Sunbyanyname

I have already given you a post about pussy-cats, viz, ‘Pussy-Cat, Pussy-Cat, Where Have You Been?‘ Hence, let me tell you one about rats too.

Sooner or later we had to come to the innovativeness of this species on earth that is so curious that it is almost enigmatic. Away from the hills and plains, it makes its home at sea and learns to live there with hardly any means of subsistence. At times when the sea is rough, it wretches out its guts until there is nothing more to bring out; and yet, if you ask it its favourite place, it would unerringly point a resolute finger towards the seas, the oceans and beyond.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about The Sailor. The most innovative of this species is the Indian Naval Sailor. He finds a way where none exists!

To cement your realization of this fact, I must tell you about this incident in the year 1976 during the Monsoons. I had just got my watch-keeping ticket on INS Himgiri and suddenly realized that the whole world was waiting for me to finish my under-trainee watch-keeping phase. One of the “whole world” was officiating CO Betwa; who realized that his CO and many of his watch-keeping officers were on leave, when Betwa had to sail for a prolonged sailing called MONEX (Monsoon Exercise). He requested my CO and my CO, always ready to oblige, dispatched me to him for the duration of the MONEX.

It was the toughest sailing I have done. At the dining table, because of constant rolling and pitching, your plates and cutlery would go from one side of the table to the other and you had to wait for your plate to return it to you with the next rolling and pitching. Even at that you had to carefully look at what you were eating; for, if the quantity of gravy in your meat had become more than earlier, chances were that in its journey on the table, someone would have puked in the plate.

Many people never got out of their cabins, lest we should all see the changed colours of their faces.

The officiating CO (actually the XO of the ship) was man of steel and good humour. Rolling and pitching and even cork-screw motions had as much effect on him as water on a duck’s back. He devised ways and means of letting the ship’s company see the humour in those trying conditions. For the officers, he had an interesting story book, in which men and women did many naughty things. He took out the pages of the book and distributed these between the officers. So the trick was to come to the end of the page, when, for example, things were hotting up between a character called Jack and another called Julie and then figure out who would have the next page!

For the sailors too he devised another game. Since, in a cat and mice game, the officers had got the cat end, the sailors had to be content with the mice game. Through the medium of daily orders he announced that anyone catching a mouse would be rewarded with a prize of Five Rupees (which wasn’t peanuts during those days).

Topass (sweeper) First Class Pillai caught the first mouse and was promptly given Rupees Five. For the next few days, we noticed that at about five in the evening, he’d bring a freshly killed rat and collect his Five Rupees and go.

On the fifth day, the XO got suspicious and sent his best spy after Pillai to see if he could…..well, smell the rat.

This super-spy discreetly followed Pillai and half an hour later reported the story to XO and it speaks volumes for the innovativeness of Pillai.

The story was that whilst the XO expected that Pillai would go straight out of his cabin to the ship’s side and get rid of the bandicoot, Pillai took it straight to his mess where a plastic bag awaited him. He packed the rat nicely into the plastic and then in a paper bag and then deposited it in the freezer in the galley. This would now be taken out about 30-45 minutes before going to XO next evening, thawed and readied as a freshly killed rat.

Finding a freshly killed rat, therefore, for Pillai, was less trying than for all of us trying to find the next page about what Jack did to Julie.

I have recounted to you many tales about Gunners; an endless topic of mirth and bewilderment with me.

Today, after a few years, I return to this.

His name was Lieutenant B and he was the Gunnery Officer of the ship on which we were borne as Midshipmen (a rank between being Cadets and full-fledged commissioned officers).

He was as clear-headed as all the gunners that I have told you about in the anecdotes so far; gunners, as I told you, seek clarity at both ends.

Long before the Army’s Bofors guns landed into media controversy, the naval ships had guns from Swedish company Bofors. Indeed, Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun, designed by AB Bofors in 1930s, was a standard gun on all our ships and the gun was simply called Bofors. In 1934, Bofors improved this gun and came up with a model 40mm L/60. It was simply called Forty-Sixty on board the ships. All of us, whether gunners or not, have been trained on this gun. Here is a picture of this gun, many many years later on Sukanya class of Offshore Patrol Vessels:

Even after the gunners moved into the missile world, they continued playing with these toys.

