The Royal Indian Navy was a limited-scale fighting force until World War II, consisting of about 20,000 naval personnel with only eight ships and these ships also had Indian names such as Sutlej, Yamuna, Khyber, Baluchistan, Rajputana, etc.
One of them was the Rawalpindi, which was sunk by a Hitlerite warship during World War II, killing 238 people, including 39 officers and the ship’s commander, Captain Kennedy. was The 22 people who survived were taken as prisoners of war by the German army.
After the War of Independence in 1857, the East India Company was replaced by the Crown of Great Britain and it stationed its army in India. The Indian Navy was named Her Majesty’s Indian Navy with two divisions, the Eastern Division stationed at Calcutta and the Western Division at Bombay.
The Indian Navy also participated in the First World War, but was renamed the Royal Indian Navy in 1934. Then the number of its employees was around 20 thousand.
Six more warships were built in Britain for the Indian Navy during World War II, but the Rawalpindi, which was used to ferry passengers between London and Bombay, was decommissioned due to World War II. Formed and commissioned into the Royal Indian Navy.
The 16,697 ton ship was built by the British ‘The Old Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’ in 1925, with a capacity of 307 first class and 288 second class passengers. It was the first ship to be fitted with refrigerators to preserve fish and fruit.
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During the Second World War, when the British Navy was short of ships, it looked at HMS Rawalpindi and acquired it for the Indian Navy on 26 August 1939. But after acquiring the ship, her name and her civilian crew, most of whom were already Royal Navy reservists, were retained.
The ship’s chimneys were removed and replaced by three- to six-inch guns. After equipping her with the necessary war equipment, she was sent in pursuit of the German ships which were stationed in Iceland and Guinea-Sinai. They attacked the British ships on sight.
HMS Rawalpindi fought bravely and shelled the enemy ships. The opposing ships were armed with large guns, so the ship caught fire during the 13-minute bombardment, during which 238 people died, including the ship’s commander. Thus, on 23 November 1939, this ship sank. A German warship rescued 26 people while HMS Rawalpindi was accompanied by another British ship, Chitral, which rescued 11 people.
On December 6, 1939, Winston Churchill, in a speech commemorating the lives of those killed in HMS Rawalpindi, said: ‘Parliament and the British nation pay their highest tribute of gallantry to the troops stationed on board the Rawalpindi ship. presents.’
Like the Navy, the strength of the Indian Army was also limited at the start of the Second World War to a total of two lakhs. By the time the war ended in 1945, the number had risen to 2.5 million, of which 250,000 were just soldiers provided by the states and princely states to protect the British crown.
It was the largest volunteer army in history, giving 87,000 lives in defense of the British Crown on three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, earning Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross, for its soldiers. About 15 percent of them were Indians.
Britain and the United States had signed the Atlantic Treaty in 1941, under which the colonists were to be freed. However, one of the reasons for independence was the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who were now trained and the British Crown could not afford them, so Britain’s best bet in the face of the rebellion was to get rid of them as soon as possible. .
