INS Khukri was a Type 14 frigate of the
Indian Navy. She was sunk off the coast of Diu, Gujarat, India by the Pakistan
Navy Daphné-class submarine Hangor on 9 December 1971 during the Indo-Pakistani
War of 1971. This was the first warship sunk in action by a submarine since the
Korean War.Torpedoed and
sunk by Pakistan Navy submarine PNS Hangor on 9 December 1971
INS Khukri was one of the Blackwood
anti-submarine frigates built by Britain in the 1950s and inducted into the
Indian Navy towards the end of 1959. The Khukri, the Kirpan and the Kuthar were
designated as ‘second class anti-submarine frigates’.
During the 1971 war these three
anti-submarine frigates were pitted against Pakistan’s Daphne class submarines.
These submarines were built in France in the late 1960s and were the best
conventional submarines of that time. Pakistan had three of them – the Hangor,
the Mangro and the Shushuk. The range of the sonars aboard the F-14 Squadron,
that is, on the Khukri, Kirpan and Kuthar was approximately 2,500 m whereas the
detection capability of the Daphne submarines was approximately 25,000 m, that
is, ten times more.
INS Khukri went down with 18 officers and 178
sailors, including its captain Mahendra Nath Mulla (awarded MVC posthumously).
Young technical officer V.K. Jain, working with the experimental sonar, went
down too.
A story of the Western Naval
command Bombay Indian Naval Ship INS Khukri which was sunk in the 71 War - Letter
by retired Naval Officer Allan Rodrigues to Ms. Ameeta Mulla Wattal in response
to an article written by Ms. Ameeta, on why her father Capt. Mulla chose to go
down with his ship, INS Khukri in 1971:
December 23, 2010
Dear Ms. Ameeta Mulla Wattal,
I am an ex- Indian naval officer
who left the service honourably in 1994. I live in New Zealand, and work in
Australia and New Zealand these days.
This email refers to an article
you wrote some five years ago very poignantly, on your father the Late Captain
Mulla, pondering why he chose to go down with his ship.
The article obviously struck a
chord with many of your readers, and in the way of the internet, travelled the
world before it entered my mail box a few days ago, via a social network
maintained by the 42nd NDA and 51st IMA course.
I did not know your father
personally, but I feel I have always known him and for what he stood for, all
of my adult life. I missed the fighting in 1971 as I was cadet in the NDA at
the time, and only passed out and joined a warship at sea in June 1972, six
months after the war ended. In the event I became an Anti Submarine specialist
and along the way, I ended up commanding three warships including INS Himgiri
(also an anti submarine frigate, although a more modernised version of the
original Khukri). I retired after 20 years, joined industry, and eventually
moved across the Pacific and the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.
I only say this because it has
some context to the comments I make below, on the decision by your father to go
down with his ship. In doing so I hope to capture the circumstances (and
perhaps the greater purpose) of why captains of warships in extreme
circumstances, take such drastic actions that seem to lack purpose or reason
(particularly to the public at large). I'm sure many naval officers of senior
rank and certainly more qualified than me, may well have commented at length after
reading your article. I just felt I might throw some light on a take that has
largely been neglected. I know the pain never goes away and I apologise for any
anguish I might give you in the process, but I do believe that Captain Mulla
did something for the service that night, that has not been either understood
or recognised, by both the navy, and the public at large.
The Indian Navy of 1971 was a
different beast from the one we have today. Little was known about
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) at the time. We commissioned our first submarine
in 1968 in the then Soviet Union, and had barely begun operating a fledgling
submarine arm by 1970. Pakistan by contrast, had been operating submarines
since the early sixties. Ships like the Khukri and Kirpan supposedly
specialised in ASW, formed the vanguard against the fight against Pakistani
submarines. They had little in the way of operational experience against
submarines, and even less knowledge about the ocean environment.
The physics of detection can be explained
in simple non technical terms. The Khukri had sonar called the Sonar 170 which
was the best we had at the time. It had a maximum range (in laboratory
conditions) of only 1500 yards. We knew little about the harsh nature of the
environment underwater.
The seas in the tropical waters
off India's coastline are heated up in the morning and afternoons, raising
surface temperatures to ambient levels. The worst effect is in the afternoons.
The laws of physics then apply. They literally bend the sonar waves downwards,
severely limiting detection range. Since deeper waters are ice cold, there is
meeting point of the warm waters on the top and the cold waters below. This
meeting point is called the "layer" where the sonar beam bounces off
and is almost totally reflected upwards. There is very little penetration below
the layer. These layers lie between 30 and 60 metres depth in tropical waters,
and are exploited by expert submariners who are able to hide under it.
It took us another 15 years
after the war, all which I was professionally involved with in one way or then
other, to fully understand the nature of anti-submarine warfare, and to learn
how to work with the physical limitations imposed by a hostile ocean underwater
environment.
Submarines on the other hand are
not as handicapped, as they do not need to transmit on their sonars to detect a
ship. Their engines are silent. They can consequently listen out for a warship
and even identify a type of ship and its signature from the sound of its
engines. Skilled submariners hide beneath the layer and approach with stealth.
They only transmit at the last possible moment when they need a final range to
fire their torpedos.
