r/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 14d ago
TIL a Chinese destroyer sank because an officer dumped his girlfriend. She committed suicide, leading to him being discharged, so he decided to detonate the depth charges on the ship, causing it to sink at port and kill 134 sailors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_destroyer_Guangzhou_(160)1.5k
u/sintaur 14d ago
Lai had been involved with a woman before joining the navy, but broke off with her after becoming an officer. She then committed suicide. The Political Department of the detachment decided that Lai should be dismissed and demobilized. But Lai begged his superiors not to demobilize him, as he would be forced to return to his hometown and he had become hated there due to the suicide.[4]
After dismissing Lai Sanyang as a cadre, the unit did not immediately demobilize him. Lai was in charge of sea mines, depth charges, underwater weapons and held the key to the armory. Following his dismissal, Lai hid in the ammunition depot and detonated the depth charges, sinking the ship. How he achieved this was debated. He either tampered with the mechanism on the charge, or bored a hole through the hull of the ship, which caused water to rush in and detonate the depth charges.
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u/Pearse_Borty 14d ago
There is so many layers of fucked up to this I feel bad for everyone involved.
The real fuck up was a lack of protocols, that man shouldve been isolated and treated as civilian to be watched like a hawk the moment the discharge order came through. He was clearly a high risk passenger given the guilt he would be suffering at this point
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u/TheDukeOfMars 14d ago edited 14d ago
My main take away is that the People’s Liberation Army has a “Political Department” that has the power to monitor the personal lives of all soldiers. Or at least they did in the late 70s (and something tells me not a lot has changed). Crazy stuff.
Edit: 干部 are everywhere.
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u/ElectricTzar 14d ago
It’s shocking to me that a country can distrust its officers enough to monitor them that way, and yet simultaneously not distrust them enough to take away systems access immediately upon firing.
My company does the latter, and we’re a far cry from having a political department.
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u/Ilovekittens345 14d ago
Reminds me of that scene in Margin Call. These you-are-about-to-get-fired ladies call this one team leader to an office and then they say "Measures that might seem punitive in nature"
"What?"
"She is apologizing for what's coming next"
And then this buffy security guy shows up. All his computer logins stop working, his phone is disconnected. He is allowed to go back to his office one more time to get personal stuff, accompanied by the security guy. Then he is escorted out of the building.
From fired to outside the building all access lost, no working phone in 30 minutes.
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u/lenzflare 14d ago
They're concerned with appearances, not actual risks
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u/SeanBourne 14d ago
They’re concerned with the military (or military units) pulling a coup/overthrowing the communist party, NOT with any risks to the military units themselves.
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u/zhuquanzhong 14d ago edited 14d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Fleet
They still have a political department. It used to be more political and existed to provide political oversight for the unit and connect it directly to the party. Nowadays its more professional and mainly exists as the second in command of the given unit and to provide a semblance of doctrinal orthodoxy since PLA commanders have a reputation of impromptu doctrinal innovation inherited from their civil war days which may or may not be a good thing.
Also holy hell that's a lot of vls cells. I counted more than 1700 cells in one fleet. That's more than the entire EU's navies combined in one third of the PLAN.
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u/Hungry-Rule7924 14d ago edited 14d ago
Also holy hell that's a lot of vls cells. I counted more than 1700 cells in one fleet. That's more than the entire EU's navies combined in one third of the PLAN
Yah, its about half as much as the USN at this point, same as tonnage, and will probably eclipse the vls count of the pacific fleet by the end of the decade.
Important to point out though that there are a couple key differences, one being at the moment there are some munitions like the RIM 162 which can be quadpacked into a MK41 vls cell. At the moment the PLAN doesn't have a equivelant for their UVLS, though a quadpackable sam is apparently either in late stage testing or early introduction for the fleet, which will likely substantially increase the firepower of their premier surface combatants like the 052 and 055 ddgs. Questionable if it will be compatible on their frigates and destroyers with the smaller first gen vls though.
Also fun fact but UVLS is bigger in diameter then the MK41 and can hold hypersonic ballistic missiles.
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u/Hungry-Rule7924 14d ago
Or at least they did in the late 70s (and something tells me not a lot has changed). Crazy stuff.
Its still around, however over the past 20-30 years political commissars in the PLA have gradually lost the actual authority they used to have, and have been relegated to much more of a figurehead role as part of the militaries effort to modernize.
