It has been reported that 55 workers on a Chinese military submarine were killed during an oxygen failure, but apparently everything is not as it seems.
Suspicions arose after anti-Chinese Communist Party activist social media account ‘Lude Media’ posted that Chairman Xi Jinping had been told that everyone on the submarine had died while on mission in the ‘Taiwan Strait.’
However, Taiwan’s defence ministry rejected these reports and said that no such event took place.
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Straight after this, it was noticed that the social media account then amended the location to a location in the Yellow Sea between the Chinese province of Jiangsu and South Korea.
The captain was then named and also revealed that the submarine was using a secret pump-jet propulsion system that they were trialling.
This incident settled down, as well as rumours that the Chinese government might be lying about the event.
However, recent events have seen the rumour come back into light after the Daily Mail highlighted parts of a leaked British intelligence report.
“Incident happened at 08.12 local resulting in the death of 55 crew members: 22 officers, 7 officer cadets, 9 petty officers, 17 sailors,” it reads. “Dead include the captain Colonel Xue Yong-Peng. Our understanding is death caused by hypoxia due to a system fault on the submarine. The submarine hit a chain and anchor obstacle used by the Chinese Navy to trap US and allied submarines. This resulted in systems failures that took six hours to repair and surface the vessel. The on-board oxygen system poisoned the crew after a catastrophic failure.”
These shocking rumours have the internet speculating on what the submarine was really up to, with international military analysts pointing issues with the report.
A former US submarine commander, Tom Shugart, wasn't so sure.
“1. Submarine nets have a long tradition in defensive ASW (anti-submarine warfare), but I haven’t heard of any in modern use like this, in open ocean.
2. I don’t understand how snaring a net could cause a problem w (ith) atmosphere control. As for batteries “going flat”, it’s a nuclear boat so that’s odd.”
A podcast host, Li-Meng Yan even suggests the anchor and chain strap was behind damage caused to other submarines, such as the US Seawolf attack submarine USS Connecticut in 2021.
Whether there is any truth behind the claims is not yet known.
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