China’s official news agency also stated that the stricken sub had already been towed into port, at an unidentified location. Beyond that, little information is available. Informed speculation, however, is possible -- and seems necessary too, until more facts are divulged and final closure can be achieved.

This is the worst submarine catastrophe since the loss, with all 118 hands, of the Russian submarine Kursk in August 2000.

But there seem no similarities at all between the two incidents. The Kursk was nuclear powered, sank while running submerged, was know (via distant acoustic sensors) to have suffered two massive explosions in her torpedo room... and was (mostly) salvaged from the bottom into dry-dock only after many months of extremely difficult diving and engineering work.

How can a diesel submarine, with the Ming-class crush depth of about 1000 feet, kill everyone aboard and yet be towed into port in a matter of days?

We know the Russian government did not at first tell anything like the truth about the Kursk disaster. The Chinese military has a history of extreme secretiveness. Can the information in the news report even be believed?

Let’s first assume the Chinese are not misleading us. Given the dilapidated state of their submarine fleet in general, and their known poor standards of maintenance and relatively low level of crew training, it seems unlikely that the Ming-class sub actually sank to the bottom and was salvaged in a very short period. Even if the Chinese had the technical capacity, to pull off such an amazing recovery covertly is impossible. Such effort requires tremendous surface-ship support -- it could not go unnoticed by U.S. national intelligence resources such as sea surveillance satellites.

That would imply the accident really occurred on the surface. The submarine may or may not have been able to radio a distress report, but no one was able to get out. The latter is extremely puzzling.

Poison gas of some kind seems the most plausible explanation. If seawater leaked into the submarine’s battery bank -- say because of a less serious equipment problem -- chlorine gas would be produced in a chemical reaction every submariner dreads. If fuel in a torpedo leaked, a different chemical reaction, or toxic fumes of the fuel itself, might also poison the atmosphere. A problem with the exhaust system while the twin 2,600-horsepower diesel engines were running might have thrown off colorless, odorless carbon monoxide. An exhaust problem seems consistent with a possible snorkel malfunction. This in turn would explain why the sub had to run on the surface, for engine air in order to recharge or conserve her batteries.

But diesel subs usually are divided into several watertight, airtight compartments, to be quickly sealed in case of any emergency. And diesel subs have escape hatches, which should have been in easy reach of at least part of the crew. Furthermore, most submarines have emergency breathing equipment aboard, to save the crew if the air becomes deadly for any one of a number of reasons -- such as smoke from a fire.

Consider this scenario, then: Initiative is strongly discouraged in the Chinese military. Budgets are tight, inventory control is sloppy, and the Ming, hull number 361, goes to sea with faulty crew respirator gear or maybe none at all. There is an accident on the Ming, while on a coastal training exercise. Leadership skills and technical competence are scarce, concentrated in only a few of the officers and more seasoned enlisted men. Those key people may have been the first to be overcome by the poison gas, perhaps while trying to solve the problem and help save the ship.

Panic ensues among the ever dwindling number of survivors; they might not even realize why friends around them are gagging and collapsing, or seeming to merely go to sleep for no apparent reason. Communications within the hull, 250 feet long and only some 20 feet in diameter, break down completely. No one is alive with the authority to order “Abandon Ship.” Young and terrified sailors glance longingly at escape hatches, yet fear a firing squad for cowardice if they desert their posts -- a very real fear in China. One by one, they drop. The Ming turns into an executioner’s gas chamber, only the executioner is an unforgiving mixture of bureaucracy and fate.

It’s also conceivable the toxic gas began while the boat was deeply submerged. The captain would have ordered an emergency blow immediately. The ship would have come up fast -- but apparently not fast enough for anyone to live to see daylight.

