Comments by "Kenneth Dean Miller" (@kennethdeanmiller7324) on "John Dahlgren and the Half Charge Myth - Did USS Monitor go into battle under-powered?" video.

  1. But firing a Double Charge had to be with a fairly new gun. One that had already been in use & showed signs of wear it was NOT SAFE to use the "double charge". And depending upon what your target is you were probably better off going with a 20lb charge or maybe 25lb to be on the safe side. I had a friend in high school that had found a "home made" gun that his father had made. It was basically a pipe with a nut screwed onto the back of it with a small hole drilled into it for a fuse. And a handle carved out of wood which was taped to the "barel". He had it over at my house and was using black powder & small steel marbles for ammo. After he shot it a few times, I lost interest unfortunately he didn't. He ran out of black powder and decided to open up a shot gun shell & use the powder from it. I told him not to that it wasn't safe to do that. I was right but LUCKILY for him it didn't blow up in his face. BUT the wooden handle broke propelling the top of it right back at his right eye. Luckily he didn't lose the eye either but the pipe had made a cut all the way around his eye and his eye did have some internal bleeding that ended up leaving him with a blind spot in his eye where some blood remained. With today's technology he has probably had it fixed. But also when it happened he hit himself underneath his chin with the wooden stock that was left in his hand. And that required about 8 stitches. Plus idk how many around his eye. Moral of the story, Don't keep shooting a gun that you are not confident about it firing correctly. Not a lesson you want to learn the hard way. Btw, they do still make muzzle loading rifles. And a lot of places here in the USA, depending on the state regulations allowing big game hunting, there are regular hunting seasons & it's extended both fore & aft for bow season & muzzle loaders. My step-dad Billy got a huge 8 point white tail buck in Georgia with his bow. And talking about a lucky shot, he thought he missed until he saw the blood trail. Right thru his jugular vein. He had it mounted and you could see where the arrow went through. He had it scored & it scored really high on the "Pope & Young" scale for a typical white tail. It's longest tines were 14". But not enough to be a record. He was good enough for eating though. Billy also had a muzzle loader too but he said for hunting it was quicker to grab another arrow than reload a muzzle loader. Plus if you missed it might not scare the deer away. A muzzle loader would most certainly scare the deer away. But if you hit it they pack a lot of punch. He's the one that taught me how to lead a target when it's running. You can't shoot where it is, you have to shoot where it's going to be. In South Alabama they would let dogs run the deer & go to wherever there might be a clearing they would have to cross. He said the first deer he ever got was like that. The deer was at full speed so he had to shoot with a big lead. But he said he actually saw the buck shot going thru the air to meet the deer. And it basically rolled a couple of times after it got hit. After he married my Mom he went squirrel hunting with my 22 semi-auto behind the house where we were living & ended up shooting a little "button buck" in the head 3 times. He came home saying "I got one & it's got horns about ya long" while holding up his thumb. We were like "a squirrel with horns? What do you mean?" He said "No a deer. And I need help to carry it home. Now come on." That was my introduction to deer hunting & deer meat. And he was damn good at cooking deer meat too. Billy McCormick was his name. I loved & trusted him more than my own Mom & Dad. My Mom was lucky to have him!!! He died at 49 years old. Didn't even make 50. If there really is a heaven I know he will be there. The house him & my Mom lived in from 1991 until they both passed away, Billy in 2005 & Mom in 2011, Billy & I built that house. I mixed mortar in a bathtub & he laid the block. A 16' x 32' basement & 2x that for the footings. Laid the floor & framed the walls. My brother helped me do some of the ceiling joyces but that was about all he did. I remember Billy cut down 2 pine trees & nailed 2x4's to them to make them into a ladder. Made it a lot easier getting the shingles on the roof & doing the block for the fireplace. Sorry for writing so much. Sometimes I just get inspired and text what I'm thinking about. But bigger guns scare me more than make me curious. I liked shooting a 22 rifle. They are fun to shoot. I once knew a guy that could hit a marble in the air after you had thrown it with a 22. His name was Huey King. Best marksman besides Billy that I ever knew. Oh & btw, I'd never heard of the "Half Charge Myth." And I'd never knew about a bunch of our US officials getting killed by a gun blowing up like that. And the President only surviving cause he was down below. I guess that is why they don't let our President be around stuff like that & the Vice President & Secretary of State & all our top officials can't all be together in the same place at the same time. Wow. Seems like something they would teach us in our History Classes in school but I don't remember it being taught. That is one I would have remembered. Idk, maybe I was absent that day. But I never heard about MOST OF WW2 in school either. The bombing of Pearl Harbor & the atomic weapons used on Hiroshima & Nagasaki. And then D-Day & Russia & the Allies rush to get to Berlin. History is NOT taught well in Elementary schools or high schools here in the US. I guess that's why we have college students protesting in favor of Palestinians when Palestine never really existed in the modern age. And I doubt anyone alive can say they were born in Palestine cuz it's been Israel for so long now. And it was formed because the surviving Polish needed a country. Cuz the Allies didn't want to go to war with "the Soviet Union. And when we started helping Russia that should have been agreed upon first, that Poland goes back to being Poland after the war.
