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Comment by zardo | Hacker News Reader

The first submarine that sunk an enemy ship (h.l. Hunley) was a suicide torpedo with a crew of 8.

The Hunley was not a suicide torpedo. It was a new and highly dangerous submarine. The crew died shortly after sinking the Union’s Housatonic, but their death was accidental rather than a necessary part of the attack method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine)

IIRC, things may have gone according to plan. That is the suicide was accidental, but it was designed in. They didn't understand that shockwaves would travel further underwater and getting to safety may not have been possible.

That's frightening, first crew drowns in it, so they raise it off the seabed, clean out the bodies and send in another crew who also drown. Then they raise it again for a third crew to take over. At this stage I'd be like "mister, thanks but no thanks".

Note that the second crew to drown included the inventor of the submarine, H. L. Hunley himself. And they still tried a third time...

He's listed on wikipedia's page for inventors killed by their own inventions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_th...

(Also they named the submarine after him after he was killed by it. Kind of morbid.)

Not intentionally.

My recollection from Cussler's version of the story was that the detachable torpedo on their bow (the idea was to ram a pointy torpedo on the bow of the sub into the enemy ship, detach, then it blows up on a delay so the sub could escape, IIRC) got stuck and didn't detach properly.

All that's known for sure (since it was found and raised a few years ago) is that it was close enough to the explosion for the shockwave to kill the crew, but far enough away to not damage the sub itself.

Historically, torpedoes were bombs on the end of sticks that you'd ram the enemy with, but these were generally not intended to be suicide weapons (the stick was for safety.) Self-propelled torpedoes came later, and the original bomb-on-a-stick sort of torpedo may now be called "spar torpedoes."

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