The magnificient men in their flying machines : Air Marshal S Raghavendran [www.bharat-rakshak.com]

Funnily enough, it is difficult to remember how I got to Jodhpur for the real commencement of my career in the Air Force, because our flying started there. I know I caught a metre gauge train from Bombay Central called the Luni Express. Please note the spelling and get it right so that you won't think of this 'escapade' in the same terms as many members of my family did. There is really a Luni Junction in Rajasthan and I think we had to change trains there to get to Jodhpur.

The only mode of transport to get from the railway station to the Air force station was the good old Tonga. One always traveled with one large unwieldy steel trunk holding all your clothes and valuables and a 'Holdall' containing your travel mattress, bed sheets and a 'razai' or blankets. I think the Air Force gave two ill fitting bed sheets and a horse blanket. You had to carry them around because, in case you got 'suspended', you had to religiously return them and sundry other items. If you were lucky, the daily 'Postings Truck would be around and you could get a lift in it to the Unit.

The unit was called No 2 E.F.T.S. There must have been a No1 EFTS somewhere, sometime but it didn't exist in the Independent India, as we were the first post Independence course.

No.2 EFTS at Jodhpur was set up during the Second World War. Tiger Moths of the unit are seen in this undated photograph.

There was a Cadets Mess and an Officers Mess. The officers' mess was in the Ratanada Palace. There were many stories of ghosts being seen there. There had been a State Hotel, which had been taken over by the Air Force and was used as accommodation for officers. I presume that in the heydays of the Maharajah, the State Hotel accommodated visitors. Apparently it had been gifted by the Maharajah to the Air Force. The name "State Hotel" was carved in the stone façade of the building. The Royalty of Jodhpur had always been close to the Air Force and was in the forefront of aviation, owning aeroplanes for private use etc. In fact, there was still a hangar at the far end of the airfield in the possession of the Maharajah, who still owned at least one aeroplane that we saw.

The Cadets Mess really was an annex of the State Hotel. We lived in three different buildings in a kind of dormitory fashion. There were the two 'Bungalows', No. 1 and No.2, two storeyed with each storey having four rooms and four bathrooms and about five or six cadets stayed in each room. Since there was one bathroom only per room, the mornings were the most bizarre sight. One person would be sitting on the 'throne', one would be showering, one would be brushing his teeth and one would be peering around him and shaving!! Even with this amazing optimization it was a difficult task to cater to everybody's needs. Fortunately I was one of the lucky ones that were housed in "Edgar House". This was a two storied building about 1/2 a mile away from the mess. At one time it must have been the stables of some dignitary. The Horses' stalls must have been downstairs and the syces must have lived upstairs. The stalls had been converted to 'dry sanitation' W/Cs and the horses' troughs had been left as sinks (wash basins) for us!! We were probably about twenty cadets there, housed in three rooms, one central hall in the middle and two small rooms on the side. The small rooms held four each. The big advantage was that there was no scrambling for the three S's - Shower, shave and shit!! There were plenty of horse troughs, shower stalls and 'dry sanitation' troughs. We were all very mobile, with a bicycle each, and so didn't mind the distance. Since we had been well acclimitised in ITW to 'dry sanitation', we took it in our stride.

To me the sight of the Tiger Moth biplane trainer that we were to fly brought a rush of all the enthusiasm that had been generated in RIMC. I had been an avid reader of facts and fictional accounts of the First World War, with the amazing Sopwith Camel, the Sopwith Pup and the Bi and Triplanes of The Red Baron - the legendary Baron Richthofen. We didn't realize it at the time but we were literally going to go through the range of aeroplanes from World War I, through World War II to the current ones of the time during our training. The speeds, the handling qualities and thrills of the WWI Biplanes were all there!! The Tiger Moth climbed at a breathtaking 45 miles per hour and its max level speed was about 70 MPH. Now we drive faster than that on the road in the USA!! The Tiger Moth, with its tail skid, which was the steering mechanism, no brakes, no radio, open cockpit, imperative flying goggles seen in 'The Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines', scarves that flapped in the wind stream etc were evocative of the stories I had read about the chivalrous approach to 'fighting' those days. That was when one would see that your enemy has run out of ammunition and so came up alongside and waved farewell so that you could fight on equal terms next time!! The Red baron was never "Shot Down". He was seen executing a perfect landing in a field and when people went up to his aircraft, he was found dead!! Or so I read.

