Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday, September 28, inaugurated the Indian Navy's largest Aircraft Carrier -- Dry Dock -- at Naval Dockyard in Mumbai. The largest dry dock of the Indian Navy is capable of accommodating INS Vikramaditya and India's first indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant (IAC-I).
It took almost nine years for the making of the state-of-the-art dry dock. Also, five lakh tonnes of concrete have also gone into constructing the mammoth dock.
A video, which has been released by the Indian Navy, shows that the megastructure has been constructed using 80,000 metric tons of steel — equivalent to that used to build the Eiffel tower.
The Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) has built the swanky dry dock.
Here are a few features of the mammoth dock:
- The Aircraft Carrier Dock measures 281 metres in length, 45 metres in breadth and 17 metres in depth.
- This is the largest dock, which will allow multiple ship-docking, including two submarines at the same time.
- The dock will facilitate the underwater repairs quickly and efficiently.
- The dock has been constructed at a cost of Rs 1,320 crore.
- Indian Navy's pride -- INS Vikramaditya -- can be accommodated in it.
- Also, the dock is equipped to drain the 200 million litres of water within 2.5 hours.
Rajnath Singh took to Twitter to share the video of the dry dock facility with the caption, "An additional Dry Dock facility was inaugurated at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai. This asset is an edifice of modern India."
What is a dry dock?
A dry dock is referred to as a berthing place, where repair, refuelling and maintenance of a ship is being carried out as the ships need to undergo crucial repairs while waging underwater which is only possible when the vessel is on a dry dock.
