A Tale of Two Sinkings

A Tale of Two Sinkings - Captain Anil Gonsalves (Indian Navy, Retd)

20 April 2022

On 14 Apr 2022, Russia and Ukraine both announced to the world that the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet Flagship Missile Cruiser Moskva had sunk after being seriously damaged. Initially Russia claimed that the ammunition compartment onboard the ship exploded due to some unexplained fire, which led to the sinking of the ship, but later retracted their statement saying that the ship had sunk after being hit by an enemy missile. Ukraine claimed that their forces had sunk the ship using their Neptune missile.

         

The sinking of the Moskva

We can't really trust any media agency to tell us the exact truth because practically all of us have been watching different news channels long enough to know that they are talking with one hand tied behind their backs and an off-camera gun to their heads. So we need to wait till the truth emerges, possibly forty years from now.

Undoubtedly, the sinking of a major warship of any nation, in any war, anywhere in the world, is a huge blow to the morale and pride of that nation.

The Russian Naval Flagship Moskva in it’s glory days

If you look at published pictures of the Moskva you would surely say there can be no doubt that she’s got a spine made from titanium and nerves of steel. The Moskva was a Slava Class Cruiser warship and was the third largest class of vessel in Russia’s active naval fleet and one of the most heavily defended assets of the Russian Navy. The Cruiser was equipped with a triple-tiered Air Defence System, that if operating properly, should have made it very hard to succumb to a missile attack. Moskva also had medium and short range defence systems, It’s Close-In-Weapons System (CIWS) had six rapid fire guns, each of which could fire 5000 rounds of ammunition in one minute, thereby creating a wall of flak to stop any incoming missile at the very last moment. 

The Ukrainian made Neptune missile was made by the Ukrainians in response to the growing Russian military threat following the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In the current conflict, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is being used as a  blockade to prevent supplies coming into Ukraine from the South and also to launch cruise missiles anywhere in Ukraine from undisclosed and changing locations at sea. Thus, it was important for Ukraine to sink any vessel of the blockade, and in particular the Flagship. Although the sinking of the Russian Naval Flagship will not remove Russia’s Naval blockade on Ukraine completely, the victory is more about the psychological damage that the sinking would have on the Russian Forces. And it establishes the fact that Ukraine can now use its missiles effectively, perhaps even with America’s clandestine help and satellite information.

The Moskva may have had the sensors and weaponry to defend herself but she needed more than that to cope with war's apocalyptic downsides. 

Because history has a way of biting back when you least expect it, I would like to point out to the declassified reports pertaining to the actual reasons why the HMS Sheffield sank in the Battle of the Falklands, forty years ago, after being hit by an Argentine missile. The British Government made these reports public after 35 years of lies and half-truths. Some of what happened on the Sheffield may well have happened on the Moskva, which may explain why the Moskva actually sank on the 14th of April 2022.

HMS Sheffield was hit and sunk by an Argentine Excocet missile during the early days of the Falklands conflict. It was the first Royal Naval warship to be lost in war after WWII.

Declassified reports now tell us about the most weird and intriguing things that led to the sinking of the Sheffield. The following details are now clearly established.

HMS Sheffield in it’s glory days

Some members of the Sheffield crew were ‘bored' and a little frustrated by the 'inactivity’ which led to the ship ‘not being fully prepared’ for defence against the incoming missile.

The Anti-Air Warfare Officer had left the Ship’s operation room and was having a coffee in the wardroom, while his assistant had gone to visit the 'heads’ (relieve himself in the toilet} when the missile struck.

The Anti-Aircraft radar on the ship had the capability to detect the incoming Argentinian aircraft Super Etendard fighter aircraft carrying the missile, but the radar was made inoperational because of Electro-magnetic Interference from the ship’s radio transmitter which was sending a radio message to the other ships.

One of the nearby ships HMS Glasgow had detected the incoming enemy aircraft and reported it to all ships in the vicinity, but Sheffield’s operation room failed to react.

The Anti-Air Warfare officer was recalled to the Ops room but did not believe that the Sheffield was within range of the enemy’s aircraft to fly to such a distance and fire a missile effectively. They were unaware of the capability of the enemy aircraft to fuel mid-air.

When the incoming missile was sighted visually in the final moments of it’s flight by the look-outs, the officers on duty in the Bridge were mesmerised by the sight of a missile coming towards them and so failed to warn the Ship’s Company to brace for an explosion, or to take anti-missile evasive measures, like firing of CIWS weapons, firing of Chaff to deflect the missile and high speed manoeuvers to avoid a direct hit on the ship.

The Sheffield’s Captain was a Submariner and his Second-in-Command was a helicopter pilot, and both had little or no relevant experience of operating a surface ship.

Nobody on the Sheffield informed the Captain about the incoming danger and neither was the ship brought to its highest state of readiness by announcing ‘Action Stations’ to warn the rest of the ship and move out of the targeted area with a combination of high speed and hard manoeuvers.

