After 36 glorious years of service, INS
Vagli, the oldest operational submarine of the Indian Navy that was
decommissioned at Visakhapatnam on December 2010, is set to become an
added tourist attraction in Mamallapuram.
The submarine arrived at Chennai Port from
Visakhapatnam at 9 am on Monday and is expected to be handed over to the State
government during ceremony next month. It will then be converted into Maritime
Heritage Museum.
Port officials told on Monday that the submarine
is likely to be stationed in the harbour for the next six months before being
moved to the 30-acre plot of land abutting the beach near Shore Temple.
Sources said the government had already sanctioned Rs 10 crore towards the cost of transferring the submarine from Visakhapatnam to
Mamallapuram and installing it on the platform at the selected site.
Sources said that besides hosting the maritime
museum, the submarine would also have facilities like food courts, audio-visual
studio, souvenir shops, aquarium and public toilets. It would be planned and
executed in a phased manner on Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) model.
The submarine, a Foxtrot class vessel Type 641B,
was commissioned on August 10, 1974 by the then-Lieutenant Commander Lalit Talwar
at Riga in Latvia, a republic of the erstwhile Soviet Union. After 36 years of service, having served under 23
commanding officers, INS Vagli held the distinction of being one of the oldest
submarine of its class in the world and the oldest unit in Indian Navy. Vagli,
in her operational life, participated in almost all major tactical exercises
off both, the sea boards and elsewhere.
Despite being the oldest unit in commission in the
Indian Navy, she continued to serve with distinction. Even in her last
operational cycle, she completed 137 days at sea and 1,232 dived hours. That the Indian Navy was able to operate a boat
this vintage so effectively also bore testimony to the dedication and skills of
generations of maintainers and operators.
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