Visakhapatnam, a graveyard for submarines

During World War II, a Japanese submarine with the Imperial Japanese Navy number RO-110 off the coast of Rambilli village on February 11 or 12, 1944.

The city of Visakhapatnam is known for being the home for the Eastern Naval Command, having the largest integrated steel plant and a 1,000-year-old Simhachalam temple. But one thing that has put this once sleepy fishing town into the global map was the sinking of Pakistani naval submarine  PNS Ghazi off the coast of Visakhapatnam on December 4, 1971.

Ever since, December 4 is celebrated as Navy Day and a monument ‘Victory at sea’ adorned by an eternal flame stands tall on the Beach Road.

But the sinking of  PNS Ghazi is a known story and in fact in 2017, Sankalp Reddy had done a film  The Ghazi Attack, starring Rana Dagubatti, Atul Kulkarni and Kay Kay Menon.

Though many controversies shroud the sinking of the Pakistani submarine, the common theory that stands good was that the boat was sent by the Pakistani navy to sink the Indian Aircraft Carrier  INS Vikrant. Wrong feeding of intelligence inputs and some clever manoeuvre by the then chief of the ENC Vice-Admiral N. Krishnan and the top brass of the Indian Navy and RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) led  Ghazi to Visakhapatnam, which was apparently sunk by  INS Rajput, an R-Class destroyer, with depth charges. The story is, however, disputed by many.

Whatever may be the mystery,  Ghazi was sunk on the night of December 4-5, 1971, and still lies with its 93-men onboard, including 11 officers, a few hundred metres below the surface, just a few nautical miles off the coast of Visakhapatnam.

PNS Ghazi is not the only submarine that lies on the floor of the Bay of Bengal, near Visakhapatnam coast. During the Second World War, a Japanese submarine with the Imperial Japanese Navy number RO-110, was sunk off the coast of Rambilli village on February 11 or 12, 1944.

The submarine was sunk by  HMAS Launceston and  HMIS Jumna, using depth charges. The RO-110, was a mid-size coastal submarine, and was launched on January 26, 1943, at the Japanese port city of Kobe.