Keeping the blogosphere posted on the goings on of the world of submarines since late 2004... and mocking and belittling general foolishness wherever it may be found. Idaho's first and foremost submarine blog. (If you don't like something on this blog, please E-mail me; don't call me at home.)

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Two Indian Submarines Bump

Two Indian Kilo-class submarines collided last week when one that was trying to land hit the sub it was going to moor alongside. Excerpts:
Two Kilo-class 877EKM attack submarines collided with each other at the Naval Bay in Mumbai-half-a-km from the Gateway of India-last Monday.
Officials said the "minor accident'' took place when INS Sindhukesri was parked at the bay and INS Sindhuratna was returning from patrolling; the latter-being towed by a small tug boat -hit the parked Sindhukesri.
"The accident was not too serious as Sindhuratna's engine was switched off and it was being towed by a small tug. These are minor accidents,'' an official said, trying to downplay the incident.
This article has a "helpful" picture of what happened. I like to make fun of journalists who make basic mistakes in writing about submarines, but I can't help but think there was some translation error in this paragraph that appears in both linked articles:
Both 2,300-odd-tonne vessels have low noise levels. That could be one of the reasons why they got too close to each other without anybody noticing.
Yes, it's clear that two surfaced submarines, probably during daylight, couldn't notice each other -- when one was moored and the other was trying to park alongside -- because they were so quiet.

13 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Those are way cool depictions of the incident and they are probably to scale.

I did not know that Indians had submarines, did they get those as part of a casino license deal?

Luckly an island did not "tip" over during the incident of the quiet bumping.

7/03/2010 6:38 PM

 
Anonymous Kolohe said...

Naval spokesperson Capt Manoharan Nambiar said he was on leave and had no information on the incident. His deputy, A Vispute, did not respond to an SMS yesterday

So, the *Indian* Navy had no one available to answer the phone, eh?

7/03/2010 6:54 PM

 
Blogger Mike Golch said...

sound like the some one was not watching where they were going.

7/03/2010 8:27 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kolohe: Don't you know, all phones in India are reserved for AT&T call centers.

7/03/2010 8:48 PM

 
Blogger Vigilis said...

Too amusing for words.

We can assume such events have also occured within China's PLAN sub fleets - but not very often since bullets quickly remedy similar incompetence.

7/03/2010 10:28 PM

 
Blogger kaigun said...

Shouldn't this qualify as an allision vice a collision since one sub was moored?

7/03/2010 11:23 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Probably not a translation issue...just the the usual bureaucratic sing song common from native speakers in that part of the world.

Best part of the article:
"This is first time two Kilo-class attack submarines have collided at the naval dock."

A statement that opens the door to so many other interesting questions1

7/04/2010 4:25 AM

 
Anonymous NHSparky said...

Maybe the moored boat was still cloaked. Tell a newsie that and watch them try to wrap their heads around it.

7/04/2010 7:39 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They were probably just tired, having flanked all the way home after being counterdetected by some drunk Florida boater.

7/04/2010 8:08 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And in a related matter, several shore support personnel were overcome with violent vomiting following the puff release of Curry scent as a result of the collision.

7/04/2010 2:24 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Too many words; I didn't understand what had happened until I saw the pictures.

Those Indian boats are especially quiet when parked. They even cleverly avoided the tug's active sonar by blending in with the pier.

7/05/2010 4:52 PM

 
Anonymous JTav8r said...

I thought it was quite the technology that these KILO boats have "twin, pressurized hulls" which absorbed most of the force of the collision.

7/06/2010 12:19 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That almost happened when I was on the Santa Fe. Idiot tug boat skipper pushed on our bow to much. We answered back emergency. Steel cable to line 4 parted. It was very close.

7/08/2010 11:27 AM

 

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