Wang Qilin: Precision Within a Hand's Breadth, a Course That Reaches Far
Profile: Wang Qilin, helmsman-signalman technician (舵信技师) aboard a Navy submarine unit, Master Sergeant First Class (一级军士长), recipient of one Second-Class Merit citation and two Third-Class Merit citations.
In the eyes of most people, the deep sea is a mysterious and romantic world. But for a submarine helmsman-signalman (舵信兵), there is no scenery beneath that dark blue expanse — only the numbers flickering across instrument panels and the heavy weight of responsibility on one's shoulders. This is the battle station that controls a submarine's course and depth, and it is the bond that ties me tightly to my country's deep waters.
It was a long-distance navigation exercise many years ago. That night the wind and waves were fierce, and not long after the submarine left port, we encountered a subsurface undercurrent. The submarine rolled from side to side, and a wave of dizziness hit instantly. I clenched my teeth and concentrated completely, holding the submarine on its prescribed heading. Just as the submarine was about to clear the undercurrent zone, the helmsman beside me spotted something wrong: "The compass needle has failed — the log reading is dropping fast!"
I tried to put the helm hard over to bring us around, but the rudder angle did not change in the slightest. At that moment, a thought that made my blood run cold surfaced in my mind: the submarine had been caught in a fishing net.
A fishing net in the deep sea is an "invisible killer" that no submarine ever wants to encounter. Once entangled, the best case is damage to the propeller; the worst case is the submarine losing all power and being trapped on the seabed.
"Captain, report! The stern propeller is suspected to be fouled in a fishing net!" I drew a deep breath and forced down the thunderclap of alarm in my chest. I knew full well that every second at that moment bore on the safety of the entire boat, and any panic would be fatal.
"Flood the buoyancy trim tanks!" "Ahead four, right full rudder!" Commands rang out one after another inside the compartment. I gripped the helm wheel with both hands, simultaneously replaying in my mind the submarine's track and the direction of the current to judge where the net was fouled, and executing the captain's orders — trying to use the force of the current, combined with the boat's turning motion, to tear an opening in the net.
As the helm wheel turned, a sharp "snap" rang up from the bottom of the boat, and my eyes lit up — that was the sound of the net breaking. I seized that fleeting moment decisively and rapidly adjusted the submarine's attitude. The submarine glided smoothly forward, like a great deep-sea whale breaking free of its bonds.
"Heading restored to normal!" The young helmsman's voice was filled with excitement. Only then did my taut nerves finally ease, and I realized my back was already soaked through with sweat.
That heart-stopping experience of breaking free once again confirmed the saying: in the deep sea, details are the boundary between life and death.
Over the years, young helmsmen have often asked me: "Why can your hands stay so steady even in a crisis?" I tell them: "The submarine is our home. You have to get to know every valve, every line of piping, and the submarine's 'temperament' (脾气) under different sea conditions." That knowledge is pressed out second by second over time. Every precise dive and ascent, every effort to maintain "zero depth deviation" (深度差零) while holding steady in surging swells — behind each of these lies tens of thousands of repetitions of monotonous, rigorous training.
On the eve of one major mission, an expert proposed that, in order to raise the mission standard, the submarine's depth deviation had to be held within 0.5 meters. Anyone familiar with submarines knows that the underwater environment is complex and ever-changing, and controlling a behemoth weighing several thousand tons with that degree of precision is anything but easy.
"We can try!" Faced with the challenge, I did not hesitate for a moment. In the at-sea training that followed, I brought along a video camera specifically to record my own operating movements. After returning to port, I played the footage back frame by frame and studied it repeatedly. "That rudder angle was too small." "That rudder correction came too late." I wrote down every detail in a notebook and engraved them in my mind.
On the day of the mission, I locked my eyes on the depth gauge and gripped the helm wheel with both hands. Upon reaching the prescribed depth I reported immediately, and the mission was completed successfully: I held the depth deviation to within 0.1 meters, and the heading deviation was nearly half the margin that had originally been specified.
Precision within a hand's breadth, a course that reaches far (方寸有度，航迹自远). Thirty years have flowed by in silence, like a deep-sea undercurrent. From those early days of holding my breath in concentration when facing complex sea conditions, to the calm composure of knowing this submarine's every temperament as if it were second nature — my hands have long since become one with this small helm wheel. This silent track through the water is the heartfelt declaration I have written to the deep blue ocean, and to my great motherland.