Yugo-class submarine


The Yugo class submarine is a class of four midget submarines used primarily for infiltration and espionage by North Korea. The class is so named because it was built to plans supplied to North Korea by Yugoslavia in 1965.

Description

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 or a pair of 21 in short torpedo tubes.
All units have the same range: at on the surface and at submerged.

History

The final vessel was built in the 1980s, after which they were superseded by the Sang-O class submersibles. In 1998 one out of six submarines was captured by the South Koreans.
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 Red China's fleet per the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
In March 2016, it was announced that the North Korean Navy had lost one of the ships during exercises.