This post is dedicated to those who lost their life so that today we can see the world. This is for those lost hero’s who never came back from there expedition to protect our motherland. This is the story about a captain and his brave the captain, Mahendra Nath Mulla, choose to go down with the sinking ship. He refused to abandon ship, and passed his life-jacket to a junior officer. 176 sailors laid down there life for motherland.
INS Khukri was a Type 14 anti-submarine warfare frigate of the Indian Navy. She was sunk off the coast of Diu, Gujarat, India by the Pakistan Navy Daphne class submarine Hangor on 8 December 1971 during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. This was the first warship sunk in action by a submarine since World War II. It remains the Indian navy’s worst wartime loss.
After the beginning of hostilities on 3 December 1971, Indian Naval radio detection equipment identified a submarine lurking in the vicinity of Diu harbour about 35 miles south-west of the port of Diu.
The 14 Squadron of the Western Fleet, Khukri along with sister ships, Kirpan and Kuthar (all named after types of dagger), were dispatched on a hunter-killer mission to destroy the submarine. One reason that may have prompted the decision to deploy two obsolete Blackwood class frigates was that the Indian Navy lacked sufficient numbers of airborne anti-submarine planes.
Khukri was the slowest warship in the squadron because she was testing an improved version of the 170/174 sonar, which required a slow speed to increase detection. This was to be her undoing.
The submarine sighted the Squadron on the evening of 8 December. It fired two homing torpedoes on a sonar approach, one of which missed Kirpan at 19:57 hrs. The second torpedo directed at Khukri struck under its magazine at 20:00, and the ship sank within two minutes, according to the Pakistani submarine captain, Commander (later Vice Admiral) Ahmed Tasnim. Other sources claim that Khukri was struck by three torpedoes before going down.
INS Khukri till this date is the only ship that was lost in the history of Indian Navy.Over 18 officers and 176 sailors were lost in the sinking. He was reported to be in a saluting gesture while sinking down with Khukri. He has remained so far the only Indian captain to go down with a vessel to his watery grave.He was posthumously awarded India’s second-highest military honour, the Maha Vir Chakra.
A memorial to the dead sailors exists at Diu20°42′10″N 70°58′37″E . The memorial constitutes a full-scale model of INS Khukri encased in a glass house, placed atop a hillock facing the sea. The memorial was inaugurated by Vice Admiral Madhvendra Singh as the flag officer commanding-in-chief.
