After decommissioning, she was preserved as a museum for public access on Ramakrishna Mission Beach in Visakhapatnam. Kursura has the distinction of being one of the very few submarine museums to retain originality and has been called a must visit destination of Visakhapatnam. INS Kursura (S20) was a Kalvari-class diesel-electric submarine of the Indian Navy. She was India’s fifth submarine. Kursura was commissioned on 18 December 1969 and was decommissioned on 27 February 2001 after 31 years of service. She participated in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, where she played a key role in patrol missions. She later participated in naval exercises with other nations and made many goodwill visits to other countries. Despite being a decommissioned submarine, she still receives the navy’s “Dressing Ship” honour, which is usually awarded only to active ships. After decommissioning, the ship was towed to Ramakrishna Mission Beach in Visakhapatnam and was established as a museum ship, which is the first submarine museum in South Asia. The idea of the boat’s conversion to a museum is credited to Admiral V Pasricha. Towing the submarine 600 metres to its final location took 18 months and cost? 55 million. It was inaugurated by the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu on 9 August 2002, and it was open to the public from 24 August 2002. Six retired naval personnel serve as guides and another one as the curator. Kursura has the distinction of being one of the very few submarine museums to retain originality. She has become a famous tourist attraction of the city and has been called a “must-visit destination” of Visakhapatnam by The Hindu. Out of the 10 million revenues generated every year by the museum, 8 million is used for the submarine’s maintenance. During the first four months of the museum’s operation, it was visited by about 93,000 people. Daily visitors usually range between 500 and 600 and shoot up to 1,500 during the tourist season. In September 2007, Vice Admiral Carol M. Pottenger of the United States Navy visited the submarine when she wrote in the guestbook “What a fantastic experience. The Indian Navy should be very proud of this awesome display”. She said that the submarine was very well preserved, and they did not have anything similar to it in the United States. A major overhaul was done in December 2007 to repair her hull’s corrosion. New steel plates were arranged at a cost of 1.5 million. As of August 2008, about 1.5 million people had visited the museum, and in 2010, she was visited by 270,000 people.
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