India's Most Fearless 2 by Shiv Aroor & Rahul Singh

Author:Shiv Aroor & Rahul Singh [Aroor, Shiv & Singh, Rahul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9789353055684
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

8

‘Climb over Me, Get to the Submarine!’

Lieutenant Commander Firdaus Mogal

Arabian Sea, 220 km off the Mumbai coast

30 August 2010, 6.55 a.m.

‘THREE MEN OVERBOARD, SIR!’

Seventy feet from where he stood watch on the periscope tower, Lt Cdr Firdaus Mogal had just witnessed three sailors on the submarine’s back being violently flung several feet out into the churning Arabian Sea.

The sun had just risen, and as the submarine violently bobbed and pitched in the swell, it was clear to the Executive Officer (XO in military parlance) that the three heads in the water were drifting helplessly away—and fast. He knew a minute wasted would mean the possibility of losing those men. Using his walkie-talkie, he quickly relayed what had happened to the control room. A reply crackled back in. It was the submarine’s CO, informing Lt Cdr Firdaus that two sailors were being sent up to go after the three men who had been thrown overboard.

‘There’s no time, I’m going after them,’ Lt Cdr Firdaus shouted down the shaft to the submarine’s bridge. As he did so, he saw two combat divers hastily clambering up the ladder from the control room to join him. As they heaved themselves up through the hatch, the three men felt a familiar wave of vibrations course through the submarine. Their CO had just switched the submarine’s engines slowly back on to stand by for the rescue.

And just as the three leapt off the back of their submarine into the heaving swell, Lt Cdr Firdous knew he was about to enter a realm he loved and felt most comfortable in.

Mumbai naval dockyard

Fifteen hours earlier

‘All set and good to go, Sir,’ Lt Cdr Firdaus said, as he welcomed the submarine’s CO on board at the jetty. Cdr Gangupomu Murali, the last to walk the gangplank leading into the submarine, returned the younger officer’s salute. With the full crew on board, the submarine was ready to depart. The submarine skipper and his second-in-command would be leading a crew of forty on a mission to practise action in a situation that all submariners see in their worst nightmares.

The 211-feet-long and twenty-four-year-old INS Shankush dived beneath the surface shortly after sailing out of Mumbai’s harbour. The German-built Type 209, one of four attack submarines that the Indira Gandhi government had ordered in 1981, headed straight out into the Arabian Sea for a combat war game that seemed straight out of a Cold War-era film.

INS Shankush was all set to play the quarry in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, as part of an annual exercise with the French Navy code named ‘Varuna’. From the first week of August onwards, the submarine would test the fearsome tracking and detection capabilities of two warships—the Indian Navy’s INS Brahmaputra and the French Navy’s FNS Dupleix —both purpose-built to hunt and destroy submarines. The crew of Shankush , on its part, would need to dodge the two marauding warships using a combination of silence and evasive electronic techniques. The ships wouldn’t be dropping real weapons at the submarine, and INS Shankush wouldn’t be letting loose any of its deadly torpedoes.

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