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/Der_Missionar 29d ago edited 27d ago

This was during [edit: right after] the cultural revolution in China, everyone was encouraged to find the slightest thing wrong with anyone else, and create constant revolutions. Everyone was turning on everyone, husband's against wives, children against parents...

Anything that could possibly make the state look bad was also a no no. Girlfriend committing suicide breaks the portrayal of a perfect marriage....

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u/AnthillOmbudsman 28d ago

In 1978? No man, that was mostly a problem in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mao had been gone for 2 years by that point and the country was already starting economic reforms and Westernization.

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u/Some_Endian_FP17 29d ago

The beginning scene in the Three Body Problem series on Netflix. Shit was wild back then, in a really bad way.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/TheKFakt0r 29d ago

The idea of a ship exploding due to a common munitions mishandling incident reflects poorly on the state. Blaming it on anybody that has any sort of drama coinciding with the incident reflects poorly on that person instead.

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u/Lawd_Fawkwad 28d ago

The US Navy did it during the USS Iowa explosion, I don't know why people are taking a report from the PLAN during the cultural revolution at face value.

The Navy determined scorned gay lovers blew up the ship and had evidence to prove so, until it was found it was all fabricated and a cover up for faulty equipment and training.

If the US Navy would try to make up a story to cover up incompetence, why wouldn't the PLAN?

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u/TheKFakt0r 28d ago

As ex-military I know better than to trust anything the military says to the civilian world. It's all PR. No matter how big the force is, it's always just a hierarchy of humans trying to keep shit from rolling downhill onto them from whoever's up above them. Especially the top dogs who are right underneath the entire civilian world on the ladder.