The British Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier the HMS Queen Elizabeth tracked down a Chinese submarine while deployed in the South China Sea, as newly released footage revealed.
According to the U.K. Sun, when the incident happened, the HMS Queen Elizabeth was on a seven-month tour of Asian waters. The encounter happened in 2021 but has now been revealed in a new BBC documentary, The Warship: Tour of Duty.
The £3.2 billion HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK’s biggest-ever warships, is capable of carrying up to 40 aircraft. The footage shows how the boat was caught lurking near the aircraft carrier before being detected by HMS Queen Elizabeth.
“If this had been in a different scenario, a conflict situation, it would have proven that we’d have detected something, in ample time, protected the main body of the carrier. Then you could have started a weapon chain against the submarine that was detected to neutralise the threat,” an officer said, “So we beat them to the draw; 1-0 Queen Elizabeth.”
The frigate HMS Richmond, which watches over HMS Queen Elizabeth as it travels through the South China Sea, was the first to notice the Chinese Kilo-submarine.
The team needed to drop a number of sonobuoys—highly sensitive sonar devices—to warn the aircraft carrier in order to detect the submarine, so they dispatched a specialized helicopter to locate the stalking boat underwater.
“We’ve identified one vessel down 20 nautical miles to the south of the force,” a crew member aboard the chopper said, moments later after dropping the sonobuoys.
Officers ultimately came to the conclusion that they had come upon a Chinese Kilo-class submarine.
One naval officer said, according to the U.K. Mirror, “So what we thought was a submarine, is now definitely a submarine. It’s not a whale.”
The incident comes after last month it was reported that Russian airplanes undertook menacing maneuvers toward HMS Queen Elizabeth.
To deal with the threat, the cruiser was compelled to launch its own F-35 stealth fighters.
Watch the video below for more details:
Sources: WesternJournal, Mirror, Telegraph, SunUK