While on one side such thoughts were there, on the other side was the spectre of 'Not making it'. One by one many of our comrades went through the 'Suspension Check' with the Flight Commanders and then with the CFI and disappeared back to where they came from. We did see many of them again in their 'avatar' as Navigators (Iqbal Chabra who retired as an Air Marshal and AOC in C of Maintenance Command, Sridharan who died later on in a Liberator crash and 'Tojo' Gajjar,who was alleged to look a lot like the Japanese General ), even as Technical Officers (Like Vittal who retired as an Air Vice Marshal in the Technical Branch. He was a science graduate and managed to catch a window for such graduates in that Branch). We had Thimmayya who became an Education officer in the Indian Navy.. Then there was Gorawala who became an ATC officer after losing an eye in a Spitfire crash.

The most critical thing in going solo was the landing and the key to it was to judge the 'check height', the height that you started puling back on the 'stick' to flare out for the landing. It so happened that the parapet wall all round the verandah upstairs in Edgar House was just at that height, about 15 feet as suggested by our instructors. So you saw all the wannabes sitting on the wall with their legs dangling outside with glazed eyes pretending to be landing!! They were trying to freeze the view in their mind so that they could get it right while flying with their instructor. There was heated discussion on the tips given by the different instructors on landing techniques. Then there would be the searching questions to those who had gone solo and trying to remember all of it while flying with the instructor. I am not sure but I have a feeling almost everybody in Edgar House made it. Must be the parapet wall!!

But 'going solo' was not a guarantee to 'passing out'. Many more fell by the wayside even later. Trying to understand what the instructor was screaming to tell you was itself an art by itself. Remember, there was no intercom!! The instructor in the front cockpit and the pupil in the rear cockpit had a tube sticking out from the instrument panel (dash board to the land lubbers), with a mouthpiece at the end, into which you spoke. You had to use one hand to hold it, mostly the left hand as you dare not let go the stick. The speech was conveyed by an aluminum tube which was connected to a flexible tube which was part of the flying helmet and which branched into two to go to each ear!! You should try it some time when the open cockpit is creating a small hurricane around you and you were numb with the cold!! We were 'issued' silk inner gloves and enormous leather gauntlets to keep our hands warm but neither the instructors nor we used them because you just couldn't get the feel of 'the stick' which needed sensitive and tender movements to execute the landings. But we struggled on.

Amazingly, half way through our course in Jodhpur, we got technically upgraded - we got intercom but they had many hiccups as they were being introduced for the first time in Tiger Moths. I am sure that the failure rate would have been much less if we had had the kind of trainers we have now. Had we had a training aeroplane with tricycle under carriage and a decent intercom, many more would have made the grade. Most of the 'suspensions' were because the trainees could not keep straight on take off or landing with the tail wheel/skid of the basic and advanced stages of training. On the other hand, it is a moot point - did it turn out better pilots, like the jumpy Gnat did?. Perhaps, we should do an assessment of comparable accident rates of some such things as a research study to find out.

But I have jumped the gun. One of the first things I did on arrival was to report 'sick' and explain to the Senior Medical Officer (SMO) that my left leg muscles had been sort of atrophied due to the 21 day plaster cast and that I should be excused from parades and sports till I could recover. I told him that this was due to developing water in the knee. Flt .Lt Jayaram, the SMO, immediately said that if I had water in the knee, I was disqualified from being in the flying branch!! I quickly blabbered to him that I was O.K. and ran out of the office before he pinned me down. We had an even more interesting interaction when I was Commanding Bareilly and he was the PMO in Central Air Command. I will save it for another article.

