“India has a rich maritime heritage, but a very poor record of restoration. Our ancestors ruled the seas, but we don’t have even a model of how their ships looked like and how they sailed and lived,” Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command, Vice Admiral Satish Soni, has said.
“It is in this context the efforts of Vice Admiral Vinod Pasricha are important and he will go down in history for being the first person to take efforts to convert an operational ship into a museum,” Vice Admiral Soni said speaking at a function organised on Wednesday to felicitate the former FOC-in-C of Eastern Naval Command Vice Admiral (Retd) Vinod Pasricha, under whose stewardship the submarine museum was conceived and established.
“There are 170 museum ships in the world and we just have one,” he pointed out.
The Foxtrot class submarines that saw action in Indian Navy in the 1971 war are no longer in commission and the museum showcases the life and times of the Indian Navy officers and sailors during that period, Vice Admiral Soni said.
The submarine museum had become a possibility only due to the indomitable spirit and steadfastness of Vice Admiral (Retd.) Pasricha.
No other admiral, serving or retired, could have done this, he declared.
