He took a deep breath and steeled his nerves. “No, I will not be sunk by some sort of sneak attack by the Americans,” he resolved. “The only submarines operating in this area are the Americans and the South Koreans…. I’m going to hit them before they hit us.”
“Fire at the enemy sub!” he ordered. “Then bring us up to full speed and take evasive maneuvers as soon as the torpedoes shoot!”
Captain Ma had just taken command of one of China’s quietest diesel submarines, the Wu Ling, a Type 039A Yuan-class attack submarine. His sub had been moving down the Yellow Sea, and was going to observe the coming battle between the DPRK and the American-backed ROK naval forces. There were rumors among the other naval officers that a war with the Americans may happen soon.
“I hope those are just rumors,” thought Ma. “The American navy is good, and despite our best efforts, I just don’t see our forces holding up against them.”
As they moved to their observation point (which was well outside the combat area and in international waters), he wanted to raise their communications buoy to make sure they did not have any additional orders since he set sail several days ago. They had one of the new communications buoys that the Russians had developed; Captain Ma hoped it would do as promised and allow his sub to be better able to communicate with the surface fleet while reducing the likelihood of being detected by the Americans.
As Ma overheard his communications officers talking with the enlisted men as they prepared the buoy, suddenly a series of events went wrong.
He heard a loud grating noise, and yelled, “What was that?”
One of the officers responded, “The outer door that protects the buoy scraped against something as it opened, Sir.”
The sound of rushing air suddenly gurgled in the waters. An enlisted man shouted, “The hose that was supposed to release the air into the buoy at a specific rate must have malfunctioned. This piece of trash is supposed to be silent!”
“Clearly, a function check was missed before we left the shipyard,” realized Captain Ma. “Now we are all paying for it by alerting nearly everyone in the area of our presence.”
Seething with anger, the captain ripped into his officers. “How did this happen?!” he demanded. “What if someone heard us? You numbskulls-your incompetence may have just put all of our lives at risk!”
A voice came from the sonar room, “Conn, Sonar. We have contact. Submarine less than 5,000 yards from our position.”
Everyone in the room froze in that second, unsure of whose submarine it was that just detected them.
The Captain grabbed the handset in a jerking motion. “I want a read out — whose submarine did we stumble onto?” he yelled.
Then, to their horror, the sonar room announced, “A torpedo has just been launched! I spot a second torpedo… the unknown submarine just moved to flank speed and appears to be dropping a noise maker behind them.”
They had precious little time to make their own decision on whether they should respond.
Captain Ma bellowed, “Are there any American submarines in the area?”
“Conn, Sonar. We have not identified any American subs, but that does not mean that there may not be one that slipped by us,” came the reply.
The Captain made a critical decision in that moment (one that might have been made differently from a more senior captain, but he had just been promoted and this was his first command). “I am not about to lose my sub on my maiden voyage as its commander,” he thought.
“Take us to flank speed,” he ordered. “and drop our own noise maker. Then turn hard to starboard, creating a knuckle in the water. Hopefully, we can confuse those incoming torpedoes.”
Turning to his weapons officer, he instructed, “Prepare one of our own torpedoes to fire.”
Seconds later, the sub lurched forward and then turned hard to starboard, just as they had trained a million times. It was a Russian strategy that had played out well in the Atlantic, and the Chinese Navy was not at all opposed to adopting a new strategy if it worked.
While still in the middle of their turn, they fired off one torpedo towards the other submarine, which was now running at flank speed and making an inordinate amount of noise for a submarine.
As they began to pick up speed and move deeper to get under the next thermal layer, their sonar finally identified the sub that shot at them. “Sir…” began the officer in disbelief, “it was a Sang-O (Shark) class North Korean submarine.”
Captain Ma was furious that an ally had launched a pair of torpedoes at him. He also felt foolish for launching his own torpedoes so quickly. “If I would have just waited a few more minutes, I would have known it was a North Korean sub and not one from the U.S. or ROK.”
The first North Korean torpedo went straight for the noise maker and detonated several thousand yards away, rattling everyone in the sub.
A very tense moment passed; the second DPRK torpedo seemed confused and began to head away from them, in the direction of the Americans. They had somehow escaped unscathed.
Their own torpedo, however, was a much more advanced model, with smarter targeting sonar and a processor to help it distinguish between distractions and the sounds of an actual sub; it blew right past the noise maker and locked onto the Sang-O sub. Once it had a solid lock, it began to increase in speed to close in for the kill.
Minutes later, the torpedoes rammed the Sang-O and exploded in spectacular fashion. The submarine crumpled under the pressure and began to sink to the bottom quickly.
Captain Ma turned his attention back to his officers. “What in the blazes happened? How did we not know that noisy, clunky diesel was sitting right there-and what in the world happened with that buoy?” he demanded of his officers.
The enlisted men tried to sink a little lower in their chairs to avoid the gaze of their irate captain. They had just survived a very close encounter and were still not 100 % out of danger yet. Their position had just been broadcasted to every submarine in the area, which is something no submariner ever wants to have happen.
One of the officers suddenly stepped forward and offered himself up. “Captain, I take full responsibility for this mistake. Prior to you taking command, when we took the ship out of the shipyard to test the upgrades, the communications buoy made this same noise. We spoke with the engineers about it during the test, and they said it would be corrected when we returned back to the shipyard.”
“A week later, the engineers told me the problem had been corrected and tested to make sure it worked. I did not insist on a second sea trial test before you arrived. I trusted them when they said it was corrected.” As he finished his explanation, he hung his head in defeat and humiliation. He was certain he would be shot when they returned to port, if they ever made it back.
Captain Ma was fuming. “I can’t believe that one my officers could be so reckless,” he moaned to himself. “Ugh — I should have made sure we used the buoy prior to this situation. If we had, we would have discovered the problem sooner.”
They had only been at sea for three days, so they had not had a need to use the buoy just yet. So far, they had been able to come to periscope depth and had relied on their main antenna.
“This whole deployment was rushed,” Ma complained to himself. “If the previous captain of this submarine hadn’t died unexpectedly of a heart attack, two days before the submarine was supposed to put to sea, I would have had the appropriate time to get to know the submarine and check on all the upgrades the sub had just received at the shipyard. I am paying the price for that now…”