“It’s shameful to have a naval ship, however small, sink in peacetime because of poor material state,” Vice-Admiral (retd.) K.N. Sushil said on the flooding and sinking of naval Torpedo Recovery Vessel A-72 off the coast of Visakhapatnam on Thursday night.
The incident bore a shocking similarity to the sinking of patrol boat INS Andaman some 150 nautical miles off Vizag in 1990, he said.
“The Navy set up an organisation called ‘Hull Inspection and Testing Unit’ (HITU) to periodically inspect and certify the hull integrity of naval ships after the INS Andaman incident. From reports it appears that A-72’s aft sea chest, located below waterline in the steering gear compartment, gave way, leading to its sinking and loss of precious lives. This cannot be allowed to happen,” he said.
The Navy, on Friday, maintained sailor James Jacob, POME, was the only casualty and that search was under way to locate the four missing personnel which included an officer.
Suggesting that proper predictive maintenance routine could have averted the accident, Vice-Admiral Sushil said rules also stipulated that commanding officers of naval vessels should alert HITU to corrosion of hull and the steering gear compartment, as rudder and sea chest was prone to this.
“It is an issue of safety. While frontline ships get all the attention, maybe smaller ships are sidelined. Was the ship overdue for its routine maintenance?” he asked.
He said hulls of vessels got surveyed for corrosion during medium refits and if necessary, plates restored and replaced. “I am surprised that nobody saw it coming.”
A naval officer, on condition of anonymity, said the spate of accidents involving naval ships in the recent past had reinforced the need for stringent quality regimen and revalidated the standard operating procedures. “Under these circumstances, this should not have happened,” he said.
If it was callous material status that caused the ship to sink, those responsible for it should be brought to book and the kin of casualty duly compensated, he said.