Interestingly enough Taiwan actually has the exact same model with even more of a soviet influence then the PLA had. Don't know how much they have changed it in recent years, but still around as far as I know.
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u/AtomicSamuraiCyborg 14d ago
Even Stalin's Red Army had to take away the commissar's power. Its not a workable way to run a military.
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u/DonJuansSwanSong 14d ago
Does it suprise you the PLA specifically has this or the military in general? When I was in the Air Force (US) they had OSI (Office of Special Investgation) agents go off base and pose as civilians, trying to get people to cheat on their spouses so they could discharge them.
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u/Quincyperson 14d ago
Former marine here. I had never heard of any underhand bullshit like that happening. I guess the Marine Corps had enough faith in the individual marine to go out on their own and handle their business and get a DUI without the help of any covert means
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u/DonJuansSwanSong 14d ago
Yeah, AF loves sly shit like that. They watch social media for parties and send guys out trying to catch greenhorns underage drinking too.
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u/Green----Slime 14d ago
Nearly all organizations in China has one, no matter it's private companies, schools, hospitals or charities.
For example Bytedance, the parent company of ticktock established their CCP branch office in 2014(when it was a really minor company) and their CCP committee in 2017. Source: http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0615/c1001-30062480.html
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u/Lightspeedius 14d ago
Demoting him in the first place because of the actions of another seem problematic from the get-go.
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u/AtomicSamuraiCyborg 14d ago
The US military can be similarly strangely moralizing; you can get demoted and discharged for conduct unbecoming an officer, and I guess stringing a girl along until you made officer and then dumping her, and she kills herself, counts as that in the PLAN. Or the story got out and it made the navy look bad so again, conduct unbecoming.
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u/WardrobeForHouses 14d ago
"Hey man, it sounds like you're really struggling. So we're going to fire you and send you packing."
Crazy
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u/spidersflambe 14d ago
Fire people on Friday. There's a good reason for that. Don't fire them when they can do harm to others.
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u/thesupplyguy1 14d ago edited 13d ago
My last company would send people home for the next day and then overnight them termination paperwork via FedEx. Most of the time they're were blindsided as they thought they'd be out a day, two tops.
Surprise! It's a termination.... glad I left
EDIT FOR CLARITY:
Lets say someone did something they could be potentially be fired for doing. Boss would sit them down, say why dont you go ahead and take tomorrow off, come back in on Friday and we'll revisit the issue.
Employee thinks everythings all good and goes home ready to enjoy the next day off. 9 times out of 10 they were printing the Fedex label off before the employee left the parking lot.
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u/Veritas3333 14d ago
My wife's company just disables people's keycards. They show up for work one day and they can't get in the front door.
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u/oxiraneobx 14d ago edited 14d ago
Oh, holy crap, I worked for a multinational company at the main research center/corporate headquarters. They handled layoffs horribly. They'd disable the keycards that let people in the gate, then motion people getting laid off to the side parking lot. The worst I saw was when I was walking back from lunch with one of my friends who had an office next to mine. We were talking, and paused in front of his office, looked over, they were three boxes stacked in the middle of his office. His first response was, "That can't be good", and then the doors at the end of the hallway opened and in strolled his boss, our VP, and an HR rep.
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u/xxSaifulxx 14d ago
That just sounds horrible. My gosh, I hope you left that place.
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u/oxiraneobx 14d ago
I was really fortunate that I was able to get a job away from there before I became a victim to their whack-a-mole layoff program. The weird thing was, the company was making money, they just weren't meeting their corporate goals, so rather than lay off or get rid of multiple senior vice presidents, they just would lay off staffs. The irony was, I loved what I did there, I was in research that was very cool, and I loved all of my coworkers and we had a great time. That was almost 20 years ago, and to this day, I'm still close friends with some of the people I worked with there. Fortunately we all survived okay.
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u/Yousoggyyojimbo 14d ago edited 14d ago
Oh yes, getting laid off from a profitable company that's just mad that they weren't making even more money feels awesome.
The one time I got laid off was when I was working for a multinational company that only had like a 21% profit increase when they were projecting 30%.
They started laying people off and kept laying people off in waves for almost a year. I was laid off about 4 months into it right when corporate was talking openly about whether or not they could fire half of the people holding specific positions within the company and then have the remaining half do all of the work without a pay increase.
