USS Trenton/INS Jalashwa Accident Ridden?

[+ghostrider883 525]

The INS Jalashwa met with an accident killing 5 sailors on board. Was doing a bit of research on the Trenton and found this

 

June 28, 1971 off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba A steam valve in TRENTON's number two engine room ruptured, killing four sailors instantly and severely injuring six others. The injured men were "medevaced" first to Guantanamo Bay and thence to the burn ward of the Army Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, TX. There, two of the six subsequently died as a result of their injuries.

 

TRENTON returned to Guantanamo Bay for interim repairs and then made her way back to Norfolk on one engine, arriving on July 6, where repairs were completed at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

 

January 17, 1977 Barcelona, Spain An LCM-6 from TRENTON carrying marines and sailors from shore back to TRENTON and USS GUAM (LPH 9), collided with a merchant vessel which was entering the port of Barcelona. The LCM-6 capsized. 49 servicemen were killed in the accident.

 

April 27, 1981 Alexandria, Egypt During a five-day port visit, the USS TRENTON and USS JACK (SSN 605) are slightly damaged when the JACK, moored alongside, surges against the TRENTON in a sea swell.

 

TRENTON was decommissioned on January 17, 2007, at Norfolk, Va., and transfered to the Indian Navy. For the following months US Navy sailors trained their Indian counterparts in the handling of the ship. On June 22, 2007, the ex-TRENTON was officially recommissioned as INS JALASHWA at Norfolk, Va.

 

February 01, 2008 : An accident during a Navy Exercise killing five Indian Navy sailors. Details are sketchy.Navy denies that one of the boilers burst. RIP Brave souls.

[Apocal 0]

I can't think of many worse of going than those associated with a boiler accident. My condolences.

 

It probably won't win me any friends, but stuff like that happens to just about every ship over the course of it's service. That isn't to say there aren't ships that I consider really unlucky, just that two incidences in about twenty odd years of sailing isn't unusual. I know of two legitimately unlucky/piece of s**t ships and both are currently acting as fish sancturaries. As for why it would happen so soon in Indian service... well, the US Navy decommissioned ships for a reason and the engineering plant is usually it. You can do all the overhauls and tearouts and upgrades you want, but bottom line is that the plant is old and old plants aren't safe.

 

You could consider the engineering plant of a ship to be like an airframe. It just doesn't get any younger.

Edited February 2, 2008 by Apocal

[+Typhoid 231]

oddly enough, when I was on the 6th Fleet Staff the Trenton deployed to the Med. Or tried to anyway. She spent most of the deployment in port trying to fix her engineering plant and we almost had to have her towed home.

 

at least, I think it was the Trenton. It was a while back.....

[+Hinchinbrooke 36]

Very unfortunate. Still, ships of this class are getting on for forty years old. HMS Ark Royal (IV) had an active life of just some 23 years (with several refits) and she was in a dire state by the time she was decommissioned in 1978. Oddly enough, despite the fact that she was less mechanically sound than her sister Eagle, she was the one chosen to maintain the RN's fixed wing/carrier capability................. although Eagle was the first to test Phantoms, and it would have been relatively straightforward to bring her up to Phantom standard.

[JediMaster 451]

I think that was merely because Ark Royal was a more famous name than Eagle.

A 23 yr service career for a carrier is awfully short, though.

[+ghostrider883 525]

Courage under fire on INS Jalashwa

 

New Delhi: Lieutenant Commander Shwet Gupta could have spent Valentine’s Day with his wife. It would have been the couple’s first. But he died on February 10 after trying to save five sailors trapped on the INS Jalashwa, where a gas blast occurred on February 1.

 

Gupta, 28, chose not to wait for a gas mask and leapt to the rescue of the sailors, who were inhaling poisonous hydrogen sulphide.

 

“His last words still echo in my ears.... agar mask ka wait kiya to woh mar jayenge... aise hi chal( if we wait for the masks, they will die, let's go),” wrote Lieutenant Ruchir Prasad, a survivor who last saw Gupta.

 

“He jumped and so did I,” Prasad wrote in an email circulated among the officers. “I was the last man to see him conscious before I fell myself and in those 30 to 60 seconds we were down there, all I remember is how he showed utter disregard to his own safety.”

 

 

The vessel, India’s second largest warship, was acquired from the United States — it was earlier called the USS Trenton.

 

Gupta, who graduated from the Naval College of Engineering, Lonavala, defied death for nine days after the blast in the Bay of Bengal.

 

 

Six sailors died in the gas leak. “We have not seen God, but most of us in the 15th course saw his likeness in Shwet sir,” Prasad wrote.

 

“He truly rode the storm…. I am privileged that I was with him at that moment of reckoning, when we decided to jump despite the peril.”

 

Gupta tried to create hope when there was none, Prasad said.

 

“No paeans to him will suffice but he will be remembered for a legacy that our seniors can be proud of and our juniors can take inspiration from.”

 

 

He compared Gupta’s sacrifice to that of Lord Shiva, who consumed poison to save the world.

 

 

“I saw him do it, and he did it like no one else. I hoped he’d recover but God calls the best people first. And Shwet sir never came second.”

 

Prasad wouldn’t want the naval fraternity to grieve for Gupta but be proud of having known a soldier, who like God “planted his footsteps in the sea”.

 

It is men like these because of whom the Navy is what it is today. Salute!!!