Public
Chilling: neither the submarine crew nor anyone else understood that succeeding in the mission would inevitably be suicide:
> The sunken submarine was found in 1995 and raised from the bottom in 2000. Mysteriously, the skeletons of all eight of the crew were all still at their stations, with no broken bones, and the sub was in very good condition, Lance reports. [...]
> The exit hatches were closed and the bilge pumps that would have been used if the sub started to take on water were not set to pump, suggesting that the crew never tried to save themselves as the sub sank. [...]
> Unlike a modern-day torpedo, the Hunley's weapon couldn't be fired into the water and away from the sub. Instead, it was a copper keg of gunpowder attached in front of the sub by a short pole called a spar that was rammed into the enemy ship by the advancing sub, with the crew inside.
> "Their spar was only 16 feet long, so they were actually very close to the 135 pound charge, especially since the spar was at a downward angle," Lance said.
> When the charge exploded, the blast would have caused the submarine's hull to transmit a powerful, secondary shock wave into the submarine, crushing their lungs and brain and killing them instantly. Lance calculated that each crew member had only a 15 per cent chance of survival from the blast.
> The sunken submarine was found in 1995 and raised from the bottom in 2000. Mysteriously, the skeletons of all eight of the crew were all still at their stations, with no broken bones, and the sub was in very good condition, Lance reports. [...]
> The exit hatches were closed and the bilge pumps that would have been used if the sub started to take on water were not set to pump, suggesting that the crew never tried to save themselves as the sub sank. [...]
> Unlike a modern-day torpedo, the Hunley's weapon couldn't be fired into the water and away from the sub. Instead, it was a copper keg of gunpowder attached in front of the sub by a short pole called a spar that was rammed into the enemy ship by the advancing sub, with the crew inside.
> "Their spar was only 16 feet long, so they were actually very close to the 135 pound charge, especially since the spar was at a downward angle," Lance said.
> When the charge exploded, the blast would have caused the submarine's hull to transmit a powerful, secondary shock wave into the submarine, crushing their lungs and brain and killing them instantly. Lance calculated that each crew member had only a 15 per cent chance of survival from the blast.
