INS Khukri

[varunik]

INS Khukri was a British Type 14 (Blackwood) frigate of the Indian Navy. She was sunk off the coast of Diu, Gujarat, India by the Pakistan Navy Daphne class submarine Hangor on 9 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 only warship to be lost in war to date.

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 Frigate Squadron of the Western Fleet was dispatched on a hunter-killer mission to destroy the submarine. The 14 Frigate Squadron normally consisted of three ships Khukri, Kirpan and Kuthar (all named after types of dagger). But only two were involved in the incident as Kuthar's boiler room was being repaired in Bombay. One reason that may have prompted the decision to deploy two obsolete Blackwood class frigates against a modern Daphne class submarine was that the Indian Navy lacked sufficient numbers of airborne anti-submarine planes.
In the early hours of December 9, Hangor picked up two sonar contacts in the area.The sonar and radar transmissions identified them as warships but Hangor failed to intercept them and lost contact when the range increased.
The submarine sighted the Squadron on the evening of 9 December. Khukri was still not aware of the submarine's presence and continued doing slow speed on a steady course because she was testing an improved version of the 170/174 sonar, which required a slow speed to increase detection, despite the fact that moving on slow speed was against Indian anti-submarine doctrine. At 19:57 hrs Hangor fired a homing torpedo on a sonar approach at Kirpan. The torpedo failed to explode and was detected by Kirpan which turned away and fired anti-submarine mortars.Khukri increased its speed and turned towards the submarine, which then fired a second torpedo directed at Khukri. The torpedo struck Khukri and exploded after 5 minutes under its oil tanks.According to the Pakistani submarine captain, Commander (later Vice Admiral) Ahmed Tasnim the ship sank within two minutes. Other sources claim that Khukri was struck by three torpedoes before going down.
After a few minutes, Kirpan turned back to attack Hangor with depth charges, as the anti-submarine mortars of Kirpan had broken down.Hangor then fired another torpedo at Kirpan before turning away and exiting at maximum speed. Kirpan outran the torpedo and returned later with another ship, INS Katchal, to rescue the survivors from Khukri.


To date, INS Khukri is the only ship lost in the history of the Indian Navy. Over 18 officers and 176 sailors were lost in the sinking. The captain, Mahendra Nath Mulla, chose to go down with the sinking ship. He refused to abandon ship, and passed his life-jacket to a junior officer. 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 Diu. 20°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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Khukri_(1958)

[ak27]

Nice read. Never thought Indian Naval Ships would be named after daggers! The captain of INS Khukri has really gone down on his own terms. Though it would have been hard to argue on whether he is a patriot or a lunatic!!

thanks for sharing.

[timmy]

varunik, thanks so much for your write up, it is greatly appreciated. There are so many historical events that get lost in the mix, especially for someone like me, so far away. You have told a very interesting story!

[varunik]

The weird thing is, it's THE ONLY ship INS has lost, and nobody knows about it.
I myself ran into it while searching for Khukri stores.

[skeetshot]

I had the privilege of boarding INS Khukri a few years before it went down during the 1971 hostilities and enjoyed a meal with some of the finest officers and crew the Indian navy ever had.

Sadly a few of those very gentlemen were on board when the sinking took place.

[hamiclar01]

The weird thing is, it's THE ONLY ship INS has lost, and nobody knows about it.
I myself ran into it while searching for Khukri stores.

The national book trust series on the Indian navy starts with the story of the INS Khukri.
Recent press news stories relate the "Khukri" survivors getting together to tell their side of and clear their name for cowardice.
Pakistani sources are abuzz with the "Khukri" incident, both in print and online.

If you or people you have spoken to had no idea about the affair, my friend Varunik, you have obviously been looking in the wrong direction and talking to the wrong people

[hamiclar01]

Though it would have been hard to argue on whether he is a patriot or a lunatic!!

A "lunatic" is a strong choice of words for someone upholding an old naval tradition.

Though I suppose he and most men and women from our forces must be lunatics, risking their lives for ungrateful strangers like you and me.

[chucky]

Though it would have been hard to argue on whether he is a patriot or a lunatic!!

A "lunatic" is a strong choice of words for someone upholding an old naval tradition.

Though I suppose he and most men and women from our forces must be lunatics, risking their lives for ungrateful strangers like you and me.

Well said hamclair01. we tend to take the sacrifices made by our armed forces for granted.

[arcraptor]

Indian navy had a great success in the 1971 Indo-Pak war . Two operations(Operation Tident and Python) were launched to destroy the karachi harbour...both were great successes . Indian navy had only one ship destroyed (Khukri)..while toll on the Pakistani side was 12-14 ships (including merchant vessels)...in one case during the operation a Pak plane which was on sortie over the Arabian sea saw a ship approaching the Karachi harbor..and opened fire on the deck of the ship killing several sailors...later they came to know that it was their own ship PNS Zulfikar...Pak Navy's only destroyer at the time.

[timmy]

Gentlemen:

After reading this post, I immediately copied varunik's write-up and emailed it to my friend in Scotland, who had a great deal of RN experience in similar vessels. I asked him for his comments, which I'll condense for you here, in case anyone is interested:

As you can see in the Wikipedia article on the Type 14 frigates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwood_class_frigate), my friend told me that the ships of the INS Khukri class were designed to be cheaper than the Type 12 frigates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitby_class_frigate) then in use. (India, I understand, also had a pair of Type 12 frigates, INS Talwar and INS Trishul.) My friend said that the idea was for something cheaper and that required less manpower than the Type 12 that would carry the same Anti-submarine armament, a pair of Mark 10 Limbo Anti-submarine mortars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(weapon)). My friend said that the Royal Navy needed to get as many hulls in the water in the shortest amount of time to combat the Soviet submarine threat of the 1950s.

Wikipedia (from the Type 12 article) notes about the Limbo mortars:

The armament was based around two Limbo Mark 10 A/S mortars. This allowed a three-bomb salvo to be placed both above and below the target, creating a convergent pressure wave more likely to assure a kill. The Limbos were mounted in a well on the quarterdeck, with a 360° arc of fire. Again, wartime experience had shown that the quarterdeck, perhaps not an obvious location for an ahead throwing weapon, was indeed the best location for such weapons where they were out of the spray towards the front of the vessel. The Limbo mortars were controlled by three sonars, the Type 174 search set, Type 162 target classification set and the Type 170 'pencil beam' targeting set.

He further said that, as you can note from the Wiki articles, the Type 14s used a cut-down version of the Type 12 power plant, with smaller boilers and the twin turbines geared to a single shaft.

My friend noted that the issue with the Type 14s is that they didn't have room for a helicopter, which was necessary for the next advance in anti-submarine warfare. So, he said, the Type 14s then began to be used to escort fishery vessels. He said that, in that duty off of Iceland, the rough seas would damage the bows, requiring strengthening. During that weather, he said the decks would be awash, hampering above-deck movement, and that when the watch was changed in the engine room, a great deal of water entered. This required a course change so that the hatches could be entered without shipping so much water.

My friend related personal experiences and said that the Type 14s were happy ships. He wondered about the ship's complement varunik reported, noting that in the RN, the crew would be much smaller.

I thought that a little background on these types of ships might be interesting to some.

[Sakobav]

Capt Mulla was a jovial officer and like many officers of that era was batchmate of folks in Pakistan Navy. There are really good and thorough analysis on various defense sites. Bottom line was Indians were cutting their teeth on Anti sub warfare and sonars are not very effective in warm water. Bottom line these brave officers sacrificed life for nation and Capt Mulla followed the valiant tradition of going down ship.