I am rather interested to know how come the chinese missile failed to sink a 1,075 ton corvette even after it hit the boat????
INS Hanit is still in Israeli service. The incident killed only 4 men.
GB
And the impact was at the waterline at that. This is a corvette, not a capital ship, like an AEGIS-class ship or aircraft carrier. A waterline impact usually leave the ship the typical 'dead-in-the-water' condition, vulnerable to repeat attack if the first attack did not critically injured the ship. The crew even managed to get home on their own power. It indicate at least a couple of important items for us observers to mull over: missile warhead yield and ship construct.
That said...These attacks are not designed to literally sink a ship, although a sinking would be a bonus, but rather intended to inflict enough severe damage to tactically remove the ship from the battle. If a rescue effort is started, and usually do, then there are now two ships tied up, depleting that force further of combatants.
If we are to take seriously the Israeli side of the story, then
IF the ship's defenses had been activated, the odds of having an alternate version of events would be better than 50/50. In less than three seconds, a ship can deploy several chaff blooms that would electronically be thousands of square km in area, totally blanketing the missile's radar view. Same for IR flares. Successful seduction/distraction tactics was what happened to an allied fleet in Desert Storm when Iraqi land forces launched several Chinese-derived anti-ship missiles at the fleet.