India's Most Advanced Missile Testing Site
One of India's key missile testing facilities - Wheeler
Island - located off the coast of Odisha, will be named after President APJ
Abdul Kalam, whose death in July this year triggered a nationwide outpouring of
grief, the government has said.
Where is it ?
10 kilometers off the Odisha coast on the Bay of Bengal. The
Island, which is about 2 kilometers in length and 390 acres.
A legacy of missile testing ::
It is India's most advanced missile testing site in the Bay
of Bengal should now be named 'Kalam Island'. The missiles which were launched
from the Wheeler Island include Akash, Agni, Astra, BrahMos, Nirbhay, Prahaar,
Prithvi, Shaurya and Advanced Air Defence, and Prithvi Air Defence.
Kalam had requested the Ministry of Defence for the island
::
Remembering Kalam's association with Odisha and the Island,
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen said Kalam was working at Defence Research and
Development Organization, Balasore for pretty long. "It was Biju Babu
(Biju Patnaik), who allotted the historic Wheeler Island to the ministry of
defence on the request of Dr Kalam in 1993," Naveen added.
Missiles and Poems ::
It was there that Kalam tested scores of missiles. The quiet
sea washed sylvan surroundings also gave him inspiration to write many poems
for his book "My Journey".
Kalam's Theatre of Action ::
As the man pioneering missile development in India, he
himself described the Wheeler Island as his 'theater of action'. The first
successful land-to-land test of the Prithvi Missile was conducted from the
mainland and it landed on the then uninhabited 'Wheeler Island' on November 30,
1993.
Who was Wheeler?
The island was named after an English commandant Lieutenant
Wheeler. "It is high time we need to call it Kalam Island since it is a
one-of-its-kind hi-tech facility in India and it was actually spotted and built
from scratch by Kalam," asserts V K Saraswat, member of the National
Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) had commented in August 2015.
Saraswat was Kalam's associate for 35 years as a missile scientist
and then rose to be the Director General of the Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO). In 1993, it was Saraswat and his co-worker S K
Salwan who as scientists were the first to set foot on the 'Wheeler Island'
when Kalam instructed them to look for these uninhabited islands that he had
initially spotted on the naval hydrographic maps.
Humble beginnings ::
Saraswat recalls those sultry day in 1993 when he hired a
boat for Rs 250 and then got lost in the Bay of Bengal and had to spend the
night on the Wheeler Island itself surviving on bananas. The islands were not
visible from the mainland. In his book "Ignited Minds: Unleashing the
Power Within India", Kalam writes "to their surprise they (Saraswat
& Salwan) found a Bangladeshi flag flying atop a tree, as the island may
have been frequented by fishermen from the neighboring country. My friends
quickly removed the flag".
Courtesy: Defense News
