Western Front of Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 On the midnight of 26 November 1971,
Hangor sailed from its base with a load of
torpedoes to patrol the
Bombay Harbour. It was then speculated that the torpedo had missed its target, and the moment
Kirpan sensed the torpedo, the captain of
Kirpan realized that the ship was under attack turned away at maximum speed from the scene.
Kirpan was not sunk but there was a substantial amount of physical damage that led
Kirpan to flee the battle scene by turning west towards deep waters.
Hangor moved into searching for survivors in a hope to rescue but
Khukri sank in matter of two minutes before
Hangor could reach it. The casualty roster listed 18 officers and 176 sailors aboard
Khukri and it remains as the Indian Navy's most costly wartime casualty in terms of lives lost.
Kirpan returned to the scene next day to execute the rescue operation along with
INS Katchal but left without success. After this incident, there was a massive
search and destroy mission led by the Western Fleet, indiscriminately dropping depth charges hoping to sink
Hangor. Cdr. Tasnim had
Hangor submerged for almost a week, returning to its base with depleted
lead batteries during the night of 13 December 1971. According to his personal admission in 2001, Tasnim maintained: "
An extensive air search combined with surface ships made our life miserable but with the intelligent evasive action we managed to survive these attacks and arrived in Karachi safely after the ceasefire." ==Legacy==