If not for the three explosions onboard the ill-fated INS Sindhurakshak believed to have been caused by ordnance blast, the diesel-electric submarine of the Navy that was docked in Mumbai would have set sail for its home port of Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.
Even as the submarine was being readied for its journey to its home port, the explosions took place within seconds of each other at 12.10 am -- the first one was minor in nature but the next two were major ones which badly damaged the vessel’s front portion.
Sindhurakshak was berthed in the Mumbai Naval dockyard between the two other ‘Kilo class’ submarines when the blasts occurred and this resulted in one other submarine, identified by the Navy as INS Sindhughosh, suffering minor damage after its casing’s rubber shield caught fire, sources at the Naval headquarters here said.
The third vessel was tasked to sail out of the dock just after midnight and it had successfully cast off to the sea ahead of the Sindhurakshak mishap.
The damaged vessel tilted towards its front and the rear fin was up in the air above the water surface for several hours, before the whole submarine sunk to a depth of seven metres in the Naval dockyard’s waterbed.
“We don’t have a reason right now for the blasts,” Navy chief D K Joshi said and in the same breath hazarded a guess that the two major explosions were indicative that it was due to the ordnance on board the vessel. “There are several ingredients that could have caused the explosions. There is ammunition, armament, fuel, oxygen bottles, battery pits that exude hydrogen and the acid fumes from the batteries. Either of these or any combination of these could have caused the explosion. But the two major explosions indicate it could be due to ordnance,” the Admiral told journalists in Mumbai.
The ordnance on board the vessel included torpedoes, mines and missiles such as the Russian-origin anti-ship ‘Klubs’.
“The primary explosion caused the bigger explosions, because the ordnance would have been ignited,” Joshi added. The Navy chief also referred to the February 2010 explosion on board the Sindhurakshak, which was the first-ever accident of this nature onboard any of the 10 ‘Kilo class’ submarines that India has been operating since April 1986, when the first INS Sindhughosh was commissioned into the Navy.
The 2010 mishap, which was triggered by hydrogen leakage from the battery compartment, occurred when the vessel was docked at its home port, Visakhapatnam. One of the sailors working in that compartment had suffered injuries and later he succumbed to injuries at the Naval hospital.
“Submarine accidents have always been catastrophic the world over,” he said, but without naming the major submarines mishaps.
One of the major submarine accidents in recent history involved the Russian Navy’s ‘Kursk’ submarine which went down in the Barents Sea off Russia’s Northern tip. The deadly explosion was caused by hydrogen leak after the vessel hit the sea bottom which accidentally set off the warheads. And all the 118 sailors onboard the Kursk perished in the August 2000 mishap.