In the early morning of March 23, 1985, on the surface of the Yellow Sea shrouded in sea fog, the patrol boats of the Rokk Navy that were patrolling suddenly found that there were 3 warships in the thick fog!
The people on board suddenly became nervous, there had been no training tasks in this area recently, the 3 warships were obviously foreign warships, and they immediately sent an alarm to the base while closely monitoring their movements.
"Could it be a warship from the north?" One of the officers raised his own questions with the captain.
The captain, who was observing the situation with a telescope, said, "Absolutely not, their warship is not so big!" ”
As soon as these words were uttered, a sense of fear suddenly surged into the hearts of everyone present. There are only a few countries near the Yellow Sea, they are not their own or the north, then the only thing left is China (Note: South Korea calls the Yellow Sea "West Sea").
As the South Koreans feared, these 3 warships were indeed our warships. But why are they near South Korea? This has to start with a vicious incident that occurred two days ago inside our Navy.
On the afternoon of March 21, a certain unit of the Navy's North Sea Fleet dispatched six torpedo boats from the Qingdao base to the Surface of the Yellow Sea to perform daily training tasks.
One of the torpedo boats, numbered 3213, acted as a command boat carrying 19 naval officers and men. After the exercise ended at 7 o'clock in the evening, the troops returned to the base one after another, and the No. 3213, as a command boat, walked behind the end of the hall. However, what no one expected was that its return voyage was full of blood and twists and turns.
After determining that several other speedboats had already embarked on their return journey, acting captain Zhang Xiaosheng also issued a return order.
But at this time, Du Xinli, a telegraph soldier, broke into the operation room, and he still had a submachine gun in his hand. Zhang Xiaosheng immediately sensed that there was something wrong with the atmosphere, but when he was about to question the other party what he was going to do, Du Xinli pulled the trigger.
Accompanied by the "click" sound of the submachine gun, Zhang Xiaosheng immediately collapsed in a pool of blood.
Without the slightest hesitation, the evil bullets then shot at 7 other people in the operating room, resulting in 5 more people killed on the spot and 2 injured. The torpedo boat was not very large, and the people outside the operation room heard the gunshots and immediately ran to check what was happening. What we saw was the tragic situation of our comrades being shot and killed, and the murderer was the Brothers of The Robe Ze who were born and died together in the past!
Some people are very alert, the first time they realized that something big might have happened, and wanted to take out the firearms from the weapons cabinet for emergency. However, when they ran to the weapons cabinet, they found that the cabinet had long been locked, and next to them stood a man with a pistol, who was Wang Zhongrong, an electric aviation soldier on the boat.
Wang Zhongrong pointed a gun at them: "You all give me honesty!" The relationship is usually quite good, and we don't want to embarrass you! fast! Let me in the cabin and stay!
Soon several other people were also forced into the cabin by Du Xinli with guns. Du Xinli let Wang Zhongrong watch over them, then ran to the wheelhouse himself, turned the bow of the ship and sped toward the east.
Wounded officers and men
After about nine hours, the hijacked torpedo boat was completely out of fuel and could only drift on the surface of the sea. Du Xinli and Wang Zhongrong calculated that they should have reached the vicinity of South Korea by now, so they fired signal bombs into the sky in the night, hoping to attract the attention of the other side.
Unexpectedly, the signal bomb that was fired did not respond, and the two sighed and could only continue to wait.
It wasn't until noon on March 22 that the two men saw a South Korean fishing boat going out to sea, and they didn't want to let go of this life-saving straw, so they waved desperately at the fishing boat and wanted it to lean over.
Discover South Korean fishermen in torpedo boats
However, the torpedo boat is a torpedo boat after all, and the South Korean fishermen on the opposite boat do not understand Chinese, so naturally they dare not easily approach, so they choose to notify the military police at the first time.
South Korean military police were at one point excited when they heard fishermen say that there were unidentified torpedo boats, because it might be from the north, but then their hearts sank when they heard the fishermen report that they couldn't understand each other's language at all. After all, if it was really a person from the north, it would not be completely incomprehensible in any case.
South Koreans have a hunch that this time they may encounter a very difficult problem, but this is the end of the matter, and now they can only harden their scalps.
Soon, the South Korean patrol boat approached the 3213 torpedo boat, which had lost power, and they boarded the torpedo boat to see the tragic situation on the boat, and after a preliminary understanding of the situation, the South Koreans transferred Du, Wang, and the rest of the crew to their own boats, and then dragged the lost torpedo boat back to shore. They secretly took the dead and the wounded to the hospital, while the rest were all taken into custody to learn more about the situation.
negotiation
Meanwhile, on the other side of the sea, the Chinese Navy had already begun to search for the 3213.