Either way, the Ming becomes, indeed, a modern Flying Dutchman, a ship of the dead, doomed to drift, a floating mass grave. I pity the first sailors who came upon the hulk to bring her to port almost as much as I pity the deceased. And like many others around the world, I mourn for the dead and share their families’ sadness and their loss. Every submariner, in every navy, is a hero for the dangers they face. And all sailors, of every nation, literally take their lives into their hands each time they head out to the cruel ocean, no matter what sort of vessel they ride.

But other scenarios are possible too. The Chinese report, as incomplete as it is, may still be disinformation. Perhaps this has been done to disguise the genuine timing, location, and nature of the accident. Perhaps this has been done to protect military secrets. Perhaps the Chinese sub was even on a urgent spy mission, against the world’s newest self-proclaimed nuclear state, North Korea... And perhaps, in the ugliest scenario of all, the Ming was sunk or her crew was killed by enemy action. North Korea has submarines and anti-submarine forces too, and for decades has acted very aggressively toward neighboring countries.

Is China in fact covering up the loss of a spy sub that was compromised and then attacked? If so, is the purpose of the cover story to tone things down, and avoid escalation at an extremely volatile time in Chinese/North Korean relations? If North Korean frogmen quietly assaulted the snooping Ming when she wasn’t submerged (because of a snorkel malfunction?), then undogged her hatches -- preventing her from diving to escape on batteries -- and threw down canisters of lethal gas, we may never learn the truth.

But truth and speculation and conspiracy theories beside the point, seventy brave men are dead. Nothing can bring them back or console their families. This should keep us from taking for granted those thousands of other brave men who serve every day in America’s own submarine fleet. Let us all keep a prayer in our hearts for these men of our Silent Service, that they will always come home safe. And let us never take for granted the many thousands of other U.S. Navy submariners, who served under the seas protecting our freedom in the past -- some of whom didn’t come home.

Update for Military.com, May 5, 2003 --

Yesterday, English-language on-line news services began to report further allegations or theories regarding the Ming-class Chinese submarine disaster -- explanations or scenarios originating in Hong Kong and Beijing. Some of this has made it into today's American daily newspapers. The only thing the Hong Kong and Beijing reports seem to agree on is that the accident actually occurred about ten days before it was announced last Friday, May 2.

The Beijing explanation is attributed to an anonymous Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy naval officer, in comments which "could not be independently verified," according to today's The Boston Globe and The New York Times. The officer said a possible cause of the deaths was that engine trouble sucked oxygen from within the sub while she was diving, suffocating the crew. This official also claims the crew were all found at their posts, with no sign of panic or alarm or any "frantic efforts to make repairs."

Knowing what I know about diesel subs, I find this particular sort of engine trouble explanation implausible. Here's why:

If an air-intake problem occurs in a diesel sub with hatches closed while diving, it does far more than quietly suck the oxygen from the air. It sucks in air. This is well known by diesel submariners (since World War I!) to cause immediate and extreme pain in the crew's ear canals as the internal air pressure drops precipitately. Leadership personnel in the engine room(s) would react in a heartbeat: Submarine diesel engines have multiple instant-acting cutoff devices to shut them down the moment such trouble is detected -- this is a very basic and standard "casualty" that any elementary crew training program would certainly include, even in China. Besides, all submarines carry large supplies of compressed air for many purposes -- including restoring normal atmospheric pressure right away after any such engine trouble. (The Ming-class derives from Russian designs that in turn derive from World War II German U-boats practices -- instant-acting diesel cutoff devices and ample compressed-air tanks seem guaranteed, as a legacy from these earlier models.)

Thus, that the crew could asphyxiate from lack of oxygen due to the engines running, at all -- and especially without most men aboard knowing at once and reacting in ways that would, forensically, be visible in the positions and postures of their bodies -- seems a "rather" low-probability event.

Also, an accident in the process of diving, in which everyone is quite suddenly dead, is unlikely to result in the submarine ending up on the surface. It is much more likely to crash into the bottom catastrophically while out of control, and get mired in the mud or hit rock or an old wreck and spring a leak and flood. Or, it could end up drifting beneath the surface at the mercy of currents and thermal layers, even in the comparatively shallow Yellow Sea. An emergency blow would be needed to resurface once the sub is diving -- which would not be commanded unless senior officers knew something was very wrong.

