NEW DELHI: Over seven years after an Indian Air Force An-32 aircraft with 29 defence personnel on board went missing during an operational mission, its debris appeared to have been spotted on the sea bed 3.1 km off the coast of Chennai.
The debris was found last month by scientists at the Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), which had recently deployed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) equipped with multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) and high-resolution cameras, at the last-known location of the aircraft.
The AUV picked up strong SONAR reflections from the seabed at a depth of 3,400 metres. The team at NIOT clicked pictures of the debris and sent them to the Air Force, which studied them and concluded that the debris belonged to an An-32 aircraft. “This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed An-32,” a statement said.
The An-32 aircraft took off from Chennai’s Tambaram Air Force Station on July 22, 2016, and was en route to Andaman and Nicobar Islands when it went missing over the Bay of Bengal.
