Yugo-class submarine

The Yugo class submarine is a class of four midget submarines used primarily for infiltration and espionage by North Korea. The Yugo class was given its name because it was built to plans supplied to North Korea by Yugoslavia in 1965.^[2]

Design[]

The Yugo-class is a family of midget submarines which are not all identical. The displacement is either the standard 90 tons of the original Yugoslavian design for the early units, or 110 tons for the later units. Armament is either a pair of 400 mm torpedo tubes (early units) or a pair of 21 in (533mm) short torpedo tubes (later units).^{[citation needed]}

All units have the same range: 550 nautical miles (1,020 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) on the surface and 50 nautical miles (93 km) at 4 knots (7.4 km/h) submerged.^{[citation needed]}

History[]

The final vessel was built in the 1980s, after which they were superseded by the Sang-O-class submarines. On June 12, 1998, one out of six submarines was captured by the South Koreans.^[2][3]

In the early 2000s, Vietnam "gained experience" with these craft prior to ordering Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines for denial of area capabilities, specifically against China's fleet per the Foreign Policy Research Institute.^[4]

In March 2016, it was announced that the North Korean Navy had lost one of the ships during exercises.^[5][6][7]

Operators[]

•  North Korea^[8]
•  Vietnam: Purchased in 1997.^[2] These were used for swimmer delivery operations aside from conventional submarine operations.^[2] The purchase was done by bartering.^[9] Kim Jong-il personally approved of the delivery to make amends for not paying Vietnam for purchasing 20,000 tons of rice.^[10]

References[]