from Westerbork Netherlands to Sobibor concentration camp.

1968 USAF displays Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, biggest plane in the world, with a cargo compartment 37m long.

1969 First test flight of the supersonic Concorde.

1974 Grand jury concludes US President Richard Nixon is involved in Watergate cover-up.

1991 US Army controversially destroys a retreating Iraqi Republican Guard column at Rumaila Oil Field, despite a ceasefire being observed.

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1917 German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admits the "Zimmermann Telegram" is genuine. Generates support for the US declaration of war on Germany in April.

1942 First combat flight for Canadian British-built Avro Lancaster bomber.

1945 Winston Churchill visits Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters.

1991 Los Angeles police officers severely beat motorist Rodney King, the beating is famously captured on amateur video and later leads to riots when the police officers are acquitted.