I have just been reading Harpoon Naval Review '97 about the Indian Navy. My group and myself were guests on board Godavari a few years ago. It was quite new at the time. The first thing one is struck by is the impression of an overgrown Leander-class frigate riding too high in the water. Despite having a letter from our Minister of Defense and their Embassy, we had a bit of trouble getting on board at first. They were decidedly unfriendly.
Then I had a bright idea and said it would be such a disappointment not to see an Indian Navy ship, since I had so much enjoyed being a guest of the Pakistanis on Tugril. That did it and the rather rude OD dashed off and returned with someone who had enough rings on his sleeve to fall just short of an Admiral. He barked orders and in no time we were being given the personal touch...if grudgingly......although we found it a little off-putting to have two sailors with large wooden batons and helmets, walk behind us as a group of officers and PO's showed us about. It was my impression that the officers treated the men like a pack of insolent dogs, and the men seemed cowed and sullen. In fact, I think the officers were sure we were a pack of insolent dogs too, but just not under their command.
Firstly, the ship is painted in a very, very, dark gray. The upper decks are Brunswick Green, the anchor cable area is dark red, and various bits of equip-ment are picked out in white! I felt decidedly sea sick and that was only from looking at the colour scheme. Although admittedly some of the guys in our group are rather large, I still can't recall visiting any other warship where, in various places, the deck plates seemed to 'give' under your feet, with a rather worrying 'walking on tin' feeling. The upperdecks are very crowded and there seems to have been little consideration of the need to get easily from one point to the other quickly. Ladders were narrow and difficult. In fact, they were worried whether some of our large guys would get through at all. No problem for a skinny Indian.
On deck one could not help feeling this ship had lots and lots and lots of paint on it (layer upon layer) and that scraping the old stuff off first was not part of the normal sprucing up drill.
Part way through, the officers were all called away temporarily to greet some high ranking diplomats, and during that time the petty officers and men spoke quite freely. In fact, so freely that one PO proudly told us he had once served in the "British Royal Navy.....a real navy, that one is, Sahib." He went on to say that the only time he had seen any of their ships fire a Styx it didn't work and that since they only had four of them "The officers are not tellings us what we are doing when we are running out."
He also said the 57mm mount was OK but jammed a lot and in fact (to the serious nodding of heads from the rest) the ship would roll on wet grass and was top heavy and had lots of mechanical problems. Although the officers had seized our cameras and left them with the OD one of the PO's scuttled back to the table, returned with one of the cameras and we all posed. He then ran back with it. Unfortunately, it was not my camera, but one of the guys has a beautiful shot of a bunch of guys grinning around a twin 30mm mount with a pair of sentries beaming big smiles behind them.
At that point, some of the officers returned and the 'enlightenment' ceased as they extolled the wonders and progress of Indian technology. They even explained that they had 'improved' the old Soviet systems and made the 30mm guns 'as good as an American Phalanx' (We were really impressed at the thought). Below decks, besides the exciting but rather overwhelming smell of curry permeating the entire ship our group were round eyed in amazement at how crowded it was and bloody difficult to get about. I've seen kids cubby houses with more room. Pretty well everything was a ladder straight up and down, usually through a very small hatch. The men seemed to 'slink' out of our way and rolled their eyes at the sentries following us. Lights seemed to be rationed and I was wondering if the crew get around by 'touch' or if they had just switched half the lights off to stop us seeing any 'secret stuff'.
The machinery spaces were clean, but again horribly cramped......and we had been on a Gearing FRAM, earlier in the day! There seemed to be people slinking off into corners all over the place and one of the guys whispered that he had that 'walking in the jungle with eyes watching' feeling. I'm convinced that they either have a lot more crew than the reference books say, or they were ALL following us about out of curiosity.
The helicopter hangar is something we all remember vividly (I still have the occasional nightmare). Large, roomy. Two helicopters. Both sparkling clean....but.....a heap of oil-soaked cotton waste at least 12" deep, all along the sides, a pair of overalls hanging over a firepoint....and the smell of curry replaced by an overpowering smell of Avgas. We noticed this could be traced to a guy who seemed to be siphoning fuel out of a loose tank with a bit of hose. Those of us with a normal human fear of being burnt alive fled for the hangar door, but having decided that even the extreme end of the helideck was not beyond blast range, quickly asked if we could take a peek at the SAM system again. (That being well away from the hangar). Besides the officers got very uppity when we asked some questions about the towed torpedo decoy. On the way back through the hangar we noticed there was another heap of mouldering cotton waste against the back wall as well as what appeared to be an ordinary 44-gallon drum, converted into a rubbish bin, with even more stuff sticking out of it.
After accepting some (curtly offered) hospitality at the (fortunately) other end of the ship, we made our excuses and left. The group opinion was that if it didn't turn turtle in a decent wave, it was sure to catch fire and burn out and failing that, at the first opportunity, the crew would slit the officers throats for half a Rupee. Of all the very many ships I have visited, that was by far the most crowded to move about in and seemed packed with an enormous amount of shadowy humanity who may or may not have been part of the crew. Apart from the officers no one seemed to have a uniform that fitted and either every one of the crew must have had his washing hanging out somewhere below decks, or they were preparing for a clothing trade mission. One of our guys started observing firepoints and extinguishers after we beat a retreat from the hangar....but saw only a couple and some of those were obstructed or had things on them. I didn't see it myself, but one of the guys said a fire point apparently had had the hose rolled out at some stage and then just bundled back into a heap on the deck.
Needless to say our impressions of 'the finest ship in the Indian Navy' were not high. Any chance of an amendment to Harpoon 4 for highly inflammable 5th-rate navies?
BT
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© Copyright 1997 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms.
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