As the flagship of the Indian Navy, aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, undocked at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) following its maiden refit, on November 5, it dispelled doubts about the capacity and capability of an Indian yard to do the behemoth’s periodic maintenance.
“Simply put, it was nothing short of a fight against the odds that made it possible,” says Madhu S. Nair, chairman and managing director of the yard.
Russian engineers, who refurbished the Soviet-era carrier for India, had ruled out the Cochin Shipyard — the only Indian yard with docking capacity and experience to carry out a refit of this scale — as a possible candidate for the job. The contention was that the dry-dock, which periodically took on the outgoing carrier INS Viraat for some 14 refits during its 29 years with the Indian Navy, was not strong enough to carry the 44,500 tonne vessel and ran short of the desired length, too, by a few metres.
But the engineers of the CSL and the Navy assessed the capacity of the dock, and experts from the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, seconded their opinion after studying the strength of the dock floor.
