Violet Oboe
Junior Member
Re: Chinese sub thread
AFAIK the nice JL-1 pic is showing the first officially successful underwater launch from 092 on 9/27/88.
(although there are some speculations around that the real first sublaunch was indeed a year earlier in the fall of '87 and that the event in september '88 was ´staged´for internal and external propaganda purposes)
Actually China had to overcome severe obstacles in developing JL-1 since after some initial testing successes in '82-'83 there were also several (2-3) failures and partial failures in sep-oct '85.
Interestingly JL-1 has a striking resemblance to the US Polaris A-1/A-2/A-3 SLBM and the specs of both missiles are also very similar (Polaris A-2: 9.4 m, mass 14.7 t, core diameter 1.37 m , range 4600 km; Polaris A-1: 8.7 m, mass 12.7 t, core diameter 1.37 m, range 1900 km; JL-1: 10.7 m, mass 14.7 t, core diameter 1.4 m, range 1750 - 2250 km).
During the 70's and 80's the PRC and the US had a quite cozy relationship and it is well known that there was also existing close military cooperation directed against the common enemy the USSR. Probably the Pentagon gave the chinese a ´helping hand´in transferring valuable parts of the already obsolete Polaris technology but even today the incident is politically sensitive and remains classified (perhaps BOTH governments do not want that this goes public after more than 20 years have passed by since this would simply open a pandoras box of secret deals made during the sino-american honeymoon phase 1978-88!).
AFAIK the nice JL-1 pic is showing the first officially successful underwater launch from 092 on 9/27/88.
(although there are some speculations around that the real first sublaunch was indeed a year earlier in the fall of '87 and that the event in september '88 was ´staged´for internal and external propaganda purposes)
Actually China had to overcome severe obstacles in developing JL-1 since after some initial testing successes in '82-'83 there were also several (2-3) failures and partial failures in sep-oct '85.
Interestingly JL-1 has a striking resemblance to the US Polaris A-1/A-2/A-3 SLBM and the specs of both missiles are also very similar (Polaris A-2: 9.4 m, mass 14.7 t, core diameter 1.37 m , range 4600 km; Polaris A-1: 8.7 m, mass 12.7 t, core diameter 1.37 m, range 1900 km; JL-1: 10.7 m, mass 14.7 t, core diameter 1.4 m, range 1750 - 2250 km).
During the 70's and 80's the PRC and the US had a quite cozy relationship and it is well known that there was also existing close military cooperation directed against the common enemy the USSR. Probably the Pentagon gave the chinese a ´helping hand´in transferring valuable parts of the already obsolete Polaris technology but even today the incident is politically sensitive and remains classified (perhaps BOTH governments do not want that this goes public after more than 20 years have passed by since this would simply open a pandoras box of secret deals made during the sino-american honeymoon phase 1978-88!).