   

The sinking of the Sheffield in 1982

The missile that hit the Sheffield ripped a hole 4 ft high by 15 ft long, on the starboard side of the ship, resulting in a fire with billowing smoke, making fire-fighting a daunting task. The smoke emanating from the insulation lining the inner side of the hull was like a coruscating kaleidoscope of thick grey matter choking and smothering everything that came in its path. Defence experts say that it was the blazing cotton-glass fibre insulation which gave rise to the fumes, which prevented fire fighting and which in turn sank the ship. The world has now implemented industrial standard A60 mineral insulation for protection against fire resulting from plastic, wood, paper, cotton textiles and other other cellulosic fires. The A30/A60 insulation is a noncombustible, thermal insulation specifically designed and manufactured for use on shipboard bulkheads and decks. It is suitable for use on ducts, mufflers and exhaust stacks.

The fire-fighting was unco-ordinated and lacked cohesion and it was not clear who was taking charge of the fire-fighting effort. The fire-main pipeline carrying sea water to fight the fire was ruptured and several fire pumps were damaged in the blast, making it impossible to fight the fire.

The ships couldn’t bring the fire under control and the Captain felt that the ship would eventually sink, so he gave the order to abandon the ship, when they could still have fought the fire and saved the ship from sinking.

The Royal Navy chose not to court martial the two officers it had found guilty of negligence, in order not to underplay the euphoria of winning the war.

The Board of enquiry also found out that there were critical deficiencies in the firefighting equipment of the Type 42 Destroyers, such as the HMS Sheffield. However, the truth about the Type 42 destroyers never came to light for many years because the British Government was trying to sell these vessels to Third World countries. Rather they covered up the incident by saying that the enemy fighter plane probably flew under the radar of the ship’s anti-aircraft detection system and thus was able to penetrate its defence. Whereas, on the other hand, the French manufacturer of the Exocet missile made hay while the sun shone and declared to the world,  the very next day, that the French Excocet missile was infallible and consequently made a lot of money selling their missiles to many other countries.

Like I said before, we’ll have to wait for another forty years to know the truth behind the sinking of the Russian warship, if the iron curtain ever decides to make it public.

All said and done, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Neptune missile has definitely kiboshed Russia's Sea Control of the Black Sea region.

A Tribute to my School Teacher Fr. Alphons Oesch, sj

 

Alphons Ernst Oesch was born on 12 October 1911 in Switzerland and did his schooling there and studied to become a priest in 1934 in a seminary located in a suburb south of Munich in Germany. He then went to Heytrop College in London to learn and speak chaste English while studying philosophy. Jesuits are renowned all the world in the field of education. So, he volunteered to teach in the schools in India soon after he was ordained in 1937.

My Tribute

Many people talk about destiny and everything being preordained. Strangely, life for me has rarely been a straight line but more of unexpected twists and turns, a series of accidents, happenstance and quite often dumb luck.

I was one of those kids who knew early in life what I wanted to be. But getting there seemed to be a problem because I was hopeless in science and maths, so being an engineer or a doctor was out of the question. I wanted to follow in my Uncle's footsteps and become a Naval officer. But my marksheet in school seemed to suggest that I would likely become a greengrocer.

My Dad was a Judge and was subject to transfers at the drop of a hat, every two or three years, just like I would be in the Indian Navy, many years later. Imagine having to change my school syllabus from CBSE to SSC to ICSE to SSLC to HSSC and making new friends every two years. It was a torment. In 1971, my Dad gave up the judiciary prematurely and left Nagpur to settle in Pune. I was admitted into the 9th Standard in St Vincent’s High School, where he too had studied. When I finished the first two semesters, my report card was full of red lines. My bone marrow would freeze everytime I had to get my report card signed by my parents. Luckily Mum and Dad would only encourage me to do better next time, without breathing down my back.

Tuitions were expensive. My parents had arranged for extra tuition in German, Marathi and Maths, but I found every subject equally challenging. Armed with a ridiculous smile on my face and two ink pens I use to wade into battle with my maths and science papers but always ended up with answers that had pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles.

The PTA meeting at school turned out to be an unpropitious encounter with much asperity from my class teacher.  I was feeling like the receiving end of a B-52 Bomber strike when I marched into the Principal's office for a mid-term warning. The only important question running in my head at that moment was would I be decapitated before I hit the deck or after. But the Principal, Fr Romauld, let me off with a smile saying "if you don't improve your marks in maths and science, I will personally escort you to the 8th standard, where you can convalesce from your bout of temporary low mental IQ.”

As I fretted about my incompetence, ineptitude and incapacity, an answer arrived in the form of Fr Alphons Oesch, who became my class Teacher in the 10th Standard. He found me shy, introverted and withdrawn from the other petulant little brats in my class. Fr Oesch would take extra classes after school hours, without charging a dime. He would patiently explain every weak student’s difficulties, give assignments and correct their work without any compensation. I have never ever come across a Teacher with such dedication, tenacity and zeal for his students.

