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Eighteen Inches Above Doom: The Strange Fate of USS Monitor
Eighteen Inches Above Doom: The Strange Fate of USS Monitor
Eighteen inches of freeboard separated the crew of USS Monitor from the Atlantic-her armored deck sat barely a yard above the waterline while she absorbed 220 direct cannon hits and then sank less than a year after changing naval warfare. How did a 179-foot floating platform with a 20-foot revolving turret and only 18 inches of margin survive battle and yet fail in peace?
In this episode, we lay out the sequence of design, secrecy, and misfortune that produced Monitor and sent her to sea against the Confederate ironclad Virginia…
The skinny
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