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Subject: ROKN Patrol Corvette sucken by DPRK torpedo boat
YelliChink    3/26/2010 12:10:07 PM
Just happened 2150 Korean local time. Chinese reports say that it was DPRK torpedo boat. The ROKN corvette sunk is probably a 1200t PCC. I can't read Korean so I am not sure which one exactly. At this moment, 59 out of 104 crew have been saved so far. Best wishes to the still missing ones and condolence to families of lost sailors.
 
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Reactive       3/30/2010 8:04:18 PM
Info from a link Hamilcar posted a long way earlier in the thread that I must have missed....
 
milit.ru/mines.htm
 
Just in case anyone else missed it...
 
"Bottom mines can be stored for at least 20 years and their power sources for 10 years. These mines retain lethality for more than a year and then can be removed."
 
No mine from the 50's caused this. Influcence mines rely on a power supply to arm, after half a century they'll be totally dead. I didn't find the specific russian influence-mine shelf-life data until this, so it's a nice find...
 

 
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Reactive    english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/03/31/2010033101024.html   3/30/2010 11:39:58 PM

N.Korean Submarine 'Left Base Before the Cheonan Sank'

Amid rampant speculation that the Navy corvette Cheonan sank due to a torpedo attack by a North Korean submarine or semi-submersible, there are reports that South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies detected a submarine disappearing and reappearing at a North Korean submarine base on the west coast not far from the site of the wreck around Friday, the day the ship sank.

A South Korean government source said on Tuesday, "Scrutiny of pictures taken by U.S. spy satellites reveals one submarine in North Korea's Sagot naval base some 50 km away from Baeknyeong Island disappeared for a few days before Friday last week and returned to base later."

The source said North Korean submarines or semi-submersibles "occasionally disappear from the base and come back, so it's difficult at the moment to relate this to the sinking of the Cheonan. We are currently establishing the exact circumstances."

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young on Monday told the National Assembly's Defense Committee that North Korean semi-submersibles can fire two torpedoes.

The Sagot base is home to North Korea's core west coast naval forces including some 20 submarines and semi-submersibles.
 
The word is ominous.
 
 
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Reactive    I don't speak Korean   3/30/2010 11:59:17 PM
 
but if someone else does, and would care to translate the 2nd video down? 
 
As the thermal video taken has been released showing a rescue boat attending to the rapidly-sinking bow of the Cheonan.

It's low-res and hard to make out, but you can see from the timestamp just how quickly the process unfolded.
 
R
 
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Reactive    I don't speak Korean   3/31/2010 12:12:32 AM
 
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Reactive    Oops   3/31/2010 12:19:46 AM
Sorry about that, here's something interesting about how the selective, and dense, the media are being about this.
 
Consider:
 
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young himself has even changed his own story. When asked at the National Defense Committee about the possibility that the accident was caused by a mine, he replied, ?In 2008, when I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was talk about mines, so we collected all of them.? Minister Kim added, ?There is no possibility it was a mine.? But when some of the lawmakers pointed out that the possibility of a mine floating up after being buried by various pressures at a low depth in the mud or flats should be noted in the investigation, Kim replied, ?It could have been a North Korean mine that floated into our area.? 

The quote was reprinted worldwide, in nearly every outlet "NK mine may have caused sinking" They didn't read between the lines that the guy was intimating that there are other ways to kill a ship....
 
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Hamilcar    More data.   3/31/2010 12:39:30 AM
 
The type torpedo the Yugoslavs used was their version of  the 53-56 torpedo.
 
 
The data should be for the simplest air flask version of the fish. Its not much more advanced than a Mark XIV. 
 
H.
 
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Reactive    http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/03/31/2010033100669.html   3/31/2010 12:40:30 AM

New Clues to Sinking of the Cheonan Emerge

More pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place Tuesday, five days since the Navy corvette Cheonan sank in an unexplained explosion near the maritime border with North Korea. The most significant new information is that the ship broke in half almost immediately.