Generally, evening twilight times used to be reserved for these AA Firing serials called CRAA Firing (Close Range Anti-Aircraft gun firing). As cadets and midshipmen we have often manned and fired these guns.

Gunnery Officers when they are conducting these serials, have an air of importance about them. After all, signals, navigation and other things are only supporting roles; the main role of the navies is to slam the daylights out of the enemy and that’s where gunners come in.

Lieutenant B, after his Policy orders for the firings by our Starboard and Port Bofors, called G1 (Starboard) and G2 (Port) started giving orders about the bearing and range of firing. To our horror, he had crisply (GO’s are always crisp), instructed the Port Gun (G2) to train to Green 90 (Right) and Starboard Gun (G1) to train to Red 90 (Left).

After that, he smartly saluted the CO and asked permission to commence firing. We were manning the guns and at that stage the logic of both guns firing at each other had totally beaten us. However, we had been trained in:

Ours is not to reason why,
Ours is but to do and die.

Fortunately, the Captain made a last-minute visual check and found both the guns pointing at each other and cancelled the firing.

Lieutenant B, incidentally, was the same officer, who angrily picked up a sound-powered telephone on the Bridge when he was on watch as OOW and barked out, “Engine Room, stop making black smoke”. From the other hand, Captain who had been woken up at two in the morning shouted, “Captain here; who is this idiot (who has picked up the wrong phone)?” And, Lieutenant B had the presence of mind to answer, “Sorry Sir; Midshipman of the Watch here.”

(I started a new series recently on this topic. Many of you would be incredulous but I vouch for their factual correctness. All of these are first hand.)

The first one was titled: ‘Facts Stranger Than Fiction – Part I –  Mister India And His Ship‘. This was about a Seaward Defence Boat undergoing refit and everyone just forgot about it. The second one was titled: ‘Facts Stranger Than Fiction – Part II – All Cats Are Grey In The Dark‘. This was about some of my course-mates mistaking another tanker at anchorage for my ship INS Aditya when they were invited by me on board. The third one was titled: ‘Facts Stranger Than Fiction – Part III – Huge Mirages At Sea’. This was about a visual encounter between INS Ganga and INS Viraat when both of them were 180 nautical miles apart.

Here is the fourth one. It is about an exercise nearly four decades ago in the Navy that I was part of (circa 1981, that is 37 years ago). The exercise was called Maghreb.

In Arabic, the word Maghreb means ‘the place where the sun sets’ or the West, whilst Mashriq means ‘the place where the sun rises’ or the East. The Maghreb or Maghrib is the name given in pre-modern times by Arab writers on geography and history to the northern part of Africa, that which Europeans often came to call Barbary. In modern usage the Maghreb comprises the political units of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.

Now why would anyone give an exercise a mystical code-name Maghreb? Well, code-names are supposed to be like that; they shouldn’t ever give away what is actually happening.

But the Naval Headquarters authorities who code-named this exercise by this near occult name Maghreb won’t have ever known in advance what would happen during the first phase of the exercise, that is in the forces deployment stage.

Before the exercise, the available platforms of ships, submarines and aircraft were divided into two forces Blue (Friendly forces) and Red (Enemy forces); the colours that represent contenders all over the world and taken from the boxing ring. Neutral umpires were embarked on many of these platforms to decide on casualties during encounters. The Chief Umpire and his team operated from Bombay (now Mumbai). Every encounter between the platforms were to be signalled in a particular format. Based on the tracks of the platforms and other data, the Chief Umpire and his team would then signal Casualty by a pre-defined signal.

Despite all the modern means available such as radar, often ships would like to remain silent so as not to give away passive electronic intelligence to the other force. Even for a layman, it is easy to understand that in a radar (RADAR is actually an acronym that stands for Radio Assisted Detection And Ranging), radio signals have to travel two ways to and from an object for its detection to take place on the radar platform. However, for a passive detection (by another ship with Electronic Warfare equipment), it only has to travel one way. Hence passive detection ranges are anything between one and half to two times the radar ranges. Therefore, the radar ship, being active, loses the surprise element.

So, in the deployment phase of Maghreb, we had these two modern frigates, with (that time) state of art radars and other means, wanting to silently open out from each other and rejoin in wee hours. On one of these the OTC (Officer in Tactical Command; an admiral) Blue force was embarked.