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  2. Kinda like when I was a kid I caught a catfish that was as long as my arm. And after I grew up I still thought of that catfish being as long as my arm BUT my adult arms are now much longer than when I was a kid. So the catfish got bigger as I grew up. I never thought about that til now. But it made for a whopping good meal. We had caught 3 others but that one was about the same amount of food as the other 3. I never really talked about it but in my head that catfish was still as long as my arm. But I'd never thought about the fact my arm was shorter & smaller then. Funny how you don't think about things like that. The mind only sees what it wants to see. We didn't have any bait to go fishing. So we started turning over cross ties that were around the garden thinking to find some worms. No worms but we did manage to get some crickets. We caught one catfish and then 2 really small bream. And now all our crickets were gone. And I was like, well we could cut up the bream & use them for bait. And that was how I caught that catfish that was "long as my arm." Plus my brother caught a little King snake when we were turning over the cross ties. Hell, I went fishing so much back then it's difficult to remember any certain fishing trip unless something weird happened. Like, I caught an eel one time that was about 2-3 foot long. And my brother when we were really really young caught a gar. Or more commonly known as an alligator-gar. It had a long snout with spiny teeth. Scary looking thing. I've looked at pics of them on the net but none have teeth similar to the one he caught. The snout was about 6-7 inches long & there were LOTS of teeth! I'd compare them to nails that are about a half inch long real close together & way too many to count. Oh, another fishing trip we were in a boat. Had been fishing for hours & caught nothing. And we had been on a river in South Alabama Conecuh River. And had pulled into a place where the water was still, sorta like a pond on the bank & the water was clear enough that we noticed a couple of alligator-gars in there. And decided that with them in there other fish wouldn't be. And so we were just leaving & a bream came out of the water and landed in my brother lap. Scared the crap out of him. The only fish we caught all day jumped out of the water & landed in my brother's lap. True story! Swear on my mother's ashes! If I hadn't seen it I probably wouldn't believe it. I'm talking about a 16' fishing boat too. Crazy, but we figured one of those gars had gotten after him. We turned him loose. Can't make a meal out of one fish. He wasn't small for a bream but not that big either. Our neighbor down there him & his buddy would go fishing all weekend long. Seen them come home with an 8' stringer full of bream. He had a washing machine rigged with chicken wire in it. He'd put a bunch of them in it & hit spin & it would scale the fish. Redneck engenuity at it's finest! The guy he went fishing & hunting with had a farm and they had built a freezer house there. It was a big shack almost the size of a barn & he had about 8-10 freezers full of fish & deer & anything else that they had caught, trapped or killed. Wow, that was a whole lifetime ago. Seems like it was a totally different world now from then. We would go crabbing. On weekends we would all go in on about 20 lbs of shrimp or more. Bowl half & fry half. Fry a bunch of fish & boil crabs & make fries & hush puppies. And it would be like a whole neighborhood cookout. Some drinking beer some smoking weed. But everyone just having a good time together. Wow. That was over 40 almost 50 years ago. Ànd the thing about is, that's the first time I really remember being happy. My first 8 years my Dad was cheating on my Mom & they were always fighting & then they divorced but were still in the same house. And until My Mom married Billy & we moved there all I knew was violence. Or mostly. I had had a couple of girlfriends but knew little to nothing about sex. Then some of Billy's cousins started coming around trying to get him to help them do bad things. So he left & went to Atlanta where my Mom's sister lived & found a job there. Then we packed up everything and moved to Atlanta. I was at the top of my class in 4th & 5th grade. Captain of the defense on the football team. My girlfriend won Homecoming Queen for the 5th grade & we had our picture in the paper cuz I was her "escort" and then we move. And it wasn't really a long & drawn out thing. One night we packed all the stuff in a truck & was gone to Atlanta. My second day of school I go out to catch the bus & no one is out there. I had already noticed the day before that about 15 other kids caught the bus there. Mom & Billy are already gone to work & so I'm left trying to tell my Aunt something ain't right. "Just get out there and wait on the bus. Your just trying to not go to school!" And I'm like wtf!! So, like the only kid I know, I walk up to his apt & knock on the door. He comes to the door sleepy eyed & in his underwear "You didn't hear? The school burned down last night." So I go back to my Aunt's and she makes some calls & finds out that someone had burned half the school down. But us 5th graders got to spend the rest of the school year in the 2nd graders classes. While they tried to bring in trailers & do construction. And then we get our own apt & move from Smyrna to Stone Mountain. OK, now I gotta make some friends all over again. As a child in elementary school I went to five different elementary schools. But we moved nine times. We moved away from Stone Mountain & then moved back while I was in 6th grade. By this time I didn't even want to make friends anymore. Why bother? We will just have to move again. So I make it to Stone Mountain high school, in the 8th grade there you went to high school but didn't start getting points towards graduation until 9th grade. But then we move again & now I'm going to Lithonia HS. AND finally we stay there long enough for me to graduate. But I guess I did learn early in life that nothing is forever except change. No matter what, things are constantly in motion and constantly changing. Like when I married my wife, I thought I had it made. I had someone I loved & trusted. A partner til the end. And barely 8 years later she passes away. And when I first met her she was scared to get into a relationship cuz she was tired of being heart broken. And I'm talking about a woman so beautiful that at the time was very hard to find, especially one you could trust.
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  3.  @Crapartstudio  I'm fairly certain that it was black powder. But the pipe part was in tact it was the old wooden handle that broke. And then when he went to grab for his face the handle part was still in his hand and he hit himself underneath the chin with it. He needed more stitches under his chin than around his eye. Plus the only scar left around his eye was in his eye brow so you couldn't really see it a year later. But you could still see the scar under his chin. If he had wrapped the whole thing with some fresh duct tape it might not have happened. BUT the handle part was kinda thin right between the handle part and the longer part that the pipe was taped to. Idk, at the time I could tell it was an accident waiting to happen. And I told him so. And he said "Well, after this one I won't do it no more." And he was true to his word. After that one he didn't do it anymore. 😀 He was my best friend and when it happened it scared the crap outta me! At first, of course, I thought he had lost an eye. After he finally moved his hand & let me look, I was a lot less worried. But because he was under 18 we had to call his Mom so she could give permission for treatment.
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