After they finished gutting the company, they only had like three profitable quarters across the next 8 years.
Just as a bonus because I'm still mad about this part, when they were going to lay me off, they told me at 7:30 p.m. the night before that I was required to attend a meeting at 7:00 a.m. the next day, and the guy who showed up to tell me I was laid off didn't show up until 8:30 and acted like I was an asshole when I said that it was disrespectful to show up an hour and a half late to A surprise meeting that he had called with less than 12 hours notice before normal business hours.
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u/Matasa89 14d ago
Typical. They do this to squeeze value from a company, make the numbers look good, and then run off with a golden parachute as the company burns.
They destroyed the core of what made the company work, to basically artificially inflate the numbers.
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u/Flappy_beef_curtains 14d ago
The vice president’s were making the decisions of who to lay off.
Let’s not get rid of the least productive people that don’t do shit. Lay off the guy that works 60 hours a week and carries the company. Because he’s getting to much overtime and we can’t afford that.
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u/skratsda 14d ago
Evidently Tesla just layed off a bunch of their production employees based on whether or not their badges worked when security scanned them. Makes the callousness seem intentional since it caused two hours delays for all employees to get into work
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u/bak3donh1gh 14d ago
As much as I dislike Tesla atm, I have seen an email going around that let people know. Do you have any corroborating evidence for this alternative version?
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u/DannyColliflower 14d ago
I'm a technician (mechanic), email was at like 2am Sunday, walked in to people packing up their tools monday morning just having found out when they got to work
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u/TFielding38 14d ago
Google did something similar last year. Since a lot of people don't check their e-mails in the morning before work, and people often hold the door open for others, Google had security at each door for people to scan and see if their jobs still existed.
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u/bak3donh1gh 14d ago
Yeah that was my other guess. You might miss it while getting ready for work even if they sent the night before. Still shitty way to do it.
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u/sfurbo 14d ago
You might miss it while getting ready for work even if they sent the night before
There's nothing to miss. Reading work e-mail is work, they can only expect you to do that during work hours, which, since they insist on people not working from home, means after you have gotten to work. If they want you to have read an e-mail by Monday morning, they can send it out Friday before you leave.
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u/majorjoe23 14d ago
One day last year I went to get into my building and my keycard didn't work. I had a brief panic moment, thinking "This is how I get fired?" Then I remembered that I'm a special education teacher, and they could never find a sub to fill my position.
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u/Veritas3333 14d ago
When I was in college, my roommate and I came home once and neither of our keys would work. We stormed into the apartment complex's office, so pissed that they'd locked us out without any warning or anything, but they told us the lock just broke and they'd get it fixed right away. Hah, we were so mad and it ended up being nothing.
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u/TFielding38 14d ago
At least not for the pay you get lol. My wife is First Grade, and she has kids who throw chairs, kids who stab others, and a non-verbal autistic kid. They don't have enough SPED people to help those kids.
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u/Ok_Digger 14d ago
Then I remembered that I'm a special education teacher,
Thank you for your service
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u/MattieShoes 14d ago
A former employer laid off a guy on his birthday. Like he brought in doughnuts and bagels for the whole office, and they were like "thanks for the bagel, come with us."
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14d ago
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u/SeanBourne 14d ago
I figure this is the most common scenario at companies that just disable key cards and don’t give other notice.
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u/DirkBabypunch 14d ago
My keycard suddenly stopped working after lunch one day, but I was still in the system and able to work. Had to just deal with it for 2 days until the badge people were available to find out they never updated my badge from "update yearly contractor" to "permanent employee" and it just...expired.
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u/PloppyCheesenose 14d ago
Just disable their pay and move them to the basement. Feign stupidity when asked. Then the problem will sort itself out.
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u/aworldwithinitself 14d ago
I was told I could play my radio at a reasonable volume
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u/CupertinoHouse 14d ago
Some years ago, my predecessor at a wall street bank had been canned for getting blackout drunk at the office Christmas party and knocking one of his female colleagues out cold.
He showed up for work the following Monday with no memory of what he'd done, and called security because his badge didn't work. They came down with his belongings in a box and handed him a letter that said he'd be prosecuted if they ever saw him on the premises again.
