Indian Defence Review

Eastern Air Force 1976. A Tale Of What Not To Do

The dark, ominous, thunder heads had been rising from the depths of Subansary valley all morning. The orographic winds pushed them up the slopes and the impetus helped it to climb higher and higher till the cataclysmic thermodynamics of thunder clouds unleashed enough energy to help them climb unrestricted to unimaginable height, hell bent on destruction around ‘Mechuka’. I was in the middle of it.

I went and landed on a volley ball court next to some tents and without switching off, I ordered the Army Cdr out. He was dumbfounded, initially loss of words. But when it came, he let it fly at me, alternating between request, order, court marshal, pleading and jostling.

After waiting for several hours, I had got airborne from Dinjan in a MI4, on a bad weather day, to take the Army Cdr on a recee of the Chinese border. The GOC had other preoccupations and hence I got airborne close to 1100 hrs, something which we had been told not to do, due to bad weather and turbulence inside the hills after 1200 hrs. The Eastern Air Force, those days, was a different sort of IAF, much like the CIA operations in Lagos, a decade earlier, except that we did neither gun running nor dope peddling like the CIA, we were very socially useful and productive fellows. Most of the guys in Chabua were either the ones who had failed the promotion exams, or were the guys on punishment posting. The guys that the IAF did not want to have around in any self respecting squadron. Chabua was therefore the best self respecting places to be. SOPs were made just for the pleasure of breaking the rule. Anyway, to continue my story……, that day we went from place to place on the whim of the Army Cdr, who seemed to be enjoying himself at my expense. He kept dilly dallying at each whistle stop and as the day went by, we got hemmed in by the line squall while we were deep inside the hills.

Flying in bad weather was nothing new to me, in those years I was compulsively drawn to it, it was exhilarating, the most adventurous thing that I could do at the age of 26. As usual, I dumped collective, descended to the deck, with the MI4’s wheels touching the Subansary river, more like driving a ‘Jonga’ than flying an airplane. I zig zagged along the river, acutely aware of a theorem propounded by my earlier Stn Cdr (Vir Narain). I whistled the morbid tune, taught to me by a navigator friend, it was called ‘point of no return’. The MI4 was one hell of a helicopter to fly. In due course, we braved the weather and got out of the hills, to my recollection, around 1600 hrs ……. about 45 minutes before sunset.

That is when I heard James Palapura on the radio.

James was overhead Tezpur in a Mig 21 acting like an airborne FAC coordinating search and rescue over Dulanmukh range. I heard arguments, between a Caribou, Chetak and James. The sensible guys in the Caribou and Chetak were calling off the search and going home due to impending bad weather and darkness. James was trying to order them back. I had no business to go anywhere other than directly east, back to Chabua, and get the Army Cdr off my back. Yet, curiosity overwhelmed me.

“James Sir”, I called on the radio. “Who punched out ?”, I asked.

“Kempy”, he said promptly, and gave me a quick rundown.

It seemed Kempy (then Flt Lt Deviah, a course mate) had punched out from a Gnat earlier that morning over Dulanmukh after he got hit by ricochet and the engine flamed out. None saw him punch out, none noted where the aircraft went down. The place as you guys know is thick jungles, with crazy wild animals.

Just then my radio quit. That was not unusual. It was unusual if the radio ever worked in a MI4.