Taiwan goes to sea in steel coffins
By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - To score against his domestic political opponents, gain leverage in
negotiations with Beijing, and assure Washington that his country remains
committed to defending itself, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou presents himself
as a commander-in-chief who insists on a military with the highest standards.
Yet despite the appeal Ma's style has to the general audience, a glimpse behind
the scenes of Taiwan military affairs sometimes reveals neglect that on the
daily basis puts Taiwanese
servicemen and women's lives at risk. Arguably the most hair-raising examples of
this are the island's two Guppy-class submarines.
Built in the World-War-II era, they are the oldest serving submarines of any
navy on the planet, and unsurprisingly, they are beginning to fall apart. While
Ma's Kuomintang (KMT) government wastes its breath by persistently requesting
the fanciest weapons the US has on offer, the clock ticks. The more often the
age-old Guppies leave their port, the likelier is the day they will become steel
coffins for their crews. Their deaths - or indeed even more so their rescue -
could then well bring about weighty repercussions for Taiwan's political fate. ell bring about weighty repercussions for Taiwan's political fate.
While China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has roughly 60 submarines
under its command, Taiwan's navy has four. Although the administration of former
US president George W. Bush in 2001 announced an arms-sales package that
included eight boats, procurement has proved difficult as the US ceased building
diesel subs in the 1950s, and the remaining manufacturing countries have little
interest in putting their lucrative relations with Beijing into jeopardy for
coming to Taiwan's aid.
The US at one stage offered to arrange the procurement of fairly priced vessels
decommissioned by the Italian Navy, but Taiwan somewhat stubbornly insisted on
new ones. Moreover, a program to locally build submarines has so far been unable
to get the support of Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND). But
nonetheless, what has been by far the biggest factor keeping Taiwan from
obtaining decent submarines is a lack of consensus among the island's
notoriously feuding political parties. And while those bicker, the state of the
subs the Taiwan Navy operates has become severe.
Two of the Taiwanese subs are Dutch-built, modified Zwaardvis-class attack
submarines, each accounting for 25 years of service. The other two boats are
US-built Guppies, the oldest operational submarines in the world. Just how
spine-chillingly antiquated these subs are is illustrated by the story of their
development. The US Navy obtained the Guppy technology by testing and reverse
engineering captured Nazi U-boats. This is the state of technology that Taiwan
still sends to plough the seas in 2010.
Neither the Sea Lion nor the Seal - as the Taiwanese Guppies are
named - are equipped with torpedoes, as the boats are used exclusively for
training. During naval exercises, the Guppies are assigned to simulate PLAN
subs, allowing surface ships to practice anti-submarine warfare (ASW)
techniques. After an overhaul in the early 1960s, the boats could dive to 125
meters, yet by the late 1990s, a commander wouldn't have dared to exceed a depth
of 60 meters. Now, because of the growing fear of accidents, the Guppies stay on
the ocean's surface as much as they can.
So must Taiwan's navy really resort to submarines of such a biblical age for its
ASW drills? Apparently, it must.
"A simulator can be used as an alternative. But training in a real environment
is also necessary", says Arthur Ding, a cross-strait military-affairs expert at
Taipei's National Chengchi University.
It is hard to imagine how sailors who grew up with mobile phones and game
consoles would feel in a submarine welded together in the 1940s. However, Wang
Jhy-perng, a military analyst with the Association for Managing Defense and
Strategies and a former officer on Taiwanese submarines, can tell a thing or two
about it.
Out of his nine years on board Taiwanese subs, Wang served as an officer for
about a year each on the Guppy-class Sea Lion and Seal. In an
interview with Asia Times Online, he recalls that although the crew members
always did their best to keep the Guppies neat and clean, the conditions on the
boats were light years from those of modern subs. Wang describes the mechanical
noise at any given time in the vessels as deafening, but what was all but
unbearable was the air quality. "Needless to say it is loud, but the lack of air
purification systems was simply outrageous", Wang says.
On a more upbeat note, Wang tells of the usual reaction of visiting active-duty
personnel of the US Navy. "The Americans were very keen on taking a Guppy out to
the sea because they could only see these old vessels in their favorite
Hollywood movies." Reportedly, veteran US navy sailors who once served upon the
two Guppies have long been trying to persuade Taiwan to return the submarines to
the US for display in a museum.
Apart from these anecdotes, however, to the submarine crews, the daily routine
is rather grim, and this not only because the average monthly salary of those on
board is as low as US$1,100. "As the Taiwanese subs are constantly involved in
drills, they often spend as much as 27 days per month at sea", Wang laments.
"This brings about a lot of physical and mental stress for the sailors."
Every time the two Guppies leave Kaohsiung's Tsuoying naval base, which is their
mother port and the Taiwan’s naval headquarters, both Naval Command and Fleet
Command bite their nails as the crew of 80 - in addition to 20-odd sailors who
are normally on board for training - take on significant risks. For someone like
Wang who has served on the vessels, it is just too easy to imagine how accidents
could come about. He describes the scene as vividly as if he has lived it in
nightmares. "On a dive, the crew could notice the vessel gaining depth faster
than it should. As soon as one of the old welding seams cracks open due to
outside pressure, sea water rushes in like a sword."
Wang further expounds that by the time the vessel reaches a depth of 20 meters,
it could well tilt, and the mobility of its control fins could become
suppressed. In theory, the crew could close off the compartment where the leak
occurred, as the boat is divided into nine of them. But after decades of
service, the Guppies' hulls have become fragile and are covered with multiple
deformations, so this could prove a difficult task in an emergency.
"Then, the communication systems would fail, and all the crew could do is grab
metal tools to bang on the hull," Wang adds.
The peacetime death of a crew of a hundred healthy young men will have a deep
impact on any nation - on the military, the political landscape and society as a
whole. Psychologically, a submarine accident affects a people more than the
crash of an airplane because the thought of having so many die a slow, grisly
and - seemingly until the last minute - still avoidable death on the ocean
floor while their families pray at the pier is hard to bear, even to those who
are not related to the victims.
If one day Tsuoying naval base was to lose contact with a Guppy, the navy
command would almost immediately turn to the US for help. However, the US Deep
Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) and Submarine Rescue Chambers (SRC) are likely
to be located at San Diego, California, a long way from the waters off Taiwan.
"A C-5 transport aircraft could fly the DSRV; that would take at least 50
hours", estimates Wang. "The support ship, however, would likely need 11 days to
make it".
By that time, Wang says, domestic and international TV crews would have long set
up station at Tsuoying. China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman would have held
a press conference in far away Beijing, offering the dispatch of two PLAN
submarine-rescue ships, which could be on the scene shortly after what China
calls "their Taiwanese compatriots" requested help.
When the island's TV screens are bombarded by news coverage with
computer-generated animations depicting the men on Taiwan's Guppies banging the
hull in two hundred meters of water, and footage showing their wives and
children weeping in despair on the shore, the question of how President Ma could
politically afford to refuse Beijing's offer would be a rhetorical one. So would
the question of whether a rescue by the PLAN would have a significant impact on
how the Taiwanese see the KMT's Beijing-friendly policies.
Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based journalist.
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