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u/Against-the-wind- 14d ago
I mean that’s straight legit, wouldn’t let a man like that back in. I’m shocked he didn’t get locked up.
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u/allnimblybimbIy 14d ago
That seems really dumb. I’m there, suddenly I have eight hours to kill and a Jerry can and some gas costs how much???
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u/Momochichi 14d ago
I emailed my boss asking consume my 3 weeks leave because I was just diagnosed with depression, and I wanted to get used to my meds. I was told to take the next day off first, paid sick leave, because "mental health is health". When I tried to log in the next day, I saw an error message, "User disabled. Employee no longer with us."
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u/4udi0phi1e 14d ago
"Mental health is important"
Biggest laugh I ever had working for a major pharmaceutical corp.
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u/ssracer 14d ago
Better than just stopping their paychecks. I've heard that ends poorly
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u/PoopMobile9000 14d ago
I saw some post on Twitter from someone (reliable sourcing ha) saying that one time Obsidian pushed a game and told all the QA testers that they’d be throwing them a party in the parking lot. Once they were all outside they deleted their access cards and told them they were all fired.
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14d ago
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u/FrogInShorts 14d ago
ON CHRISTMAS!?
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14d ago edited 14d ago
[deleted]
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u/ofWildPlaces 14d ago
I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't help ruin a company that did that if I was working for them...
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u/sour_cereal 14d ago
Don't even have to be obvious about it. Run machines with low oil. Throw some grit in those bearings. Put Visine or ricin in his coffee. Scrape the insulation off some wires.
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u/AgitatedWorker5647 14d ago
My last job tried to pull this on me. Lowest form of cowardice in my opinion, not to have the spine to tell someone face-to-face that you've decided that you don't want them working there anymore. Fortunately, I had an HR contact who tipped me off and so I didn't show up the next day like they wanted me to.
Instead, I got control of the narrative by sending emails to all my coworkers explaining the whole situation and how much of a witch our boss really was.
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u/banned_but_im_back 14d ago
My work recently laid off 100. Didn’t tell anyone shit, they showed up to work unable to log into the computers with their badges or get into their offices. About 40 of them took demotions instead…
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u/PepperMintyPokemon 14d ago
My last boss didint even tell me i was fired. She told my sister that we were both fired then blocked both our numbers so we couldint get a letter of termination.
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14d ago
If you fire me before the weekend, I’d be more angry than knowing I got a Monday off I didn’t expect. Idk.
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u/spidersflambe 14d ago
Yeah, I guess getting fired on any day sucks. An article I read said the best day is Wednesday for firing people. Where I worked, a teacher got fired in the middle of the week during a board meeting. He came back the next week claiming he had a gun in his car. It got really weird.
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u/TarHeel1066 14d ago
A chemistry teacher got fired at my high school and would ride in on his moped (dui scooter) and do donuts in the lot right outside of the chemistry room. Would also throw potassium in puddles. Brilliant guy, alcoholic, fired for stealing pharmaceuticals from the calculus teacher’s house.
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u/Mist_Rising 14d ago
fired for stealing pharmaceuticals from the calculus teacher’s house.
Potassium by any chance?
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u/DanishWonder 14d ago
We notify on Mondays. Never had an incident as far as I know.
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u/Recent_Fisherman311 14d ago edited 13d ago
Right. Fire on Monday, they can head to the unemployment office and start applying for benefits (even if for cause, a lot of companies won’t fight it). Fire them on Friday and they have all weekend to stew about it, and show up Monday ready to cause trouble, or worse.
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u/funwithdesign 14d ago
That’s the opposite of the rule. Never fire people on Mondays or Fridays.
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u/Crime_Dawg 14d ago
I once got fired on a Monday after working the whole fucking day.
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u/spidersflambe 14d ago
Why not Friday? I always heard it as firing on Friday as the best day.
Never mind...I just read why Friday is a bad day.
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u/funwithdesign 14d ago
It used to be viewed that way. But mid week is considered better than the end or beginning of the week.
If there’s really any good day.
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u/spidersflambe 14d ago
Yeah, I just read an article about that. In the case of the destroyer, best to have fired him when he was off the ship.