&e670; New Facts

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had initially announced that the Cheonan went under because there was a hole in the stern, but night-vision footage shows that that the ship broke in two and sank right after the explosion. That would seem to rule out that it simply struck a rock.

But it remains unclear whether the explosion was internal or external.

Some survivors including the captain testified that the ship shot up about 50 cm above the surface from the impact of the blast, which is unlikely to be a result of bombardment from a coastal artillery battery or a missile attack.

A missile would not be powerful enough to break the ship in two. Navy ships are made up of a multitude of small compartments to reduce impact and the risk of flooding, in the case of the Cheonan more than 100.

That leaves a mine or torpedo, which are powerful enough to cause that amount of damage if they explode right beneath the hull, causing a "bubble jet effect" that can break the keelblocks of a ship.

No survivors smelled powder or suffered burns, which makes it less likely that there was an internal explosion.

&e670; Open Questions

To find the exact cause of the blast, investigators must first of all check damage to the hull. The direction of the blast will show whether the explosion was internal, in which case the hull would be bent outward, or external, bending it inward.

There was no hole in the hull but a large cross-sectional area was severed. It will take some time to examine the entire area of the bent hull, and that will be possible only after the wreck is salvaged, experts say.

Once it is clear where the blast came from, investigators need to find evidence such as shrapnel to determine what kind of ordnance caused the blast. If found, any remnants of the weapon will also show whether it was North or South Korean.

But a military source said the chances are slim that any identifiable shrapnel from an exploded mine or torpedo is found.
 
 
The media is slowly working it out, piece by piece.... only question I can see as open is whether any South Korean ships/subs loosed torpedos that night, pretty sure we'd know by now...

 
 
 
 
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Hamilcar       3/31/2010 12:45:46 AM


 

The type torpedo the Yugoslavs used was their version of  the 53-56 torpedo.

 


 

The data should be for the simplest air flask version of the fish. Its not much more advanced than a Mark XIV. 


 

H.

Had to fix the links.
 
H.
 
 
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Reactive    Cheers   3/31/2010 1:02:40 AM
I would hope the explosive used in those torpedos can be identified from seabed samples, and it should be present as residue to some degree on the hull... Any idea what the charge was comprised of?
 
I really just can't see what else it could possibly be, having ruled out at the very least anything 50's vintage, any moored influence mines that could have been laid in that area, same goes for bottom mines, and that's assuming they even have these weapons in the first place, we certainly know that they have torpedos.....
 
Only thing I can't figure out, why wouldn't an inbound torpedo be detected by a vessel optimised for ASW roles?


 
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Hamilcar       3/31/2010 1:36:25 AM
I presume the Russians used a variant of Torpex (RDX) in their warheads, with some kind of  powdered metallic agent additive to enhance the pulse of their torpedo's water hammer effect. Chemistry is chemistry. 
 
I have no idea of what a DPRK copy of a Yugoslav copy of the Russian export model might contain as explosive. That's the honest truth.
 
I'm also going to say again that a small submarine is just one of many possible agents of effect.This is sheer speculation right now.
 
The only thing I can tell you is that if the Cheonan was in roiled water very close inshore, the hydrophone watch might not have heard a torpedo launch from deep water against the surf surge. The noise pickup is that bad on a beach shelf as the waves crash in-especially if you do not expect an ambush deep across your side of the DMZ line.
 
I do not say its impossible. Its very unlikely, These same Pyongyong  idiots are the same types who seized the USS Pueblo. I wouldn't put anything past them, including mass murder, coumterfeiting, insurance fraud, drug trafficking, missile and nuclear weapon trafficking, Asian woman slavery and prostitution, germ warfare, general democide, and when it comes to that elite ruling class and the thugs who prop it up, any perversion or depravity Humanly conceivable. That regime is an absolute horror that makes Idi Amin's Uganda, or the Saudis look civilized . YC did not even begin to describe those bandits, who enslave the North Korean people in detail, and he knows them far better than I do. 
 
H.
           
     
 
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