HMS Andromeda

yep did a refit at dml prior to hand over to the indians 1996 i think

Do you recall what work was done to her?

no but i think she was a seawolf fit ship at the time

Are they protective covers over the mainmast and tracking radar?

Have to assume so, although they were exposed to the environment all their lives, seems a little pointless. Maybe something top secret lol

Rember her from the Armilla patrol - she was armed with Exocet and seawolf - fine looking ship, sad to see her end up like this, she had a large scanner - somewhat similar to a big merchant navy type on her formast then - dont know what the cover is for, perhaps some admiral wanted her for a table lamp!

just thinking back to Jan 1996 i ran across that foot bridge, we were on ship survey before a hms Glasgow refit and had struggled to find a parking spot
the ship was off to the ammo buoy 8:30 sharp in it was getting close to that, We were the DML lads, we bumped into the Rosyth lads in a pub they were doin the same job on Illustrious or Invincible, i had worked for both companies and kept the waring factions apart

For some reason Andromeda was earmarked for resale unlike her sisters. As soon as she decommissioned she was placed in a state of preservation prior to resale. The covers you see were all for protection of equipment.
Andromeda was sold in June 1995 and towed to Devnport for refit. Emerging from refit the Andromeda (or INS Krishna) displayed no missle armament.

if what i heard was correct she had a refit of about £15m-£20m in about 1992/3 and was sold to the Indians for about £850,000. Good value for your taxes?????
I think she went as training vessel to India

At the time of the expensive refit it was assumed she would be in commision for a fair few more years, sadley the government ordered more cut backs so she paid off somewhat earlier than expected. This is the only reason she and not her sister Seawolf boats was put into extended rediness. Everything was recenly overhauled hence the covers over the equipment. India came along at the right time and got a bargain for $65k. Although this was very cheap DML made a few million for the short refit to get her seaworthy again. I think if seawolf was available for other countries to buy at the time, all of the converted batch 3's would have been sold to other navies.