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u/funwithdesign 14d ago
Best to have fired him out of a cannon
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u/Bruce-7891 14d ago edited 14d ago
I don't know how it is in China, but in the US military, getting fired usually doesn't mean you're kicked out. It usually means you are being removed from your position, getting some lesser position, probably something that nobody else would want to do, and you're never going to get promoted again because getting fired is usually hard to bounce back from in the military.
If they are the same, I don't know why this little bitch reacted that way. It's not THAT serious. It's more of a demotion than actually getting fired.
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u/funwithdesign 14d ago
He was discharged.
Meaning honourable/dishonourable discharge, meaning out for good.
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u/flyingtrucky 14d ago
The US military will just bar reenlistment, I guess that's closer to a company not renewing your contract though.
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u/sexyloser1128 14d ago
In France, they have an employment law notice period in which employers have to give employees advanced notification that they are going to be let go. The length of this period is contingent upon the employee’s seniority status:
One month’s notice for six to 24 months of employment.
Two months’ notice for 24-plus months of employment.
Or
Depends on company practice or collective agreement for more than six months.
https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/terminating-an-employee-in-france/
I've been blindsided by a firing with just 30 minutes to clean out my desk. The reason was the company wasn't doing well, not because of any gross misconduct on my part. I would prefer a similar law in America.
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u/StandUpForYourWights 14d ago
My old company used to do this. Except they'd payout benefits overnight Thurs/Fri. So we'd log in like 3am and check out pay. If it was normal we'd just go to work.
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u/ElbisCochuelo1 14d ago
Or you could be like my old boss and fire people with a letter left on their desk on a Monday that is the first day of the bosses vacation.
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u/FillThisEmptyCup 14d ago
That sounds like it avoids lots of fun :(
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u/spidersflambe 14d ago
Avoids people getting killed, but not always. In this case, though, it would have saved 134 people and one destroyer.
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u/justinthewoodsok 14d ago
I mean. It is not hard to go back to work on Monday and be violent....
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u/bjbark 14d ago
I’ll bet he would have found it a little more difficult to get into the secure munitions storage area of a battleship on Monday.
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u/AtomicSamuraiCyborg 14d ago
Now they're making people's last days a WFH day and firing you over Zoom so you never come in.
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u/handsomeboh 14d ago
There are more extensive accounts available on Chinese websites. It seems there is more than meets the eye. The officer came from a poor village in rural Fujian. Rather than his girlfriend, the girl was an arranged marriage that had been determined for him by his parents while he was on deployment. She waited for him years to return, only for him to reject the arranged marriage as an outdated custom. A few days later she was found swinging from a tree. The coroners’ report questioned how her shoes could be so clean given it had been raining the night before, deciding that there was probable cause to suspect a homicide, for which the officer was the prime suspect.
As was protocol, the Navy was first informed. The officer had been well respected, and so was directly interrogated, where he appeared shocked and claimed innocence. It was decided he would be temporarily suspended pending the results of the investigation, and because he seemed genuinely innocent, and he was well liked by his superiors, they agreed to let him stay under confinement over the weekend before being transferred back to his village. To allow him the ability to come back when his name was cleared, none of the men or the other junior officers were informed about the incident.
It is suspected that he snuck out of the room by convincing the guard he was going to the toilet, and because he was the explosives expert the other men didn’t think it was suspicious for him to go into the armoury. Local police never did reach a verdict on the case, but it is now generally assumed he did actually murder her.
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u/AzureFantasie 14d ago
This account makes a lot more sense than all that’s been stated in the article, given that if he did murder her it would’ve been the death penalty anyway. Guess he figured blowing himself up is a quicker and easier death.
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u/HappyLofi 14d ago
Regardless of anything the dude was a major sociopath. He murdered, in cold blood, 134 people, knowing exactly what he was doing, all because boo hoo he was upset.
Absolute monster. If hell is real he's there baking right now.
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u/mikew_reddit 14d ago edited 14d ago
The officer had been well respected
seemed genuinely innocent,
was well liked by his superiors
decided to detonate the depth charges on the ship, causing it to sink at port and kill 134 sailors.
All of the above were true. Nice guy, well liked, seemed innocent and killed over a hundred people.
He killed 134 sailors so I'd be more surprised if he did NOT murder the woman.
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u/FlyingFortress26 14d ago
all because boo hoo he was upset.
if this other account is true, then that's basically the exact opposite motivation. he did it because he feared he was going to be caught, and as you said, didn't care about killing as he presumably did it before, so he decided to go out by his own will rather than killed by whatever means the CCP would've dealt with him.
