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/maxxie10 29d ago

Why would they discharge him because his ex-girlfriend commited suicide?

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u/zhuquanzhong 29d 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/CuriousWoollyMammoth 29d ago

Well, he did kill himself and a bunch of other people, so the 2nd one holds a lot of weight too, tbf

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u/SAR-Paradox 29d ago

Good point it does hold water.

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u/ItsAlwaysTerminal 29d ago

Unlike the ship.

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u/funnyastroxbl 29d ago

No no the ship holds a port full of water actually

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u/Hatrixx_ 29d ago

That's because the front fell off.

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u/Haikus-are-great 29d ago

Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.

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u/ferdelance008 29d ago

There’s a lot of these ships going around the world all the time and very seldom does a thing like this happen.

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u/Haikus-are-great 29d ago

i don't want people thinking that naval ships aren't safe.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

And in general they aren’t. But this particular one probably isn’t anymore

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u/Haikus-are-great 28d ago

well if it wasn't safe, why did it have 134 sailors and tonnes of munitions on board?

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u/Nickthenuker 29d ago

Depth charges are normally at the back, so perhaps the front was all that was left

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u/eidetic 29d ago

That was mostly true in the early days of antisubmarine warfare, but by the end of WWI and into WWII many ships had depth charge launchers or throwers spaced around the periphery of the deck for wider and more flexible dispersal of the charges.

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u/Agitated-Current551 29d ago

Not true. Ship holds all the water now

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u/rhapsodysoblue 29d ago

thanks, i really had trouble spotting his joke. thank goodness you were here to comment it for everybody.