L-R : Flt Cadet sharma , Dad , suraj kumar .Details: NagpurFlying club, Ci 1963
This is a nice picture of dad at the Nagpur Flying club. If you go back a few posts to the Flying club, you'll see that the plane in the background is the L-5.
I tried to dig up more info on the other people with dad in the picture. Most of the digging I did was on the Bharatrakshak website. It is a site maintained by truly dedicated bunch of people.
This is Suraj Kumars page in the site. It doesn't mention much other then that he was a fighter pilot and was a Fl Lt.
Also on this webpage there is mention of him and on that page there is also an picture of him standing in the group picture. Apparently he went to flying hunters and in the 1971 conflict, he was posted with the 20 Sqn at Pathankot. His mention goes as follows:
"...Four Hunters flown by Fg. Offs. DeMonte, Suraj Kumar, "Bond" Heble and Kailey flew a sortie to Lahore and Walton in search of opportunity targets. They found and attacked some railway installations and a train somewhere near Walton. They came back without damage."
Sadly I couldn't find much about Sharma. The Air Force seems to be blessed with too many from the Sharma Family.
But without disputing the beauty of the picture, I did find the positioning to be a bit strange. After all mostly anyone would take the picture with the front end of the picture. Am not really sure what was going on in the minds of these chaps so many years back. I think cadets have always been the same over the years!
I started flight testing / production testing in 1974 .When I was not doing that ,I was doing courses(DSSC, CDM, Cranefield UK ,ASTE etc ) or doing ground job (Air Hq , EAC) .You see having left the Suqadron in 1974 I was not even posted to any flying station after that , places where you are in touch with the flying crowd and even come to know news about others by hearsay at least .So ,Thanks . Now at least I know that he was in Lightning Squadron in 1971 war .
ReplyDeleteIncidently towards bottom of the linked page there is squadron photo of Lightning . In standing row Suraj Kumar is 6th from the left. Also it will be news to you that the 7 th person , ie one next to suraj kumar is none other than Arun Prakash , the present naval chief , and who was flying with the IAF on exchange programme with the navy/ air force .He was awarded "Vir Chakra" in 1971 war when he was flying with A F .
P
Wg Cdr (retd.) Suraj Kumar is my uncle. He can be contacted at 09313939631.
ReplyDelete