Once Fr Oesch took all the students of the 10th standard to a picnic to Tiger’s Leap in Lonavla. We took the early morning train and reached Lonavla just as the sky stretched a web of red capillaries between bright white clouds from a golden sun on the horizon. On the way to the cliff, he pointed out birds, flowers and insects of all varieties, each with their biological name and distinctive features. Atop Tiger’s Leap cliff there is a small hollow close to the edge of the cliff top. He lowered each student into this pit, one at a time and gave us an opportunity to look over the edge of the cliff. We returned home safely without any incident.

On one Sunday, Fr Oesch asked for two volunteers to help him clean the school’s fish tank on the second floor of the building. Two of us raised our hands. We had to carry buckets of water from the huge fish tank mounted on a high pedestal, which he was emptying, and pour it down the drain in the bathroom, a little distance away. On one such trip my friend noticed some people standing directly below the window on the ground floor and emptied a bucket of water on their heads. Any other school Teacher would have punished us with brimstone and fire. Fr Oesch took a few moments calibrating the extent of our hostility and threw us a glance which I could have framed. He then sent us to apologise to the people downstairs. After the fish tank job was done he gave us each a slab of swiss chocolate, the likes of which I hadn’t tasted before.

Looking at me now, if I told you that I had more than half a dozen certificates for first and second positions in the Pune Inter-school annual sports championships, you would probably laugh. Fr Oesch was perhaps best known for outdoor activities. He trained me and dozens of other kids to run the 110 m hurdles, the 100 metre sprint, triple jump, high jump and troop games like basketball, football, baseball, and other track and field events. St Vincent’s Pune had a reputation of leading the other schools in sports for over a hundred of it’s 150 years of existence.

I approached him before my Final Board examination to guide me on how to study for the school leaving certificate. He drew up a time table to revise all my subjects everyday, giving emphasis to the weaker subjects. The result was unbelievable. I scored 92% in German, 96% in sciences, and 91% in maths. Strangely, I got just 51% in English. Apparently, the examiner didn’t think much of my English or most likely didn’t appreciate my sense of humour. But I couldn't have excelled in school without help from Fr Oesch.

After leaving school I went back to Fr Oesch to help me prepare for the Services Selection Board for entry into the National Defence Academy. He immediately wrote a letter to the Commandant of the Army School of Physical Training, who was an ex-Vincentian, to allow me to train on their obstacle course. After practising on the obstacle course for three months, I was fully ready for the physical test in Bangalore. It wasn't a surprise when during the allotted time of three minutes I completed the entire course flawlessly and also repeated the three most difficult obstacles, thus earning the highest marks in my batch of candidates.

We continued to exchange letters for many years after I left school. I would visit him in his room which was rather spartan and looked like a wartime Bomber command. His table used to be covered with exercise books for correction, there was a heap of letters from many of his ex-students stacked up neatly in one corner, which he would be replying to and he had a table fan that wouldn't start unless he hit it with a hammer.
When my wedding was fixed I requested Fr Oesch to con-celebrate the wedding mass with another favourite priest, Fr Cyril Desbruslais. He gladly agreed and married Sandra and me in the City Church, Pune.

Come to think of it, given half a chance, older boys in my school would go around putting landmines in each other's underpants. And then, there were other kids  whose parents, seemingly, had amputated their brains when they were seven years old, because it wasn't uncommon to see them carving up the furniture with cycle keys or throwing water balloons at the girls in the school across the road.
While some teachers proffered an expression of alarm that seemed to herald a heart attack at any moment, the tougher ones dealt with mardy, bad-mannered and rude kids with a slap on the face. But not Fr Oesch. There was a power in what he spoke and how he looked at people and that power transformed young boys.

As young mischievous boys we would often scream and bellow in class, as if protesting the 1971 war, slam our school desktops loudly, make tropical monkey sounds and throw pieces of chalk all over the classroom before the teacher entered the class. Fr Oesch would just scrunch his bushy eyebrows and portray a picture of sadness, the likes of which could melt even a stone heart. It seemed that he believed in the dictum of thinking twice before saying nothing. That incredibly silent posture, freighted with meaning and implication, brought discipline even to the naughtiest child in the class. Don't for a minute underestimate this giant of a man who was over six feet tall and had broad shoulders, that he couldn't beat the shit out of any bully. That for me, was integrity, holiness and greatness, all rolled into one.

People have often wondered what holiness and greatness look like. And yet, holiness and greatness are quite ordinary. Holiness is a normal, ordinary life lived with integrity. And Greatness doesn't necessarily have a great personage, it isn't dressed in the latest fashion. It is not necessarily eloquent. Greatness just has a certain simplicity to it. And I found these qualities in Fr Oesch.