The Tiger Moth was a very unique aeroplane. It had been designed in the '20s or something and still carried on. It was the only aeroplane that we had that had fabric covered wings and it was almost a lost art to repair or redo the fabric covering which needed specialists to stretch the fabric and apply 'Dope' repeatedly till it got the right stiffness. Most modern cars of the forties had more advanced engines than the Tiger Moth, which was a four cylinder, in line, reciprocating engine just like any car. It didn't have a self starter to start and run the two bladed wooden propeller. The propeller had to be 'swung' by hand, the equivalent of the starting handle of the cars of the pre 40s vintage. We all had to learn to do this and when we went out to the aircraft to fly, the instructor took two of us - one to fly and the other to 'swing the prop'. There was an airman always around in case we messed it up. It was quite a drill - first you put the petrol cock 'on'; and primed the engine by rotating the prop a few times in the direction it would eventually spin. This was done with the two 'magneto' switches 'off'. The reason there were two switches was the equivalent of today's "back up" system. If the electric circuit was not completed by the main switch then the other one was the standby!! The two brass switches which were similar to the vintage brass electrical switches in homes of those days, were positioned on the outside of the cockpit. Then you swung the prop the other way with the petrol cock 'off'. This was to drain out any extra fuel that might have got into the engine. Then you did the final 'swing', in the right direction with the petrol cock and the magnetos 'on'. You had to stand in a particular fashion or else you ran into the propeller just as the engine fired and rotated the propeller. This had happened at times with painful to serious consequences!! Like I have said earlier, there was no brake and so you had to judge early enough and throttle back so that the 'drag' from the tail skid pulled you to a stop!! This is the reason the aircraft were parked in the grass area near the tarmac and the taxiing, take off and landing were also on the grass area of the airfield. If by some mistake you had got on to the tarmac and tried to turn, it was an impossibility. If it was planned you got two airman on the wing tips and signaled to the airman on the side you wanted to turn and he pulled on it vigorously and you signaled it like driving in a car in the good old days. When you wanted to straighten out, ;you signaled to the airman on the other side to pull!! Many were the occasions when pupils had got onto the tarmac and had to precipitously switch off the engine as they were heading for buildings or other aircraft!! Even with everything under control, two airmen would run along with the plane to hold it back in case it didn't stop in line with the other parked aircraft.

To try describing the feeling when you get aloft initially in a small plane and see the world as you could never imagine is so very difficult because it really is beyond description. We joined the Air force because we felt that flying was thrilling, dangerous, and adventurous and because it would set us apart as beings in another dimension. But it was so much more. We went only to about 4000 to 5000 feet, with great difficulty and great deal of time but even then you saw the world with wonder as an unbelievable creation with all its colours, dimensions and vastness. You did feel that you were a very privileged being allowed by God to see His (or Her!) creation. And there was nobody to interrupt or distract you from the immeasurable enjoyment of it. It never became stale or familiar all your life in small planes or fighters. It is ever so different in a commercial plane. In a Tiger Moth you felt it even more because of the open cockpit.

Doing aerobatics for the first time was like a child on a roller coaster for the first time but ever so much more thrilling because you were the one making the aeroplane gyrate (or the instructor in the beginning). The seat belts were very primitive and not like the ones that one sees these days. There were slots in each of the four straps. You put the straps on and then put a lug through the holes that reasonably lined up one on top of the other and then put a large split pin through a slot in the lug. However much you crouched and made it tight, you found it loose when doing aerobatics. Especially in the beginning, when the instructor did a slow roll, you felt that you were about to fall out of the aircraft, because your head was actually in the main slipstream, the body having left the seat by a few inches. This actually happened, unfortunately, when we were Flying Instructors in Begumpet. One of the instructors decided to demonstrate a slow roll to the pupil on the way back to Begumpet airfield. The pupil's straps opened up and he fell out!! It was either too low or the pupil was too stunned to open the parachute. They were over the Nizamsagar Lake, an enormous lake. The pupil fell into the lake with an unopened parachute and was never recovered!!

Starting the engine in flight was another thrilling and scary manoeuvre in the beginning because you always wondered if you would come out of it safely. You were taught how to start the engine, in case it should stop in the air. This was the equivalent of the 'relight' in flight we learned on jet fighters. This was a real possibility and happened at times if you executed a stall turn poorly, like applying the rudder too late or let the aircraft stall and fall forward with negative 'g', starving the engine of fuel. To learn it, the instructor would put the fuel off and hold the aircraft at the stall till the engine and the prop stopped. That was scary enough but then he would put it into a very steep dive (we would start at the 'great' height of about 5000 feet) and it would look as though the prop would never kick in. It would make some tentative moves and we would heave a big sigh of relief when it started and the instructor pulled out of the dive. Doing the same thing solo needed a lot more courage and determination but we had to learn it in case we needed it when we practiced stall turns etc. In the previous course, we heard that one of the cadets had to do a forced landing because of it and did a creditable job of landing in a small field. The station commander went to see what had happened and tried to land there and crashed the Tiger Moth he was in!! The pupil was asked how he managed to land in such a small field and his answer was, 'I didn't land here. I landed in the big field next door and did a bad landing and bounced into this one'. Whether the latter explanation is true or not, the fact that the station commander 'pranged' is a true one!!