Now, in case you have understood the scenario and the restrictions for both of them being silent on electronic means, the funny part starts. The funny part is somewhat similar to Spy versus Spy in Mad comics. To start with, here is the picture of both the ships about to part on opposite tracks:

They went their ways, silently, cautiously, thinking of enemy lurking in every part of the Arabian Sea, especially since the OTC had already made a signal to all the Blue forces to be extra cautious so that nothing untoward would take place during the initial stage of the war. Within two hours of their opening out from each other, the Naval Headquarters signalled commencement of the hostilities. The OTC patted himself on the back (I know it is not physically possible but in the Navy we do the impossible too) for having had the good sense to have given detailed orders before the commencement of hostilities so that no one would have to break radio and radar silence after that and thus give itself away.

Another two hours and now with their relative speeds away from each other, both the ships were more than a hundred miles apart. Each one had investigated suspicious contacts along the way and had to several alterations of courses to indulge in such investigations. The currents and winds played their parts too.

At the pre-planned time, they reversed courses so as to affect a rendezvous (RV) between the two. Lookouts with powerful binoculars had been placed on both the ships to scan the horizon all around. As Asrani would say in the movie Sholay: Hamari jail mein patta bhi pankh nahin fadfada sakta (Even a bird can’t flutter its wings in my jail). For the purpose of the remaining narrative, lets call them OTC Ship and Other Ship.

After about three hours of steaming (the world sleeps but we the guardians of the seas are forever vigilant), the Other Ship Lookout sighted a silhouette on the horizon and reported to Bridge: Bridge, Port Lookout, Red 20, a darkened ship on the horizon. The Bridge of Other Ship suddenly came into action. Action Stations were sounded and all sensors and weapons were manned. A similar scenario took place on OTC Ship too.

It occurred to both the ships that this could be friendly force. There was only one way to find out; which was to challenge the ship with a predetermined code on flashing light and receive either friendly reply or else.

Now, on the OTC Ship, the OOW (Officer of the Watch) of the First Watch (2000 hrs (8 PM) to midnight) hadn’t handed over these Challenges and Replies Codes and Replies to the OOW of the Middle Watch (Midnight to 0400 hrs (4 AM)). Hence, when the Other Ship visually challenged the OTC Ship with the Light as shown above, the OTC Ship’s OOW suddenly realised that he didn’t have the appropriate Reply Code to signal back. He sent for the First Watch OOW who had gone to sleep.

The delay in the challenged ship replying confirmed the suspicion of the Other Ship that this was indeed an enemy ship. To be on the safe side, she made another challenge on the Signalling Projector and still didn’t receive a reply. She remembered all the Principles of War and seized the moment and fired her Ship to Ship Missile at the ‘Enemy Ship‘ and then signalled Maghreb’s first encounter, within four hours of commencement of hostilities to the Chief Umpire.

You would recall Rudyard Kipling’s famous:

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;”

In this case, it wasn’t even Mashriq meeting Maghreb; but, the Other Ship, that night, successfully fired at his own OTC and nearly sank him. Blue OTC’s Ship was the first casualty of war in Maghreb and after quickly analysing the tracks and getting inputs from umpires on both the ships, OTC’s Ship was declared out of the exercise.

When I was at the Naval Academy, many years ago, I had done a small parody during one of the outdoor camps in which the Passwords and Responses of Friendly and Enemy Forces happened to be the same (as a coincidence) one night and two soldiers encountered each other with comical consequences as a result of this.

Little did I know that my parody would actually come true at sea with equally comical but results with far more enormity.

(I started a new series recently on this topic. Many of you would be incredulous but I vouch for their factual correctness. All of these are first hand.)

The first one was titled: ‘Facts Stranger Than Fiction – Part I –  Mister India And His Ship‘. Here is the second one.

In the first one I had brought out how Navy, as a service, is different from the service on land or in the air. It is not just because of the medium in which it operates. Unlike the other two services, naval platforms operate in all three media: the surface, underwater, and in the air. It is much more than that. Although it doesn’t require great technical expertise to be at sea (you can be on a log that floats), the Navy continues being a quaint service. Some of the curious things that happen at sea often amaze people and they keep asking such questions as: How could they have missed such a huge ship at sea? How did the ship just vanish? Was it a submarine? If I was there, it won’t have happened this way.

The fact is that seas are associated with strange things happening and many of these anecdotes beat the logic of the common sense and that’s why the title of the series.

