VNI Chapres Incident (Napoleon's World)

The Chapres Incident was a standoff between the French Empire and Chinese Empire in April 1993, when the submarine VNI Chapres of the Marine Imperiale entered Chinese territorial waters and encountered a contingent of fellow Chinese ships and submarines off the southern Chinese coast. The Chapres, using a new experimental satellite tracking system, was in fact hundreds of miles away from where the satellite said they should have been - namely, off of the Mekong delta, which caused confusion.

The incident was noteworthy in that it was one the narrowest avoidances of nuclear armed conflict in world history - the Chinese had demonstrated in the past their willingness to deploy atomic bombs, as their two detonations against Burmese forces in 1976's Burmese War had shown. The captain of the Chapres, Gerard Etanieu, voted against engaging Chinese vessels despite the assurances of his crew that the French vessel was being agressed against. Two of the Chinese submarines, SV-3 and SV-7, were armed with nuclear missiles and the captains of both ships went on record after the Chinese government acknowledged the incident in 1996 as to saying that they would absolutely have fired their warheads at French targets in the region had the Chapres engaged them.

French Navy
The Marine Imperiale had been deployed in early 1992 to back up combat missions in Siam during the Siamese War. While early maneouvres by the Imperial Navy were limited to a naval blockade of Indochinese ports, the issues of rampant piracy in the South China Sea soon resulted in Marshal Jerome Richy expanding the flotilla's presence by deploying twenty submarines to back up the two squadrons of surface vessels already in the region, a move titled Operation Swordfish.

Six of the submarines used in Operation Swordfish were Class VI vessels, which had been commissioned starting in 1984 as part of Emperor Albert II's efforts to modernize the Marine Imperiale. Richy's predecessor, Marshal Nicolo de Brouchien, had been a former Admiral prior to his accession to Marshalship, and had been adamant about the deployment of the ultramodern submarines to active combat once a major conflict arose. Brouchien retired in 1990 just prior to the French deployment to Indochina.

The Class VI submarines were initially docked in Marseilles, but in 1990 were sailed by skeleton crews through the Sinai Canal before being outfitted with fresh permanent crews in Karachi. They would then rendezvous with the other fourteen submarines earmarked for Operation Swordfish at Singapore before beginning combat missions.

Swordfish officially began on February 20th, 1993 when the twenty submarines sailed out of Singapore's harbor and into the South China Sea. SEAMA vessels and other ships carrying supplies to the entrenched guerillas throughout Indochina were now at a direct threat from submarine warfare.

The Class VI submarines, besides having significantly quieter engines than their Class IV or V counterparts, were also the only ships in the South China Sea not carrying tactical nuclear warheads. While the tactical warheads were not particularly high yield, a mere 5 megatons apiece, the Class VI vessels had long-range torpedoes and a more efficient surface-to-air missile delivery system. They also relied on OMPI (L'Orbit a la Mer Placant l'Interface) satellites, which were a next-generation GPS system that could track submarines from space, through water, up to depths of one thousand feet. The OMPI had been developed by scientists at the University of Strasbourg and then been militarized in the late 1980's, and after successful testing between 1989 and 1991, was considered acceptable for active service by the time the Class VI submarines were deployed for Operation Swordfish in 1993.

After a month spent sinking pirate vessels and assisting in the blockade, four Class VI submarines, including the VNI Chapres, were sent east to investigate reports of Vietnamese naval activity off the Mekong Delta. The reconassaince mission was given permission to sink enemy vessels if engaged, and a Vietnamese translator was assigned to all four submarines.

On April 1st, the Chapres entered radio silence and began heading for its mission site - only it was actually headed to a location hundreds of miles north, about sixty miles off the coast of Hainan.