Since 3213 did not return to base at the scheduled time and lost all contact information, our Navy's warships, aircraft, and submarines quickly began searching the waters of the Yellow Sea.
However, the sea was vast, it was at night, and the weather conditions were not good, so the search did not progress at first.
By the day of March 22, the scope of our search and the forces involved in the search were further expanded, and some of the ships had come to the vicinity of South Korea, and by this time, 3213 had actually fallen into the hands of South Korea, and we had roughly expected such an outcome.
In addition, there have been cases of defectors using South Korea as a transit station before, in order to give the other side a wake-up call and urge them to return all their personnel and ships, so our ships have deliberately cruised around South Korea to put pressure on South Korea.
In the early morning of March 23, three Chinese warships, flying international signal flags indicating rescue, appeared in the waters around South Korea to carry out search missions, which led to the scene we mentioned at the beginning.
When the ROK saw the Chinese warship driving to its side, it was like a needle felt, and the ROK warship that came immediately sent a signal to our warship to withdraw, but it was refused, and the warships of the two countries thus formed a confrontation situation.
Although there are only 3 warships on the other side at its own doorstep, South Korea is obviously very insufficient. In the ensuing confrontation, South Korea not only sent more warships to reinforce, but also sent aircraft to continuously conduct close reconnaissance of Chinese warships.
Chinese warships are also waiting in strict formation, all kinds of air defense and anti-ship weapons have been activated, the air has suddenly tensed up, and a Sino-Korean naval battle seems to be about to break out!
Time passed minute by minute, and Koreans naturally had no way to retreat, but they did not want to fight with China, and could only pray in their hearts that the other party would let go first.
At this time, their "prayers" seemed to have worked, and the Chinese warships actually took the initiative to choose to retreat. Is it because our warships on the front line are afraid of South Korea?
Apparently not, but they received the evacuation instructions from above, the South Korean side has relaxed, promised to take the initiative to properly solve the problem of the No. 3213 torpedo boat, and the purpose of military pressure has been achieved.
Handover
It turned out that since the Chinese warships sailed near South Korea, there has been a quarrel within South Korea.
South Korea's Defense Ministry clamored to strike Chinese warships by force, while South Korea's Foreign Ministry sneered: Do you want to go to war with China again? If you lose again, don't expect us to wipe your ass!
The two sides argued, and finally the South Korean Defense Ministry agreed to leave the Foreign Ministry with 24 hours.
At that time, China and South Korea did not recognize each other and did not establish diplomatic relations (Note: from 1949 to 1992, Chinese mainland always called South Korea except on a few occasions), so the South Korean Foreign Ministry finally sent the message to China after several turns. After receiving the statement from the ROK, China withdrew the warships that were at the forefront of the confrontation.
As the Chinese warships left, South Korea's tight strings loosened, and instead began to deal with Incident 3213 with care.
hand over
With just experience, coupled with the fact that South Korea is about to host the Asian Games (Note: South Korea hosted the 10th Asian Games in 1986), it is indispensable to need China, the largest country in Asia, to support the scene, so South Korea's handling of the 3213 incident is very wise, that is, to return all the ships and personnel involved to the Chinese mainland.
During this period, there were also a small number of restless forces that tried to use this incident to create momentum for themselves, and also used the "diplomatic relations" with South Korea to obstruct it. However, South Korea was not disturbed by this and always adhered to the principle of returning the ship and all personnel.
In order to save their lives, the traitors Du Xinli and Wang Zhongrong, who knew that they could not escape the blame, had offered to seek so-called "political asylum", but the South Korean side did not agree to it, nor did they allow the two people any chance to appear in public. South Korea has insisted to the outside world that "the incident that took place on the torpedo boat is an ordinary brawl incident with no political implications," in order to silence some people.
Of course, South Korea also has a demand, that is, to ask China to apologize for the previous confrontation.
Although South Korea's move is more or less to fight for face, it is an unavoidable fact here that at that time, because of the urgent mood of the important people, our warship did enter the territorial waters of the ROK, but now that the ROK has promised to return the ship, China conveniently submitted a memorandum of apology to the ROK through the ROK Consulate General in Hong Kong. South Korea gladly accepted this and quickly handed over all the people and ships involved to China.
On March 28, 1985, after a prior agreement, China and south Korea carried out the handover work at sea.
The bodies of the 6 martyrs who died were buried on the torpedo boat No. 3213 and left with 11 other crew members. Before that, the traitors Du Xinli and Wang Zhongrong had been tied up by the South Korean military police and taken to the cabin in advance and locked up, and what awaited them would be severe punishment by the military court.
Although they had begged the South Koreans to save their lives, when they shot and kidnapped their comrades who lived day and night, did they ever think that there would be such an ending?
Content Source:
Wikipedia entry "Torpedo boat incident No. 3213" and so on