052C/052D Class Destroyers

jimmyjames30x30 said:

This is so funny! You probably don't know Chinese and hasn't seen much content of any Chinese language naval forum. Here is the story:

I believe it was in 2008, when the 167 Shenzhen visited Japan. And one Japanese military geek blogger went on board and did a blog post about his experience. He was pissed that there are "wooden doors" and "floor matts" inside, and said that these are terrible fire hazards. So his post got spread around extensively in Chinese military forum, and the PLA fans in China was even more pissed and demands an answer.

I believe it was 《军事纪实》of the CCTV-7 Channel that finally did a show (in 2012, 2013 I believe) explaining the practice and even showing that those doors and floor matts are made of fire proof materials. They even demonstrated this by torching the door and floor matts with a blow-torch.

The reason they did this was because it was seen as a very comforting environment for sailors onboard. Seeing the wooden color of doors and having floor matts to walk on. This is basically a Chinese navy culture now.

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jimmyjames30x30 said:

Yepp, but the Japanese guy in 2008 didn't know about that. To him, the floor matts as well as the "wooden" doors are fire hazards.

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it’s not the appearance of wood. Anything can be painted to look like wood. In most warships, doors to any watertight bulkhead will not be just a plain door, they will have clamps, dogs, quick acting levers or hand wheels or other means of quickly securing them against up to 1 atmosphere of excess pressure from either side

Video from a month ago. This is the 36th task force headed for the Gulf of Aden for escort duties. The lead destroyer is 119 Guiyang. This is the first time a Dalian made 052D lead the task force, and the first time a ship from the 10th Destroyer Division takes the lead. More progress as the "old man's home" unit, as the 10th once referred to by netizens, into a front line fighting force.



For a while the Aden missions has been a monopoly by the "elite" divisions of the Sixth and the Ninth, units that are heavy on 052C and 052D. But the last three missions, the choice of the Gulf of Aden missions has been spreading out to the divisions that have fallen behind due to their older ships, and now being upgraded into front line forces again. This started with the 34th for the 2nd Destroyer Division with 161 Hohhot taking the lead. The 2nd fell from grace from these missions after 168 Guangzhou had engine failure and had to be towed back, and 167 Shenzhen only performed this one time before she got refitted. After this, the 3rd Division, only equipped with Sovremennys, never had the opportunity because the PLAN apparently didn't allow or have the confidence to use the Sovs for these missions. The 3rd finally got its chance with the 35th mission with 131 Taiyuan. And now the 10th has its first chance to lead in the 36th mission.

jimmyjames30x30 said:

This is so funny! You probably don't know Chinese and hasn't seen much content of any Chinese language naval forum. Here is the story:

I believe it was in 2008, when the 167 Shenzhen visited Japan. And one Japanese military geek blogger went on board and did a blog post about his experience. He was pissed that there are "wooden doors" and "floor matts" inside, and said that these are terrible fire hazards. So his post got spread around extensively in Chinese military forum, and the PLA fans in China was even more pissed and demands an answer.

I believe it was 《军事纪实》of the CCTV-7 Channel that finally did a show (in 2012, 2013 I believe) explaining the practice and even showing that those doors and floor matts are made of fire proof materials. They even demonstrated this by torching the door and floor matts with a blow-torch.

The reason they did this was because it was seen as a very comforting environment for sailors onboard. Seeing the wooden color of doors and having floor matts to walk on. This is basically a Chinese navy culture now.

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Ok so I'll ask it here now but here in Taiwan there's also a story among many people that Chinese warships are third-tier low-quality crap because they would leak during large waves and storms as their doors are too flimsy to resist large waves and bad weather. There's also alleged footage of PLAN sailors freaking out in a flooding 052C but I'll have to find footage as I saw this many years ago on TV.

tupolevtu144 said:

Ok so I'll ask it here now but here in Taiwan there's also a story among many people that Chinese warships are third-tier low-quality crap because they would leak during large waves and storms as their doors are too flimsy to resist large waves and bad weather. There's also alleged footage of PLAN sailors freaking out in a flooding 052C but I'll have to find footage as I saw this many years ago on TV.

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I don't really think they know the constructions of a warship. There are a lot of Taiwanese who will believe anything to make themselves feel better. Besides, they don't have the necessary knowledge base to understand complex stuff like warship design or watertight cabin. It was a news documentary about a 052D sailing in a storm, and one of an open deck areas (basically an area not watertight has an observation door open. The sailors could just leave the door open and it will be no harm to the ship because water that got in those areas will just drain out of the ship via draining ducts. However, the sailors decided to work together to close that door under strong waves and storms.

Of course, you can't really explain this to the Taiwanese, because they won't listen what you say. They don't want common sense nor the truth, they want to feel good about themselves. They will interpret the story anyway they like to suit their rhetoric. I have even heard Taiwanese "military experts" on their TV shows that claim that Type 99A2 tank has worse armor technology than WW2 Germany tanks. This is laughable, but the Taiwanese like those kind of idiocy.

Richard Santos said:

it’s not the appearance of wood. Anything can be painted to look like wood. In most warships, doors to any watertight bulkhead will not be just a plain door, they will have clamps, dogs, quick acting levers or hand wheels or other means of quickly securing them against up to 1 atmosphere of excess pressure from either side

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Not every door on a naval ship needs to be watertight. Watertight doors are required on bulkheads and maybe installed at few other places. I've toured USS John C. Stennis and USS Stout (at Norfolk), and non-watertight doors vastly outnumber watertight ones. Both ships feature normal civilian-looking metal doors that wouldn't look out of place at a warehouse or a hospital utility room.

tupolevtu144 said:

Ok so I'll ask it here now but here in Taiwan there's also a story among many people that Chinese warships are third-tier low-quality crap because they would leak during large waves and storms as their doors are too flimsy to resist large waves and bad weather. There's also alleged footage of PLAN sailors freaking out in a flooding 052C but I'll have to find footage as I saw this many years ago on TV.

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in
There was an opening at the tail of the initial batch of 052C ship that opened inward. During the sailing in a rough sea the strong wave smashed the door open. Pretty sure they fixed that design.

I couldn't find the CCTV video but found the Taiwanese news report

Tam said:

I have seen doors made of metal with fake wood color, grain and patterns in trade shows, these doors coming from China. They're not just used in ships, they are used everywhere, especially with buildings with a tight fire code. These doors also don't rot and don't get eaten by termite.

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It’s not just the PLAN who does this. If you watch this footage taken onboard a USN SSN, you can see wood veneer all over the floor, walls and doors. By the looks of it, PLAN needs to do some catching up

vincent said:

in
There was an opening at the tail of the initial batch of 052C ship that opened inward. During the sailing in a rough sea the strong wave smashed the door open. Pretty sure they fixed that design.

I couldn't find the CCTV video but found the Taiwanese news report

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It was not a news, it was a CCTV-7 mini report show called 《军事纪实》. Go to CCTV-7 website and search for it.

Rear VLS. You get a glimpse of the internal structures.

How many 52Ds are in service now? Wikipedia seems to be missing alot.