Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Conventional submarine update

While this is still early, but it looks like a new type of conventional submarine has been launched in WuChang shipyard. Some on the Chinese forum are calling this an improved Yuan, but I see this to be quite different with quite noticeable differences in the sail, the height/location of hump, the shape of bow and the hull in general. Here is a good shot of it:

3 comments:

Meng-yuan said...

Most of the discussions on Chinese forums call this Type 039C, which seems reasonable to me. Making minor changes to the sail and outer hull is not too hard. It is in fact what they did going from Song to Yuan.

Have you heard the news that Dalian has officially started work on a Type 001A as of this month?

Feng said...

The change from Song to Yuan is actually pretty large.

Meng-yuan said...

You are right. It turns out that this new sub is indeed a minor change to 039B that will not have its own moniker. New report indicates that the first 8 039B suffered from excessive hydrodynamic noise and the PLAN refused to accept the 9th one in its original form. The shipbuilder was forced to go back to the drawing board and make some changes.