| My name is Wg Cdr PN Paralkar ( Retd) known to my friends as Chick Paralkar. I had heard about your esteemed dad and his legendary service to IAF and our nation , but unfortunately did not have the pleasure of meeting him during my service career. It is uncanny, but I happened to have had a very similar incident which you have narrated about your exteemed dad's tryst with birds! I was doing a night low level navigation sortie on a dark night phase at 200mtrs ex Pathankot in a Mig 21 bis of No.26 Sqn where I was posted. After take off and setting course for the first leg of the navigation ,half way to Pong dam , which was slightly left of track I felt a massive thud followed by strong burning smell in the cockpit. Since I had had a bird hit in my engine soon after take off in an earlier sortie , I knew how it smelt when there was an injestion of bird in the engine . I therefore knew that I had a bird hit and as it was at a speed of 800 kmph, I also knew that the engine had been subjected to great damage. I pulled up and started turning towards Pathankot airfield and gave a call to the control tower about the bird hit. During the climb I checked my engine parameters. I found my N1 and N2 RPMs fluctuating quite a lot and knew that my engine may pack up at any moment. Fortunately the fuel in my drop tanks had finished and I had almost full internal fuel. I had climbed to 2 km and had aligned with the runway and had asked for permission for Direct approach and landing. The duty pilot( FSS) at the flying control who was a flt Lt asked me to climb up to 4 km , burn up fuel before coming for landing as it would be a heavyweight landing otherwise as per the laid down procedure. I vetoed his advice and told him that my engine was badly damaged and may pack up at any moment and that I request for a direct approach and landing. ATC cleared me for the same . I lowered my undercarriage and throttled down to 75 % RPM and found that the fluctuations had reduced somewhat. I carried out a smooth landing at the very begining of runway 01 , switched off my engine on touchdown deployed my tailchute and cleared off the runway at the first link to the taxi track which is about 500to 700 mtrs from the begining of the runway as I didn't wish to block the runway, as there were other aircraft airborne. As I opened my cockpit and jumped down from the aircraft the first person to reach was the AOC himself . He had a big torch with him and was looking inside the intake of the engine. When he saw me his first words were ' Lallu , Low flying kar raha tha .....Toney Bandar Mara hai ' !!! This reaction was similar to what was told to your dad.!! Sure enough as I looked into the intake I saw that the cone was very badly damaged and apart from a lot of blood all over, there was fur wedged between cone and the bimetalic ring , part of which had broken off due to the solid impact . That's when I realised that I had hit a huge flying fox or Fruit bat (which had wing spans of 3 /12 to 4 1/2 feet and weighing 1 to 1 1/2 kgs ). This was confirmed next morning when the aircraft was thoroughly checked. As far I remember there was no Court of Inquiry ordered but only an Incident Report done as the engine had suffered extensive damage and had to be withdrawn. The aircraft was checked for any damage due to overweight landing and subsequently was back on line after an engine change. This was the shortest sortie I flew on Mig 21 bis (Type 75 ) all of 10 memorable minutes !!! I wish all to remain safe and healthy in the present pandemic situation. |
