India may turn former British flagship into motorbikes

SCRAP metal from what was once the world’s oldest serving aircraft carrier – and Britain’s flagship during the 1982 Falklands war – could be used to make motorbikes, the firm charged with breaking it down said on Tuesday.

The Shree Ram Group at Asia’s largest ship scrapyard in Alang, Gujarat state, said it had secured the giant vessel in an auction and would take up to a year to break down.

The ship entered Britain’s Royal Navy in 1959 as the HMS Hermes after being laid down in 1944. She was sold to the Indian Navy in 1986 and renamed the INS Viraat before serving another 29 years.

Viraat, which means “giant” in Sanskrit, was decommissioned finally in 2017 having sailed more than a million kilometres – roughly equivalent to circumnavigating the globe 28 times.

In 1987, then-Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reportedly used the ship to holiday on a remote tropical island in the Arabian Sea with his family and friends.

After a solemn decommissioning ceremony in Mumbai in 2017, there were plans to turn the ship into a floating museum and hotel, but they fell through.

Now the steel from the could find another use.

Shree Ram Group chairman Mukesh Patel said: “Once the ship docks at Alang, it will take us around nine to 12 months to dismantle it and then we shall sell it as scrap to recover the cost.

“We have been approached by two motorcycle makers who want to use the steel from the warship to build bikes . . . But nothing has been finalised yet.” vessel