Western experts are suggesting a carbon monoxide leak while underway as a possible explanation -- as my own May 2 analysis points out, this is plausible and would, if the sub had never dived, also explain why she was (apparently) found on the surface. Carbon monoxide works insidiously, and can lull its victims into unconsciousness swiftly and with no rational sense that something is even amiss.

Another scenario, inconsistent with this particular sort of engine trouble, was carried yesterday (Sunday) by the BBC News/Asia-Pacific service in an Internet report that cited local Hong Kong newspapers. This Hong Kong version says the submarine suffered a jammed diving plane and sank nose-first to be stranded on the seafloor. The crewmen then all slowly suffocated. Really? If so, there would certainly be signs of distress and of frantic efforts at repairs among the crew corpses. And at the depths involved in the Yellow Sea, crewmen swimming up to the surface, even without special escape respirators, is fairly routine as submarine emergencies go, and should have produced at least a few survivors. Besides, steps to take in the event of a "jam dive" are also elementary and swift: throw the engines (on diesel or on batteries, as applicable) into full reverse, and do an emergency blow. Turn the rudder left or right to take off some of the vessel's forward momentum in the meantime. (To fail to carry out such jam dive countermeasures, instinctively and instantly, would bespeak a level of on-board command incompetence far into the zone of utter criminal negligence. It would also raise very serious questions about the quality of leadership in higher Chinese PLA Navy headquarters and Beijing.)

Through Hong Kong, one senior Chinese official is quoted as saying the submarine was on an "extremely dangerous antisubmarine training" exercise. Another official is quoted as saying the Ming was on a "long-distance navigation training mission."

Yet the Beijing officer who cites engine trouble claims the sub was on a special "silent, no-contact drill." Well, which type of mission was it? It couldn't possibly be all three, for various technical and procedural reasons. And given the known centralization and tight control of the Chinese Navy, it strains credibility to believe a diesel sub would be sent off to stay out of touch for so long, especially so near North Korea, on a mere training exercise.

Other explanations, such as a serious fire aboard, or a collision with a surface ship, while definitely worth considering appear ruled out. A collision would tear a terrible gash in the submarine's hull, badly complicating salvage efforts and also remaining highly visible on the hulk. A fire, even if it quickly asphyxiated the crew by using up most of the oxygen, would create intense heat inside the hull, and would continue to smoulder for hours or days. Oven-like, and then furnace-like temperatures would result. Welds and gasket-seals in openings to the outside sea -- some below the craft's waterline -- would fail, and the Ming would flood and eventually sink like a stone. Again, crew distress would be extreme, and salvage in a short period would verge on a super-human recovery-diving and engineering feat.

(What is in fact rather intriguing is that prevailing currents in the Yellow Sea would carry a disabled submarine from near North Korea toward the exact area on the Chinese coast where the dead Ming was reported to be found. Thus, another effort at "reverse engineering" from what little seems confirmed to scenarios that could reproduce the known end result may add credence to my May 2 conjecture that the "silent, no-contact" Ming was on a spy mission to North Korea after all, and ran into bad trouble there.)

So, what are we to make of all the rumors and inconsistencies from Hong Kong and Beijing? Interestingly, and ironically, much of the Western news coverage of this story is focusing on "new openness" by China toward the outside world in the wake of widespread concern about their initial coverup of the SARS epidemic. But genuine new openness on military affairs would not be creating so many conflicting and confusing reports and "explanations."

We might never know for sure what actually happened to that Ming, unless Western experts are given much more information, or even allowed to examine the hulk and read (accurate) autopsy reports of the crew. None of which changes the tragedy of the event, and alas none of which seems to clear up the mystery.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com