The Tiger Moth was the last aircraft one could do certain maneuvers. One of them was the 'falling leaf' because the Tiger Moth came down just like a falling leaf, oscillating from side to side and gently coming down, silently because the engine is throttled right back. It looked very pretty from the ground but it was hard work in the cockpit. You stalled the aircraft, started it in a spin and just as soon as it started to dip a wing in a spin to one side, you immediately kicked the opposite rudder and started a spin in the opposite direction. So you kept it in an incipient spin from side to side. We were not taught or allowed to try it when we were under training but learned on our own and tried it in FIS and showed our pupils in the Academy. There were two amazing display king pins in the Indian Air Force who held the spectators spell bound with their total control and dexterity with the Tiger Moth. One was our Chief Flying Instructor, Sqn Ldr Krishna Rao and the other was Sqn Ldr Bhanot in the FIS. Krishna Rao would be doing rolls, loops and rolls off the top within a few hundred yards of us at low level but the master piece would be to execute the falling leaf or a spin, recover at a hundred feet or so and land straight off it on the tarmac right in front of the spectators! Unfortunately Bhanot died in Ambala during demonstration while we were cadets at Jodhpur.

The other manouvre that was awe inspiring was the 'spin'. It was taught so that, in case you got into a spin by mishandling the aircraft at low speeds, you could come out of it. It was scary to see the ground spinning around while you were descending at a rapid rate. Many of the pupils got sick during spins initially but most got over it. Those that didn't went home!!

The first batch of army AOP (Air Observation Post) officers was sent for training along with us. They were fairly senior officers, captains and a major (Major Reen). The training syllabus for them was much shorter than ours as they did not have to do aerobatics extensively etc. So they finished early and there was to be a passing out parade and a 'wings presentation'. The reviewing Officer was Air Commodore D A R Nanda. Of course, we were going to do the parade, while the Artillery officers stood at the back. They would come forward when we marched up in 'Review Order' and be presented with their wings. The officers were in a great hurry to leave the same day and so they decided to have their Passing Out Party the previous night.

Never was a decision taken so lightly to have utterly hilarious results, if it wasn't so serious. The party was held in the Cadets Mess. Liquor flowed very freely and even many of the cadets who never drank before imbibed heavily. Somewhere along the way one of the cadets who couldn't stand up decided to lie down in the middle of the ante room. (I remember his name but will keep mum, as he retired as an Air Commodore!) The Station Commander Wg Cdr O.P. Mehra (Later the CAS) walked into the room and the cadet promptly saluted him from the recumbent position!! You should have seen the face of the Stn Cdr. He screamed at the top of his voice 'Remove IT from here AT ONCE'.. He was so removed.

My instructor was a little cleverer. He had the same problem as the cadet - he couldn't stand up unsupported. So he was leaning against the wall and he kept sliding along the wall from room to room as he wanted!! When the party ended late at night, many of the cadets from Edgar House couldn't find their cycles to go home, primarily because they couldn't remember where they parked them and some couldn't recognize their steeds. So they walked home. One of them was Umaid Singh. As he was passing one of the Bungalows, he had a great urge to urinate. So he walked into the nearest Bungalow meandered around peering to make out the W/C. He saw something white and let go a full load. Unfortunately, it happened to be Gorowala's bedside table!! Goru was not amused but was too far gone himself to do much about it. But our hero walked out and set course for Edgar House but never got there or for the parade the next morning. He was found sleeping peacefully among the bushes on the way to Edgar House by a bearer coming to work the next morning.

We had been under training already for about 1 1/2 years and were considered an extraordinary smart and capable drill squadron. We were so good with 'The Continuity Drill', where you performed all the arms drill maneuvers as well as the varieties of marching and saluting, all with just one command that we were usually put on show for all visiting dignitaries. Alas, this was not our day. After the arms drill part, when we had to march up and down for saluting etc, half the flight turned one way and the rest turned the other way. When we grounded arms and went forward and came back there was one rifle extra on one side and a cadet extra on the other. He had to perforce run around and get it. Some rifles were dropped during the arms drill demonstration. Air Cdre Nanda watched all this very calmly. In his address he was indeed kind and only said, 'I can see that the cadets need more drill practice'.