To know about the sea, please read: ‘The Lure Of The Sea’.

I was commanding the tanker INS Aditya and whilst at anchorage in Mumbai: E3, (which is closer to Karanja than Mumbai because of a C-in-C who loved me intensely and hence kept me as far away from him as possible), I invited my course mates for dinner on board.

Someone commented: “I never knew that if you loved someone, you had to keep him at a distance.” I had only this to say: “Keeping distance from the loved one is part of Urdu folklore. Ever heard of Shama (Candle) and Parwana (Moth)? Parwana loves Shama but survives only if it keeps distance.

In order that the invitees won’t get lost, I sent the ship’s boat to fetch them. The engineering course mate Chaks, dutifully took the boat and arrived on board without much ado. But this is what three others, who were Fleet Commanding Officers, did: they refused to go by the tanker’s boat and said that they preferred to go by Brahamputra’s “more efficient and safer” boat. The subbie I had sent to fetch them offered to help with the navigation and Billoo, with the pride of a super navigator, declined the offer.

So, in order to cut a long story short, they ventured into the nightly Mumbai harbour with song on their lips and made fun of me, CO Aditya, for having lost his beans by sending my own boat for super-hot COs of the mighty Western Fleet. Luck favours the bold and sure enough on the horizon they spotted Aditya and asked the coxswain of the boat to steer a straight course for her.

However, as they drew closer, to their increasing chagrin, they discovered that Aditya had made no preparations to receive them. An averagely efficient ship would have hailed the boat at a distance of about five cables and established the identities of the passengers and guided the boat to the lower platform of the accommodation ladder. But, Ravi’s Aditya, might have had other fine qualities; but, they reckoned that receiving honoured guests on board in appropriate manner wasn’t amongst those.

The next horror was when they discovered that the ship hadn’t even lowered the accommodation ladder! “Aha” said my course-mates and their wives in unison, “For this slip, I think, Ravi would owe us drinks for the rest of their lives.”

Eventually, they did the opposite of good seamanship practice; and hailed the ship. For quite some time there was no response until one sleepy-eyed Officer of the Day (OOD) appeared on the upper deck. Three super hot course mates, on sighting the OOD, slanged him appropriately and told him to at least lower a jumping ladder for them. The dazed OOD had this going in about twenty minutes; in which time, my guests, nearly exhausted the expletives describing the ship Aditya and its Captain.

For my civilian friends, I must add here that a jumping ladder is normally used by such people as Pilots and Boarding Parties who board the ship at sea. These personnel are highly trained to board through this tricky hanging-by-ropes ladder; more so since the freeboard of a tanker is quite high.

Anyway, one by one three of my course mates and the ladies (in their high heels) eventually climbed on the upper decks. The OOD was now subjected to close quarters invective as opposed to the long-distance barrage that he was facing for the last about 45 mins. They pointed out all kinds of mistakes in the rigging of the jumping ladder and in other upper deck fittings. Still having no signs of their host appearing, they finally asked the OOD, “Where is your CO?” The OOD replied without a hint of remorse that CO was ashore!

“Ah” said one of them, “We should have known that Ravi has got the dates mixed up.”

At this, the OOD told them, “Sir, my CO is Captain Babu. Captain Ravi is CO Aditya, which is that ship beyond.”

The first one to recover from this faux pas was Bobby Chowdry who told the OOD, “Of course we know this is not Aditya; this is Shakti. But, on the way there we wanted to see for ourselves Shakti’s reactions. And, boy, you failed miserably. Now hurry up and help get the ladies back in the boat.”

I had no idea of the above snafu when I eventually received them on board about 90 minutes behind schedule. As Billoo stepped on board, I introduced my OOD, who was also the Navigating Officer of Aditya thus: “Billoo, please meet my NO, the second best Navigating Officer in the Fleet.”

This had an instant reaction on Billoo, “If you are mentioning tongue-in-cheek, that is, that I am the best Navigating Officer in the Fleet; you have another guess coming. First offer us a drink and then we shall tell you the story.”

The above story was then told to me. That night, we were into our fifth drinks when we hadn’t yet come to the end of the story and the laughter.

P.S. In the first anecdote in the series, you saw how a small Seaward Defence Boat became invisible. In the second you saw a huge tanker that became invisible. Wait for my third anecdote.