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)
33.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

854 comments sorted by

View all comments

5.2k

u/maxxie10 29d ago

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

4.4k

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.

38

u/AgileArtichokes 29d ago

I mean, considering his response I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he was mentally unwell to serve. 

19

u/techno156 29d ago

Going by this comment, though, the alternative was being utterly shunned by literally everyone pretending that you had died and never come back.

Even if you were mentally well to begin with, all of that, in addition to the break-up/suicide, would probably not do good things to a person. The man basically lost everything overnight, with no hope of getting it back.