Returning to Taiwan from Japan after World War II, Taiwanese author Eikan Kyu (邱永漢) wrote about what he saw when he disembarked at Keelung.
“There was an overturned submarine lying by the quay in front of the railroad station, stranded like a beached whale, its belly protruding from the water; most of the nearby buildings had been decimated,” Kyu wrote in Choshui River: Selected Short Stories of Eikan Kyu (濁水溪:邱永漢短篇小說選).
From his description, this Japanese submarine berthed in the Port of Keelung had been destroyed by Allied fighters.
In November 1974, General Chiang Wei-kuo (蔣緯國), then the vice president of the Tri-service University, invited Oskar Munzel, a former German major general acting as chief consultant to the “Ming-teh-Gruppe” training Republic of China (ROC) military officers in Germany, to visit Taiwan and participate in a seminar with representatives of major units of the ROC armed forces to discuss the best way to defend Taiwan.
Munzel delivered a speech on what should be prioritized strategically to safeguard Taiwan and the outlying islands. The German army was restricted in its operations by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but senior military personnel were still allowed to use their experience to provide consultations to the ROC military.
Munzel emphasized the importance of moving government agencies, military command centers, naval and air force bases, supply depots and coastal defense equipment and facilities underground. The ROC military proceeded to construct underground installations to house major equipment and facilities, most likely as a direct result of Munzel’s recommendations.
The project that most people would be familiar with is the Chiashan Air Force Base, construction of which began in the 1980s, to create extensive underground hangars in Hualien County. The construction lasted seven years, with the physical infrastructure completed in January 1992. At the time, it was the largest underground construction project in the Far East, and is now one of the most important facilities for ensuring that the armed forces are protected.
According to media reports, in 1988, when two Dutch-made Hailung-class Sea Dragon submarines arrived from the Netherlands, the Ministry of National Defense started looking for a suitable cave in which to build a submarine base. However, the project was abandoned due to difficulties finding a suitable location and because the Netherlands did not sell any more of the submarines to Taiwan.
It was recently reported that a major obstacle to Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program had been overcome, with export licenses for certain “red zone” military technologies — imported technologies that the nation is unable to research and develop, or manufacture itself — having been approved by the US, clearing the way for a prototype of the indigenous submarine to be launched in September next year.
Having underwater military strength would surely boost Taiwan’s national defense capabilities and public morale. While the public digest this positive news, they must also remain aware of the threat from the skies, as they have seen in the war in Ukraine and the frequent incursions by Chinese jets constantly remind them of. This kind of threat is what Munzel warned the ROC military about decades ago.
Taiwan must waste no time in preparing a safe and proper home for the submarines soon to be added to the ranks of the nation’s armed forces.
Sung Chi-cheng is an assistant professor at Shih Hsin University’s Center for General Education and a former colonel instructor at National Defense University’s War College.
Translated by Paul Cooper
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number