We love making annotations to WW2 era footage that surfaces showing Indian pilots. This latest one is a British Publicity film released by British Pathe Archive on Youtube.
We love making annotations to WW2 era footage that surfaces showing Indian pilots. This latest one is a British Publicity film released by British Pathe Archive on Youtube.
Few people realise that a number of Indian pilots took part in operations from England. At the height of the Battle of Britain, 24 Indian pilots were sent to the UK to under go conversion training and participate in Ops. Even though they could take part only after the Battle of Britain, many of them distinguished themselves flying operations with the various commands.
These twenty four hailed from the 4th Pilots Course – who had received their commissions on 8th August 1940. Less than a week later, on 14th August, it was reported that the first batch of Indian pilots who had finished their training at ITW Lahore will be sent to the UK for operational training. At that time there were 13 direct entry Indian officers in the RAF in the UK.
The 24 Officers arrived by the P&O liner Strathalan in England on 8th October 1940. On arrival, they were given a welcome message addressed individually to them by the Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair. The 24 were initially sent for basic flying training and later on to SFTS followed by OTUs. They subsequently spread out among the Squadrons in Fighter, Coastal and bomber Command. Eight of them were killed in training and operations.
The remaining sixteen officers came back and bought with them the experiences of flying in the European theatre. Another pilot was lost in operations against the Japanese, leaving fifteen survivors of the pioneer 24.
Read more about them at this link . http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Gal…
There are over a dozen annotations in this 2 min video and you will be surprised to see the number of identifications we did in this film.
7 of the 24 Officers sent to the UK died. Another died in the Pacific. The rest returned as heroes and some of them became legends in their own time.
Names
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Erlic Wilmot Pinto
Ranjan Dutt
Shiv Dev Singh
Kanwar Haveli Shah Chopra
Om Prakash Sanghi
Hari Chand Dewan
Edwin Nazirullah
Kenneth Joseph Bhore
Satya Pal Shahi
Mian Mohd Latif
Mohit Mohan Ghose
Mahindra Singh Pujji
Chaman Lal Tandon
Harbans Krishan Khanna
Ganjam Subbaramaiah
Kali Prasad Chaudhury
Rustom Nariman Dastur
Chander Parkash Khosla
Hukum Chand Mehta —
Ali Raza Khan Pasha —
Tarlochan Singh —
Gurbachan Singh —
Anandaraj Samuel Gnanamuthu
Man Mohan Singh