Again we were held up due to the next stage (Advanced Flying School) not being ready to take us, at Ambala. To keep us occupied, they took us for a visit to IMA and the newly set up Joint Services Wing, The Precursor to The National Defence Academy, in Dehra Dun. We had a couple of carriages all to ourselves that got hitched on to various trains on the way. Flt.Lt Kunzru, our Physical Fitness Officer, was in charge of the contingent. He was an amazing man. To us 19 year olds he looked around 60 years old, wore full dentures and often didn't have them on. But he played vigorous hockey etc and was an authority on games. But one thing he taught us on the trip was how to be frugal. We found that the average razor blade that we used for a week at the most was used by him for a couple of months!! His morning routine was amazing. Along with his tea he would start honing the blade. He had a special glass tumbler in which he would spend about twenty minutes rubbing the blade, sipping his tea once in a while. Then he would be ready for his shave with his newly honed 'Gillette' blade!!

I have a feeling that we were taken on this trip just to make us realize how deprived we were. Where were the nice rooms and bathrooms of IMA and JSW and where were the dingy rooms of Edgar house and the horse troughs for wash basins. Incidentally we could never shave in the 'bathrooms' of Edgar House. Since the horses never needed mirrors, there weren't any!! We all had to get hold of a shaving mirror and set up shop next to our beds to have a shave. Then, not everybody had a bedside table either. We were very 'Native'. We were given the Indian 'Charpoys' to sleep on. This was a big advantage because they didn't take up so much space and were very light to carry. This latter aspect was very useful because the insufficient fans were vintage models and worked rather desultorily and those of us who felt that the outside air was cooler could easily take the charpoys out to the verandah and try to get some sleep. But in the summer there were many sandstorms and we had to be prepared to move inside at short notice and we had become experts in this rapid redeployment.

We had one incidence of a burglar trying to get into Bertie Weir's room. He shared it with others but they had gone in for outdoor sleeping that night. Bertie woke up and made a lot of noise. Steve Michael, who was a sound sleeper, thought that another storm had come, picked up his charpoy, moved back to the room, closed the doors and went back to sleep instantly.

Bertie Weir Dressed to kill. Notice the standard outfit for flying the open cockpit Tiger Moth – flying goggles, Gauntlets etc. what looks like a radio headset cord dangling is really a ‘Gosport’ tube, through which the instructor and pupil talked to each other. No on board radio those days!!

Unlike in the Army, we had to employ civilian bearers out of our meager pay to do all the odd bodies jobs. We made it affordable by sharing a bearer amongst four or five. The bearer employed by Sanadi and a few others quit for some reason and a new applicant turned up. Sanadi interviewed him with his limited Hindi, and found him fit. One of the first jobs given to him was to go on Sanadi's bike to the canteen and get a cake of the popular 'Rexona' soap. Gulam Mohammed disappeared for about an hour and a half and Sanadi, scanning the road for him, saw him trundling the bike and coming slowly. On arrival he told Sanadi, 'Sahib, Ruksana saunf Nahin mila. Is liye maine sadha saunf laya" and gave a large package of 'saunf' on which he had spent all the five rupees that Sanadi had given him!! When he was asked whether the bike had got punctured, since he was trundling it back, he was nearly in tears when he confessed that he had told a lie when he had been asked whether he could ride a bike before being employed because if he said that he didn't know cycling, he might not have been employed. So, he had taken the bike so that Sanadi would think he could ride and trundled it up and down with great difficulty. But Sanadi was kindness personified and kept him. When I went as AOC in C to SWAC in Jodhpur thirty five years later, Gulam Mohammed was the No. 1 Bearer in the Officers mess.

All things had to come to an end and we finished our training in Basic Flying. We had a lot of claimants to the Flying Trophy, each one walking with his chest out and saying how well he had done in the 'Final Test'. But the winner was a surprise - a very quiet, unassuming cadet from Orissa called Acharya. Many egos were deflated. The Ground Subjects Trophy was won by the unbeatable Guy McKenzie, who just beat me to it.

Copyright © Air Marshal S Raghavendran . All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Air Marshal S Raghavendran is prohibited.