Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

December 2024
2min read

Lighting the Hunley

My local newspaper recently quoted Editor-in-Chief Edwin Grosvenor about his concerns that schools today were not adequately teaching the Civil War. My co-worker Fred Lutkus and I wanted to bring to his attention the work done by 12 of our students at the Hamburg Area High School in eastern Pennsylvania: over the 2009–10 school year we built four replicas of the lantern famously used aboard the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley. After sinking Union screw sloop Housatonic in 1864 to become the first sub to destroy an enemy warship, it mysteriously vanished off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Union and Confederate forces reported seeing a blue light from a lantern just before the eightman vessel sank.

Our class worked with curators at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, which houses the Hunley’s remains. Using plans and drawings provided by the center, our students spent five months building the four lanterns. We could not use the whale oil that the original lantern burned, so we developed a mixture of kerosene and paraffin oil. It was pretty exciting at the high school when we tested the lanterns and they worked. Archaeologists and conservators at the center are us ing thre e of the lanterns in their search for answers as to what caused the Hunley to sink. In 2012 the archaeologists will use two of our lanterns to reenact the signaling of the Hunley to the Confederate battery onshore, to determine if the lantern’s light can be seen from three miles offshore. The fourth lantern is at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on permanent display in its naval section.

We can tell you that our students learned an extraordinary amount about the Civil War from this hands-on project. Check out the students’ website at www.hunleylantern.com.

—Edward “Ned” Eisenhuth and Fred Lutkus
Hamburg, PA
 
 
“Real Pilots Don’t Need Wheels”
 
I enjoyed the article in the Winter 2011 edition entitled “Those Magnificent Men”—and it reminded me of the courage shown by my fellow naval aviators during the Korean War. In 1950, as a Marine reservist, I was ordered back to duty and completed flight training to become a naval aviator. I remember making the required 10 carrier landings, a nerve-wracking experience of looking down and knowing I had to land on what appeared to be a postage stamp. While many of my friends chose carrier aircraft, I signed up to fly seaplanes. 
 
A few months later, I completed my seaplane training in PBMs and flew them in Korea on our first tour. The PBMs were replaced with the P5M-1. I completed two tours in Korea, flying 84 patrols in mostly instrument conditions first as a navigator, then a pilot, and finally as a plane commander. I look back at those magnificent seaplane aviators who spent 16 to 18 airborne hours on patrols, dodging MIGs, in any weather, landing and taking off in every kind of sea condition. 
 
Today the seaplane is an antique, having been retired in 1959. However, it was for many years a vital weapon in the Navy. In fact, the first 2,500 aviators were trained in seaplanes. I think the true beginning of naval aviation was when the Navy ordered its first seaplane in 1910. After all, a seaplane is a flying boat.
 
I’ll never forget what one old, highly decorated chief petty officer aviator told me: “Real pilots don’t need wheels.” 
—Jim Cornwell
Lexington, SC

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