The Hindu Business Line : Shore duty for sentinel at sea

DURING its 31 years in service, it boldly faced the enemies, playing a critical role in the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Today, the 93-metre-long submarine, INS Kursura, which has logged 73,000 nautical miles and 10,000 hours in the depths of the sea, sits snugly on a picturesque stretch of beach in Visakhapatnam. It is set to become India's first submarine museum.

For the throngs of tourists who will flock to Vizag, a tour of the submarine will be a unique experience.

But for officials at the National Ship Design and Research Centre (NSDRC), a premier institution under the administrative control of the Ministry of Shipping, it will stir feelings of triumph.

The institution had accomplished the daunting task of hauling the submarine ashore.

``We encountered many unforeseen problems from the word go, especially since it was for the first time that such a task was being undertaken in the country. We had contracted the job for Rs 90 lakh, but ended up with a cost of Rs 4.58 crore. The physical part of the operation stretched from the original four-month deadline to 18 months,'' says Prof. P. Sambandan, Director, NSDRC.

Commissioned in December 1969 in the erstwhile USSR, INS Kursura arrived at the Eastern Naval Command headquarters in Vizag on May 11 1970.

It was decommissioned and formally declared a submarine museum on February 27, 2001.

What is unique about the museum is that it still reflects its original glory — towed as it was in one piece, with no major modifications being effected to it.

With just four such submarine museums in the world — two in the US and one each in the UK and Russia — NSDRC had to study the methods employed by each of the museums before beginning work on the INS Kursura.

The different methods that were considered to bring the submarine ashore included cutting it into small pieces and reassembling the parts at the site, digging a channel through the beach for water passage, loading the submarine onto a pontoon and lowering it on to the beach and dredging the beach before positioning the submarine on a barge. Finally, however, NSDRC decided to haul it directly onto the beach in "fighting fit condition''.

``It might sound simple, but it was a task of gargantuan physical proportionsProf. Sambandan explained that unlike a normal ship, a submarine does not have a wide bottom. "It is like a long fish with a narrow bottom and a maximum width of 1.25 m in the middle. On the sand, it would be able to withstand a normal load exceeding 18 tonnes per sq m, unlike an empty surface ship with a bottom pressure of less than four tonnes per sq m. Thus, the submarine risks keeling over if the list increases to above four degrees,'' the NSDRC chief pointed out.

Even the beaching operation, which was executed on April 20 last year, posed problemsas the submarine could not be positioned at the assigned place on the beach. To compound problems, when the submarine was 150 mt from the shore, it was found to have dug into the sand. According to NSDRC's project manager at the site, Mr G. Vijay Anand, jacking support was fabricated at six places on the submarine and a series of jacks, totalling 2,400 tonnes of jacking capacity, were deployed. RCC structures were built below each jacking support during the vertical lifting of the submarine. Another critical part of the operation was hauling the entire mass transversely onto the pedestal foundation designed for it. Says Prof. Sambandan: "We had the option of abandoning the work half-way and cutting down our losses, but we persisted.

Now that we have accomplished the task, it gives us a sense of satisfaction.''

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