Every so often a rare PLAN submarine photo bubbles up from the Chinese internet, and today we’ve got a good one. The crew group photo below (yes, submarine pun fully intended) was taken in September 2003 at the Han‑class SSN 401 decommissioning ceremony.
The boat actually looks in decent shape — not surprising - considering she never racked up a huge number of nautical miles. Han 401 (Changzheng‑1) was China’s first attempt at a nuclear‑powered attack submarine, built during the fog of the Cultural Revolution, when “learning to weld a pressure hull without a political campaign interrupting the reactor lab” was a real engineering challenge.
High‑level specs for context:
- Length: ~98 m
- Displacement: ~5,500 tons submerged
- Speed: ~25 knots
- Armament: six 533 mm torpedo tubes
Say what you will about the Han class — trust me, I’ve said worse — but it laid the foundation for everything that followed.
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