The Indian Navy's frigate, INS Betwa (F39), which had keeled over on her side during undocking on December 5 last…
Representational image (PHOTO: Getty Images)
The Indian Navy's frigate, INS Betwa (F39), which had keeled over on her side during undocking on December 5 last year while undergoing major repairs at the Mumbai dockyard was set right on Thursday morning.
The initial stabilisation of the frigate was done within three weeks of its keeling over by 29 December last year.
In a one-of-its-kind accident, the INS Betwa had tipped over and crashed while it was being undocked. Navigators and naval personnel had expressed shock over the incident with the captain describing it as the "rarest of rare" incidents.
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Two sailors had died as a result and 14 were injured. According to the Navy, the ship will be ready to sail by April 2018. The frigate was commissioned in July 2004. The 3850-tonne ship has been designed and developed indigenously.
The accident had cracked the sonar system of the frigate, leading to faulty readings and an ingress of saltwater into sensitive equipment.
Betwa, a P-16A Class frigate has been made upright by the efforts of the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai and the American salvage firm Resolve Marine, specially contracted for the operation. The salvage operations were conducted on a war footing. The complete salvage operation involving complex hydrodynamic calculations and rigging up of intricate measuring and monitoring systems was completed in less than two months.
As the ship was undergoing major refit and mid-life upgradation since April 2016, majority of the equipment and machinery had already been removed for routine servicing and replacement with upgraded equipment.
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