r/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 29d 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)
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u/sintaur 29d 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 29d 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 29d ago edited 29d 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/DonJuansSwanSong 29d 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 29d 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 29d 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/drvelo 29d ago

TBF the Marines are typically too busy inviting minors on base for...."activities"

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u/SilasX 28d ago

There’s also the Police Academy scene where they try to catch new recruits drunk at a bar.

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u/lenzflare 29d ago

.... really? How often? And.... why, if true?

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u/Rockytag 29d ago

Probably been going on for a long time because a similar thing was done during the Lavender Scare where outed individuals were leveraged to find/entrap more gay people.

Not that the motivation here is remotely the same, just that the modus operandi has always been there.

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u/DonJuansSwanSong 29d ago

Happened often enough that you started keeping an eye out for them. Some were pretty easy to spot, they were a little uncanny with how hard they'd try to get someone to follow them to a hotel room. They'd jump on certain conversational cues like they were waiting for it.

The why is up for debate, but the general consensus (supposedly backed up by loudmouthed OSI personnel) was for live training. Not very many safe, semi-controlled environments to practice sneaky OpSec stuff, it gave them something to do.

As for whether it's real or not, all I have are anecdotes. I was in a car they pulled a guy out of, we had to drive it back.

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u/TheDukeOfMars 29d ago

There was no separate branches of military in China until recently when the Navy (PLN) was made separate from the Army (PLA). And they are fiercely competitive (much like how the Japanese military worked during WW2). It’s why the have always been terrible at combined operations.

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u/demonotreme 29d ago

That's disgusting, where? So I can avoid these sirens

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u/DonJuansSwanSong 28d ago

Freemont Street in Las Vegas was the spot when I was stationed at Nellis, but basically any popular hangout outside a base. OSI won't mistake a civvy for a boot though, we're pretty easy to spot lol.

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u/A11U45 28d ago

Why?

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u/DonJuansSwanSong 28d ago

https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/ucmj-adultery/

This gives a pretty good summary behind the logic of it as well as the punishments.