Warships at sea in 1971 (and
Captain Mulla in particular) would have been more than aware of these
limitations. They would have known two simple facts. That a submarine at sea
would have already detected a surface ship long before the ship had even
reached any kind of detection range; That even if the warship did detect the
submarine, it would be at the penultimate moment, when the submarine had
already fired, (or was on the verge of firing) its torpedoes, giving the
warship a few minutes at best, to take avoiding action, let alone
counterattack.
The Pak submarine that sank the
Khukri used its environment to maximum advantage. In hind sight and over the
years, we developed better sonars and better tactics. We employed dedicated ASW
aircraft with sonobuoys and magnetic detectors, helicopter with dunking sonars,
and yes we spent a lot of time learning the harsh facts of the ocean
environment we were forced to operate in.
This is the context in which
ships put to sea in 1971, against an adversary who was well versed in using
submarines to maximum advantage. Our own ASW ships had little in the way of
riposte or as much experience we would have liked to have had before the war of
fighting submarines.
In the event every sailor at sea
recognises a moment of truth, when all of his training and skills are put to
the ultimate test. It is the moment when the ship beats to quarters and goes
into action against an enemy in sight, or an enemy that has been detected.
Khukri and Kirpan were operating
in submarine infested waters. The ship would have gone to "action
stations" against a submarine many times over, in the days and nights
preceding the sinking of the Khukri, sometimes for genuine reasons, sometimes
for false alarms. All of this would have exhausted the crew and formed the
"fog of war", that hindsight experts, armchair generals/admirals and
the public at large never quite get.
Each time the crew of the Khukri
beat to quarters and battened down for action, a clarion call would have been
broadcast on its tannoy “Hands to action stations_ assume first degree
anti-submarine readiness - assume damage control state one condition Zulu”. The
crew of the Khukri would have known fully level, that they were going against a
committed enemy, and that the dice were loaded against them. Each of them would
have been wondering whether they were going to come out of the action alive or
dead. This is an age old fear that men have, and then learn to conquer, when
they go to sea and to war. It is the nature of the beast. The army and the air
force face similar issues, which they deal with in their own inimitable way.
The people most at risk on board
the Khukri that night would have been its technical departments; engineering
and electrical officers and sailors, closed up at action stations in the bowels
of the ship three and four decks below the waterline, keeping the engines and
the machinery running, so that their captain could fight. Each of them knew if
a torpedo were to hit, it would do so well above where they were located, and
that the chances of them surviving would be a lot less than those sailors who
were fortunate to be located on the upper decks, and above the waterline.
It takes a special kind of
motivation to get these men to go down into the bowels of a fighting ship
whilst in action against a submarine. They do so each time out of a sense of
duty that the ship cannot fight without them and mostly because they recognise
that one single unspoken truth… That their captain will not forsake them; that
their captain will not leave them behind. That is the crux of the why, and the
reason why captains at sea honour this unspoken agreement.
Captain Mulla would have known
that many of his boys were trapped (but yet alive) in the bowels of his ship
when it went down, in the few minutes after the torpedoes hit. He tried to help
as many as he could, but I suspect he could not bring himself to save himself,
whilst his boys were dying down below. That he chose to go down is a personal
decision, perhaps even a moral decision; but it was a decision that set a
standard that will save lives in future actions. It forced all of us who came
after him, and who were privileged to command men in peace and war, to
recognise that undeniable and unspoken bond between fighting men … that you
fight your ship against an enemy (or the ocean in a storm), with what you have,
and to the best of your ability, and that come what may, you never forsake your
troops or leave a man under your command, behind you.
What Captain Mulla did that
fateful day has had an enormous and positive impact on the service he loved and
on the men who continue to serve it to this day. It reminds every one of us
chosen to command of the qualities of leadership needed under duress, and of
the ultimate responsibility we have to the families of the men we command;
"You never forsake your men – You never leave a man behind".
I know that this hardly helps
when trying to explain all of this to the family of a captain who makes the
ultimate sacrifice. Nor does it assuage the grief of a young girl trying to
understand why her father chose to voluntarily die, rather than save himself.
For a fledgling service post independent India trying to forge its own
traditions independent of the Royal Indian Navy of yore, the impact was
enormous. It was one of the many actions in the 1971 war that made us equal
partners with the Army and Air force in the defence of independent India.
I am reminded of the last few
stanzas of Ronald Hopwood"s classic poem; "Our Fathers" that I
quote below?
“When we've raced the seagulls,
run submerged across the Bay,
When we've tapped a conversation
fifteen hundred miles away,
When the gyros spin superbly,
when we've done away with coals,
And the tanks are full of fuel,
and the targets full of holes,
When the margin's full of
safety,
when the weakest in the fleet Is
a Hyper-Super-Dreadnought,
when the squadrons are complete.
Let us pause awhile and ponder,
in the light of days gone by,
With their strange old ships and
weapons, what our Fathers did, and why,
Then if still we dare to argue
that we're just as good as they,
We can seek the God of Battles
on our knees, and humbly pray
That the work we leave behind
us, when our earthly race is run,
May be half as well completed as
our Fathers' work was done”.
Allan Rodrigues
Director
NE
Also read: How Cargo Ship helped win World War-2
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