China’s Type 039C submarine has just been revealed through a 14-second video on social media. That is enough to realize that the conning tower has a lot of similarities with the Swedish-made Saab A26 submarine.
A video has just been posted on the Chinese social network Tiktok, showing images of a new class of submarines – most likely Type 039C – made in China.
According to Chinese media, these images were shot on the Yangtze River. Although the clip is only 14 seconds long, it is enough to capture the design appearance of this Type 039C submarine .
Specifically, the submarine has a very unique conning tower design, with many angles running along the conning tower. This part of the conning tower is also quite low in height, compared to the length of the submarine’s hull.
Unfortunately, many details of the Type 039 C submarine were obscured by a nearby tugboat. However, just looking at the conning tower, many military experts have also seen the similarity of the Chinese-designed submarine class, with a type of submarine from Sweden.
Specifically, the design of the conning tower with many angles running along the hull. This design is confirmed by Sweden to help submarines reduce noise when diving.
In addition, the design of the conning tower in the form of a water drop rounded to the rear of the ship, will help improve the aerodynamic design of the ship. This will allow the submarine to run farther, consuming less energy.
The difficulty in designing this type of conning tower is that it is necessary to conduct a lot of tests in the wind chamber and in the water chamber, to find the optimal formula for calculating, determining the size and angle of the bend.
With China’s Type 039C submarine already using this design, it is likely that the Chinese side has tested and found the optimal conning tower formula, or Chinese intelligence has obtained important parameters. This is from the Swedish side.
It should be added that, although the Swedish Blekinge submarines are advertised with a new conning tower design, they are still only in model form, not yet fully built.
Revealing this extremely unique design to foreign countries while Sweden itself has not yet applied, will likely cause huge economic damage to this Nordic country.
Type 039C is a diesel-electric submarine following the success of the previous Type 039A and 039B classes. The above two classes of submarines, which have been very successful in the Chinese navy, have a modern design and can be considered “practical”.
Currently, China’s Type 039C submarines have also attracted a lot of international attention, although the revealed images of this new type of submarine are still very rare and meager.
A few days ago, a photo appeared on Chinese social media that showed the overall design of the Type 039C submarine at the newly built port. Although the image is not detailed and complete, it is still easy to recognize the unique design of the ship’s conning tower. However, nothing has been confirmed yet, this will be the final design of the Type 039C submarine.