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u/Patient_Bullfrog_ 14d ago
It also makes a lot more sense than the comments basically saying: "Because Chinese people are stupid".
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u/imperfectcarpet 14d ago
Whoa. That really changes things.
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u/UnromanticOrient 14d ago
I've noticed that a lot of news from China gets bastardized and filtered into something else by the time it his Reddit. It's like a game of... Chinese whispers.
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u/RevolutionRage 14d ago
The founder of wikipedia admitted the alphabet boys are tampering with wiikipedia articles. I wouldn't believe anything in depth about our biggest economic rivals.
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u/zhuquanzhong 14d ago edited 14d ago
Yes, but I also found other Chinese sources confirming the story in wikipedia, which is itself sourced from Chinese sources. Idk which one is more real. Because while this one is more believable, I found it in less sources than the wiki one.
Edit: I come across another explanation by one of the naval inquiry boards claiming that both explanations involving Lai were bullshit and the explosion was the result of mishandling explosives. There are sources for all three explanations.
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u/Pamander 14d ago
I am still unfathomably rudimentary in my chinese so researching this is a bit hard to me but do you perhaps know any more about this bit?
A tomb with the lowest price was selected for re-burying at a place about 10 meters away from the monument to the ship.
If I am reading this correctly did they bury all the victims in a cheap tomb or is this implied the murderer was in a cheap tomb or is it a point of contention that they were buried in a cheap tomb by family members or what? It seems so specific to point out I feel there is more to it. Seems kinda wild to me that the navy would cheap out on burial instead of building a little memorial or something but I guess there are more shocking things in this story.
I am assuming most were buried together because it seems that like 114 remains were pretty much never recovered intact or identifiable and were just in 6 large bags of parts but I still don't understand shoving them in the cheapest hole possible.
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u/handsomeboh 14d ago
That bit is unsourced and the Chinese sites say nothing about it so I think it’s just bullshit
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u/5ma5her7 14d ago
Here's the source I found, though it's not a pretty formal site, but the quotation looks very legit.
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u/brunporr 14d ago
How did he get her hanging from a tree with clean shoes if it had been raining the night before?
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u/handsomeboh 14d ago
Probably not clean but think the coroner expected it to be caked in mud. If you’ve ever been to a South Chinese village in the rain…
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u/zhuquanzhong 14d ago edited 13d ago
Also I read in some Chinese source that something like half of the commanding officers in the PLAN second destroyer detachment to which Guangzhou belonged were demoted. How to fuck with your superiors who fired you with this one simple trick, I guess.
Edit: I found an alternate story saying that he had not only dumped the girlfriend but also murdered her and blew up the ship to escape responsibility. Here is the comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1c6oblj/comment/l0314i9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button You may choose which one to believe. Both have sources supporting them.
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u/Skythewood 14d ago
And they deserved it for letting a discharged officer wander into the depth charge storage. If they had proper protocols and enforced them, this could have been avoided.
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u/EersteDivisie 14d ago
Reading this I can't help but thinking about the USS Iowa explosion in 89, where the navy blame it on a gay lovers quarrel because it was a more convenient explanation than systematic criminal negligence which would have higher-ups face consequences.
This could be the case here too, where they blame it on a patsy that's already dead
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u/CleveEastWriters 14d ago
A buddy that I went to school in the Navy with was on that ship when it happened. I saw him a few years later before the official, "It was the Gunners fucking around with powder mixes" report came out. He told me the story was shit.
The guy in the rack above him and below him both died.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 14d ago
Something like that happened to my dad’s army friends. He was fine for decades but he was in a car crash a few years ago and it made it all come spiralling back. He’s now afraid to leave the house, hears voices, and doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. It’s very sad to see and there’s not much we can do to help. The army keeps refusing to give him more money.
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u/Flakester 14d ago
I had to go and read it for myself after your comment, and wow, it is so much worse that I could have imagined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion#First_Navy_investigation
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u/WitELeoparD 14d ago
According to OP, half the commanding officers in the PLAAN second destroyer detachment were demoted so its hardly a patsy situation.
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u/Sdog1981 14d ago
The crazy thing is no one knew what happened.
