A Chinese submarine once slipped past an entire U.S. carrier group and surfaced within torpedo range before anyone knew it was there.
Story Highlights
- On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, a Chinese Song-class submarine surfaced about five miles from the carrier USS Kitty Hawk near Okinawa, Japan.
- The carrier’s guard of about a dozen warships, a U.S. attack submarine and sub-hunting helicopters never detected it.
- A routine surveillance flight from the carrier spotted the sub only after it was already on the surface.
- China’s foreign ministry said it was not aware of the incident, and Beijing never explained it.
- The Navy retired Kitty Hawk in 2009 and sold her for scrap in 2021 for one cent.
A Submarine Nobody Saw Coming
Kitty Hawk was in the East China Sea near Okinawa when the Chinese sub came up. Beijing never said why the submarine surfaced there, and U.S. Pacific Command classified the details. The Song class is a 2,200-ton diesel-electric boat, meaning it runs on batteries while underwater, which makes it very quiet.
The carrier was a city at sea: about 80,000 tons, with more than 5,000 sailors aboard. Around her sailed roughly a dozen warships, an attack submarine and helicopters built to hunt subs. Even so, the Chinese boat came up about five miles away. That put the carrier inside range of the sub’s homing torpedoes, the kind that follow a ship’s wake.
On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song-class diesel-electric submarine surfaced undetected within five miles of the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk deep inside the defensive perimeter of the CBG in the East China Sea near Okinawa. pic.twitter.com/Ajs2uaBrIv
— Zephyrus(SendNukes)™ (@The_SharkSlayer) October 5, 2026
What Officials Said
The incident became public on Nov. 13, 2006, and the timing stung. It broke as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived in China for a goodwill visit. U.S. defense officials called the surfacing a provocative act.
Adm. William Fallon, then the top U.S. commander in the Pacific, said the incident “illustrates the primary reason” the U.S. wanted closer military ties with China. He warned that if a Chinese sub had wandered into an anti-submarine exercise, “this could well have escalated into something that was very unforeseen.”
Navy spokesman Lt. Sarah Self-Kyler said both vessels were in international waters and “there was no communication” between them. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, a Florida Republican, said he was upset that a Chinese sub had tracked the fleet and “we didn’t even know it.” China’s foreign ministry said it had not heard of the incident and that China’s defense policy is “based on self-defense.”
A Quiet Threat Under the Sea
Kitty Hawk was not the only carrier caught off guard by a small, quiet sub. In exercises that began in 2004, the Swedish submarine Gotland scored repeated pretend torpedo hits on the carrier USS Ronald Reagan without being caught. The Navy then leased the Gotland and her crew for two years to train its sub hunters out of San Diego. China went on to build a newer class of quiet submarines, the Yuan class, and has put more than a dozen into service.
From Flagship to Scrap for a Penny
The Navy retired Kitty Hawk in 2009. A veterans group tried to save her as a museum in Long Beach, California, but the Navy turned down the bid. In October 2021, the Navy sold her, along with the carrier USS John F. Kennedy, to International Shipbreaking Limited of Brownsville, Texas, for one cent each.
The penny price was not a bargain on a warship. The buyer took on the job of towing the hull to Texas and cutting it apart. Kitty Hawk left Bremerton, Washington, for the scrapyard on Jan. 15, 2022.
The 2006 surfacing and the 2021 sale are two separate chapters in one ship’s life. Together they show how China built up a quiet submarine force while one of America’s great carriers went from the front line to the scrapyard.
Sources:
19fortyfive.com, hnsa.memberclicks.net, warhistoryonline.com, 10news.com
