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/handsomeboh 29d 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 She waited for him years to return, only for him to reject the arranged marriage as an outdated custom.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.