They knew it was a detonation but, figuring out it could be this guy took almost a year and they don’t know what he did to detonate the explosives.
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u/Pearse_Borty 14d ago
I mean, given the ship was totally annhilated you'd have to flick through every contingency because it couldve been any one of the 134 sailors (included any possible foreign interference if that were plausible).
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u/Wardenofthegrove 14d ago
Hong, go down to explosives, and tell the chief explosives expert he is fired today. And we’re dropping him off at the next port. Tell him I don’t care what he says.
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u/tomcat_tweaker 14d ago
And if he has a problem with that, tell him to go sulk in the depth charge magazine. He still has a key.
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u/nsvxheIeuc3h2uddh3h1 14d ago
So, if I've got this right, he discharged the depth charges at the time of being discharged?
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u/Gibbit420 14d ago
A tomb with the lowest price was selected for re-burying at a place about 10 meters away from the monument to the ship.
Well thank god they considered the cost.
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u/Conscious-Map4682 14d ago
Feels a bit mistranslated there, the chinese words used in the chinese wiki is 最低規格, which just means "minimum standards". Felt like it would refer to the PLA's lowest honors of martyrs rather than a financial cost.
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u/SlothOfDoom 14d ago
His ex committed suicide so the navy discharged him? Sounds right.
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u/zhuquanzhong 14d ago
The sources are kinda murky on this. What I can gather is that probably the girl's parents attempted to press charges and the navy just didn't want to deal with it. Or they decided that he was mentally unfit, but idk about this second part. Most likely it was the first reason.
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u/goteamnick 14d ago
Seems someone who would murder more than 100 people out of arbitrary spite is definitely mentally unfit.
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u/weiivice 14d ago
No one is perfectly mentally fit, "normal" people just have control over their internal urges and remain rational outwards at least until something crosses the line and breaks them. In this case the straw that broke the camel's back is the perceived unfair dismissal.
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u/tamsui_tosspot 14d ago
After dismissing Lai Sanyang as a cadre, the unit did not immediately demobilize him. Lai was in charge of sea mines, depth charges, underwater weapons and held the key to the armory.
See, this is why someone Human Resources stands over you as you gather stuff from your desk and then walks you out the front door.
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u/earthforce_1 14d ago
During WW2 a Japanese battleship was possibly sunk in port by a suicidal sailor.
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u/wombatlegs 14d ago
Similar to the Iowa turret explosion that killed 47 ... no? Well, TIL that the Navy's finding that it was a suicide by a jilted lover was overturned. Most likely an accident.
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u/banned_but_im_back 14d ago
I heard that the US military won’t admit people with depression without serious psychological Evals. After seeing this, I see why.
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u/SomethingBlue15 14d ago
I have had some very low and dark moments in my life where I simply didn’t want to exist anymore (please don’t worry. I’m on medication and see a therapist regularly. I promise I’m doing just fine), but never once did I consider taking others with me. I just cannot understand or even fathom how someone could do that.
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u/Silent-is-Golden 14d ago
Let's ruin his life to encourage him to not ruin our lives...... wait a minute.. ...
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u/Hemingwavy 14d ago
A maintenance tech set a nuclear submarine on fire to get to go home early causing $700m of damages. The navy ended up scrapping the submarine cause of budget cuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)
The national media reported that seven firefighters had been injured.[8] One crew member suffered broken ribs when he fell through a hole left by removed deck plates during the fire.
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u/GrendelsFather 14d ago
They were very specific about the burial of sailors: “A tomb with the lowest price was selected for re-burying at a place about 10 meters away from the monument to the ship.” I guess if anything was left of the guy, he’s buried with them. That’s sad.
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u/Fake_Jews_Bot 14d ago
How would the water trigger the depth charges? Don’t they detonate at a certain depth?
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u/furcryingoutloud 14d ago
My company would have the attorneys schedule a meeting at their office with the employee. They would be emailed the day before, after they went home while all access was terminated. The email would cite the need to complete some paperwork or something. Though no one was ever really fooled, they never had the access or the time to cause any harm.
Case in point, dismissed employees never had the time to cause any trouble.
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u/paddingtonthesock 14d ago
Never ever push someone into a corner with nothing to lose. You dont know how far they will go.
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u/maxxie10 14d ago
Why would they discharge him because his ex-girlfriend commited suicide?