Chennai: Dr Karthiyayini Mahadeven is no Navy officer but an ordinary citizen and wife of a senior Naval Officer. On Wednesday, she held a 3,000-odd-member audience comprising civilians, mediapersons and Navy officers spellbound as she hung beneath a thin rope above a choppy sea shuttling between two Navy vessels INS Satputra and INS Kulish.
The exercise was part of the ‘Day at Sea’ event organised as part of the Navy Day celebrations that falls on December 4. Besides demonstrating close quarter manoeuvres involving transfer of fuel and personnel between ships at sea, the guests embarked onboard were given a grand demonstration of the manner in which Naval ships ward off fast moving crafts manned by terrorists and pirates, simulated missile firing demonstration, search and rescue by Naval helicopter undertaken by marine commandos.
Some of the warshipsthat participated in the even include Landing Platform Dock (LPD) Jalashwa, Destroyer Ranvijay Frigates, Shivalik and Satpura. The missile corvets included Khukri, Kulish and Khanjar, according to a release.
The Navy officers said that the Eastern Fleet based in Visakhapatnam, dubbed as the ‘Sunshine Fleet’ was the sword arm of the Indian Navy and was formed with a wide array of extremely potent war fighting ships including the indigenous stealth frigates of the Shivalik class.
Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Virendra Kataria was the chief guest of the ocassion while several senior officers from the three services and several senior state government functionaries were also present at the ocassion.
Navy Day is being celebrated every year to commemorate the daring, first- of-its-kind missile attack by the warships on Karachi during the 1971 Indo-Pak war.
“This was the first time post independence that the Indian Navy was drawn into war and proved its mettle bringing a hasty end to the conflict. The attack was so fierce that entire Karachi remained ablaze for many days after the attack thereby delivering a severe blow to the enemy’s waging potential,” a Navy release said.
