Shankar Post subject: PostPosted: 29 Oct 2005 16:12 Offline BRFite Joined: 28 Aug 2002 11:31 Posts: 1900 Location: wai -maharastra INS VIRAT - 10 DEGREE CHANNEL BETWEEN ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISALND ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capt Vijay Dixit always like watching the sea harriers taking off from the ski jump deck -himself being not a naval aviator always the held them in highest regard . His was a new command and was the first officer in this same ship for almost 5 yrs before Vikramaditya got inducted few months back . As the captain moved over to take command of indian navys newest aquistion Vijay got quitely promoted to take comand of this old but still very potent carrier . Rear Admiral Rao was still very much there as the task force commander but for day to day running of the carrier and its self defense protocol his decisions were final . Vijay Dixit looked at his command with intense pride .Commissioned into indian navy in 1987 known to royal navy as HMS Hermes and took part in much famed Falklands campaign . Today she was carryoing its full complement of sea harrieres along with a mix of Ka 31 s i AEW role and seakings for search and rescue and if nessecery commando landing in anti-piracy type operation if required. At just under 24000 tons dispalcement she was definitely small by carrier standards particularly when compared to the 99000 tons Nimitz class USS Abraham Linchon sharing the same ocean some 600 miles to south or USS Carl V incent somewhere in the east china seas . She was cruising at most optimum speed of 12 knots and capable of boosting it to nearly 30 knots within 30 minutes if required by using her twin geared steam turbines at full output power of 76000 h.p. She was one of the first indian navy ships to be fitted with Barak anti missile system and her torpedo magazine held more than 80 torpedoes for use by her seakings and the extra thick reinforced flight deck gave her a high protection level against missile strike. - set course 110 -speed 24 knots - in toned the capatain o his throat mike the engine room responded immediately -the large ship heeled over to its new course and speed settings - clear deck for helo launch ,and the lone seaking configured for search and rescue duty lifted off the flight deck and took postion 200 yds to port in the unlikely event the incomming harriers make a mistake and land at sea - clear deck for aircraft recovery ,and the deck cleared of al personel as the two sea harriers returning from CAP came in from the stern side and hovered for a few seconds matching their horizantal speed to that of the ship and then swivelled the exhaust downwards and put the engines on full power and then slowly reduced thrust as the graceful birds landede with barely a thud on the pre marked landing spots . The whole operation lasted just over a minute since in hover condition the engined have an alarming tendency to overheat and also ingest hot gases when too close to the flight deck. Down in the central combat information centre the air search radar officer carefully tracked the Cathay pacific flight 239 on its pre informed flight path along the high altitude airways at 38000 ft . At no point it came within 100 nautical miles of Virat and hence no alrm was raised -the barak system however tracked it all along -in full auto mode .
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 07:22:26 +0000
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