Struck Down, But The Shell Never Touched Him

[NH Civil War Gal]

From FB "Civil War Medicine and Surgery"

During the siege of Battery Wagner, Captain Hansford Dade Duncan Twiggs stepped onto the parapet to observe the Union fleet. A shell exploded only a few yards away.

Twiggs collapsed "all of a heap." He could walk only with a soldier supporting each arm. His body shook violently, his head drooped onto his chest, and he soon developed repeated convulsions.

Yet Dr. Benjamin Rhett found "no mark of external injury upon him."

Twiggs recovered, but Rhett never forgot the case. In 1873, he published several examples of soldiers who suffered paralysis, convulsions, altered consciousness, and even death after nearby shell explosions, despite having no wound, bruise, or visible trauma.

Rhett struggled to explain the phenomenon. Did compressed air strike the nerves? Did the blast act directly upon the brain or spinal cord? He admitted that he did not know.

Union surgeon Dr. George Burr had reported similar cases in 1865. One officer developed paralysis after a shell exploded nearby. Another became confused, unsteady, and only partly conscious.
Burr also described an adjutant whose personality changed completely after an explosion. Once considered a courageous and dependable officer, he abandoned his regiment and was dismissed from the service. Burr was convinced that the man's behavior reflected an injured brain.

Today, these cases would raise concern for blast-induced neurotrauma (BINT). Even now, the mechanism is incompletely understood. Theories include direct transmission of the pressure wave through the skull, rapid acceleration or rotation of the head, pressure transmitted through the chest and circulation, and secondary inflammation or microscopic injury within the brain.

The science is getting closer, but Rhett and Burr had already recognized the essential fact: An explosion could injure the nervous system even when the shell never touched the soldier.

 

[bankerpapaw]

On Operation Hastings, July, 1966. a KIA was brought in that looked like he had been dipped in a barrel of blood. However, we could not find a wound anywhere.

 

[Pollaco]

Is this the "shock wave" that killed the crew of the Hunley?

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

On Operation Hastings, July, 1966. a KIA was brought in that looked like he had been dipped in a barrel of blood. However, we could not find a wound anywhere.

Could he have been killed by the blast but covered in someone else's blood?

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Is this the "shock wave" that killed the crew of the Hunley?

I think, from my visit this Spring to the Hunley, that they think the crew died from CO2 or lack of oxygen and fell asleep.

 

[RedRover]

Is this the "shock wave" that killed the crew of the Hunley?

That's one theory. There is evidence the torpedo detonated ca. 20 feet from the hull of the Hunley.

Which, if so, say some scientists, would have potentially severely injured the men inside. They suggest the hull absorbed a large shock wave, and the "secondary" communication of that into the air inside the hull likely created enough "air blast" to have really hurt them.

"Momentum transfer into a structure produces motion of that structure, and rapid initiation of motion can create a shock wave off the structure's back surface [22, 25, 26]. Transmitted blast waves have been observed computationally behind structures and experimentally measured behind armor [22, 27]. Computational simulations confirm that backface pressure response is the product of rapid motion of the structure wall in response to the original external blast, and because the motion response of the structure increases for stronger blasts, so will the magnitude of the transmitted blast [22, 25]. Such a backface wave means that, even if the original blast wave is largely reflected at the front material interface of the structure, it is possible that people behind the structure could still be injured or killed by transmitted shock from a sufficiently large charge at a sufficiently close range without overt damage to the structure."

Whole paper.

Air blast injuries killed the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley

The submarine H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship during combat; however, the cause of its sinking has been a mystery for over 150 years. The Hunley set off a 61.2 kg (135 lb) black powder torpedo at a distance less than 5 m (16 ft) off its bow. Scaled experiments were...

journals.plos.org